Exile, Diplomacy and Texts

Exile, Diplomacy and Texts Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Intersections Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture General Editor Karl A.E. Enenkel (Chair of Medieval and Neo-Latin Literature Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster e-mail: kenen_01@uni_muenster.de) Editorial Board W. van Anrooij (University of Leiden) W. de Boer (Miami University) Chr. Göttler (University of Bern) J.L. de Jong (University of Groningen) W.S. Melion (Emory University) R. Seidel (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main) P.J. Smith (University of Leiden) J. Thompson (Queen’s University Belfast) A. Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin) C. Zittel (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice / University of Stuttgart) C. Zwierlein (Freie Universität Berlin) volume 74 – 2021 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/inte Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Exile, Diplomacy and Texts Exchanges between Iberia and the British Isles, 1500–1767 Edited by Ana Sáez-Hidalgo Berta Cano-Echevarría LEIDEN | BOSTON Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. This volume has been benefited from financial support of the research project “Exilio, diplomacia y transmisión textual: Redes de intercambio entre la Península Ibérica y las Islas Británicas en la Edad Moderna,” from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, the Spanish Research Agency (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad). Ref. FFI2015-66847-P. Cover illustration: Antoon van den Wijngaerde, “The March on Ham”. Detail. PK.T.01169. Drawing, 574 × 430 cm. Collectie Stad Antwerpen, Museum Plantin-Moretus (Printroom Collection). Public domain. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, editor. | Cano-Echevarría, Berta, editor. Title: Exile, diplomacy and texts : exchanges between Iberia and the British Isles, 1500–1767 / Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Berta Cano-Echevarría Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: Intersections : interdisciplinary studies in early modern culture, 1568–1181 ; volume 74 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020035802 (print) | LCCN 2020035803 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004273658 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004438040 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Intercultural communication. | Transmission of texts. | Great Britain—Relations—Spain. | Spain—Relations—Great Britain. | Great Britain—Relations—Portugal. | Portugal—Relations—Great Britain. | Great Britain—Intellectual life. | Spain—Intellectual life. | Portugal—Intellectual life. Classification: LCC DA47.9.I2 E95 2021 (print) | LCC DA47.9.I2 (ebook) | DDC 303.48/2410460903—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035802 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035803 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1568-1181 isbn 978-90-04-27365-8 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-43804-0 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano-Echevarría. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Illustrations viii Notes on the Editors ix Notes on the Contributors x Introduction 1 Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano-Echevarría part 1 Encountering the Other 1 Where Were the English? Antoon Van Den Wijngaerde, the Evidence of Visual Culture, and the 1557 Siege of Saint-Quentin 15 Glyn Redworth 2 Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese Sixteenth-Century Diplomacy and Thomas Wilson’s Mission to Portugal 32 Susana Oliveira 3 Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 1580–1760 Thomas O’Connor 55 part 2 Narrating the Other 4 The Construction and Deconstruction of English Catholicism in Spain: Fake News or White Legend? 77 Berta Cano-Echevarría 5 Memoirs for ‘a Sunlit Doorstep’: Selfhood and Cultural Difference in Tomé Pinheiro da Veiga’s Fastigínia 103 Rui Carvalho Homem 6 The Fall of Granada in Hall’s and Holinshed’s Chronicles: Genesis, Propaganda, and Reception 130 Tamara Pérez-Fernández Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access vi Contents part 3 Reading the Other 7 Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections: the Crux of Orthodoxy 155 Ana Sáez-Hidalgo 8 Tools for the English Mission: English Books at St Alban’s College Library, Valladolid 185 Marta Revilla-Rivas 9 Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance Mark Hutchings Index Nominum 208 229 Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the support of a very important number of people and institutions, many of whom have already been acknowledged in the individual chapters. Here we would like to express our gratitude to all those who have contributed to the overall result of the volume. First, and foremost, this book has been the result of the research carried out as part of a four-year Project of Excellence Exilio, diplomacia y transmisión textual: redes de intercambios entre la Península Ibérica y las Islas Británicas en la edad moderna funded by the Spanish State Research Agency and the Ministry of Science and Innovation.1 This has given us not only a significant number of resources for developing the work that is published in this volume, but it has also allowed us to have visibility as a team, and to connect with other groups researching in the same area. We would also like to thank some colleagues for reading and giving us feedback on the volume, in particular, Ángel Alloza, Leticia Álvarez Recio, João Carvalho de Melo, Janette Dillon, Elizabeth Evenden-Kenyon, Raymond Fagel, James E. Kelly, Alexander Samson, Porfirio Sanz Cañamares, and Maurice Whitehead. This volume has benefitted from their generous comments and suggestions. Last, but not least, we are very grateful to the Brill editors as well as to the Intersections-series editors, in particular to Cornel Zwierlein, for their help and guidance throughout the process of preparation of this volume. 1 The project has developed under the auspices of the Spanish Agency for Research during the years 2016–2020: Agencia Estatal de Investigación – Ministerio de Innovación y Ciencia; research project FFI2015-66847-P. An earlier project, “Libros, viajes, fe y diplomacia: interpretación y representación del intercambio cultural entre España e Inglaterra en la Edad Moderna” (Ref: FFI2009-10816), started our research on this topic. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Illustrations 1.1 Antoon van den Wijngaerde, “The Assault on St.-Quentin” [Beleg van Saint-Quentin]. PK.OT.01167. Drawing, 115 × 43 cm. Collectie Stad Antwerpen, Museum Plantin-Moretus (Printroom Collection). Public domain 24–25 1.2 Antoon van den Wijngaerde, “The March on Ham” [Spaanse troepen op weg naar Hain]. PK.T.01169. Drawing, 574 × 430 cm. Collectie Stad Antwerpen, Museum Plantin-Moretus (Printroom Collection). Public domain 26 7.1 The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise (London, Iohn Charlwood for Simon Waterson: 1592) title-page. Royal Library of the Monastery of El Escorial. ©Patrimonio Nacional 168 7.2 The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise (London, Iohn Charlwood for Simon Waterson: 1592) 446. Royal Library of the Monastery of El Escorial. ©Patrimonio Nacional 171 7.3a–b The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise (London, Iohn Charlwood for Simon Waterson: 1592) 358. Royal Library of the Monastery of El Escorial. ©Patrimonio Nacional 175–176 9.1 Robert Treswell, list of personages involved in the Juego de cañas, in A Relation of […] the Journey of the right Honourable Charles Earle of Nottingham […] Ambassadour to the King of Spaine (London, Melchisedech Bradwood: 1605) 48–49. RB69675, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California 218 Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Notes on the Editors Ana Sáez-Hidalgo is Associate Professor at the Universidad de Valladolid, Spain. Her research focuses on medieval and early modern English literature and culture from the perspective of Anglo-Spanish relations, in particular the textual and material exchanges, the channels of book dissemination through English Catholic exiles, and their impact on book culture. Her books include The Fruits of Exile: Emblems and Pamphlets from the English College at Valladolid (with Berta Cano-Echevarría), The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (co-edited with B. Gastle and R.F. Yeager), John Gower in England and Iberia: Manuscripts, Influences, Reception (co-edited with R.F. Yeager), as well as the Spanish editions and translations of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, among others. She is currently co-head of the Research Project Networks of Exchange (with Berta Cano-Echevarría) and editor of Sederi Yearbook. Berta Cano-Echevarría is Associate Professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Valladolid in Spain. Her research interests focus both on cultural and literary exchanges and textual transmission between England and Spain in the early modern period. She has published a number of articles and book chapters on the literature of the exiles in the English College at Valladolid, on the work of Philip Sidney and on the cultural manifestations of the Anglo-Spanish peace of 1604–1605. She co-edited with Ana Sáez-Hidalgo Fruits of Exile: Emblems and Pamphlets from the English College at Valladolid (2009), translated and edited in collaboration Philip Sidney’s Defensa de la Poesía (2003) and is currently working with Mark Hutchings on A Theatre of Diplomacy: The Anglo-Spanish Peace, 1603–1605. Additionally, she has been co-editor with Ana Sáez-Hidalgo of Sederi Yearbook, the Journal of the Spanish and Portuguese Association of English Renaissance Studies. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Notes on the Contributors Rui Carvalho Homem is Professor of English at the University of Porto (Oporto), Portugal, and currently the Chair of ESRA, the European Shakespeare Research Association. His major areas of expertise include Early Modern English literature, Irish Studies, Translation Studies and Intermediality. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Drama of Alterity (2003) and Poetry and Translation in Northern Ireland: Dislocations in Contemporary Writing (2009). Edited volumes and/or special issues include Relational Designs in Literature and the Arts: Page and Stage, Canvas and Screen (2012); Memory, Conflict and Commerce in Early Modern Europe – special issue of Litteraria Pragensia 23: 45 (2013; with Martin Procházka and Paola Spinozzi); Atlantic Communities: Translation, mobility, hospitality, special issue of Atlantic Studies, 15:3 (2018; with María Teresa Caneda-Cabrera and David Johnston); and (as guest editor) a forum on Cultural Translation for Shakespeare Studies XLVI (2018). Mark Hutchings is Associate Professor in Early English Theatre at the University of Reading, and was formerly Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. He specializes in early modern theatre history and performance practices, and he has published on the representation of the Ottoman Empire in the early modern London playhouse, the drama of Thomas Middleton, and Anglo-Spanish diplomacy. He is co-author (with A.A. Bromham) of Middleton and His Collaborators (2008), author of Turks, Repertories, and the Early Modern English Stage (2017), and editor of The Changeling: A Critical Reader (2019). He is currently completing a study of the theatre interval in the early modern English playhouse (2020). Thomas O’Connor is Professor in history at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where he is also director of the Arts and Humanities Institute. He has published on early modern Irish migration, religious history and political thought. He edits Archivium Hibernicum and his current research concerns the emergence of the early modern Irish and British clergy as professional groups. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Notes on the Contributors xi Susana Oliveira is an invited Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities of Universidade Aberta (Distance Education University of Portugal). She was a Tutor of English Society and Culture and English Literature at the same University and an invited Assistant Professor and Vice-Coordinator of the master’s degree in English Teaching at the School of Education of Isec Lisboa (Institute of Higher Education). Her area of expertise is Portuguese diplomacy at the Elizabethan court and her research interests concentrate on early modern Anglo-Portuguese affairs, diplomacy through a bibliographic and manuscript survey, diplomatic correspondence analysis and early modern English literature. Tamara Pérez-Fernández is Assistant Professor at the University of Valladolid. Her research has mainly focused on paratextual materials in late medieval English manuscripts, with an especial emphasis on the works of John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer and the role of the scribes in the transmission of their texts. She has also conducted research on Anglo-Spanish relations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and during the Napoleonic Wars, and is especially interested in the historiographical portrayals of the Tudor, Trastámara, and Habsburg dynasties in early modern English and Spanish chronicles. Glyn Redworth is a member of the History Faculty of the University of Oxford, where he teaches early modern British and Spanish history. He also directs a Master’s programme in London on Tudor history for the University of Buckingham and was sometime holder of the Reina Victoria Eugenia Visiting Chair at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. Author of several books and numerous articles, these include a study of Bishop Stephen Gardiner and an analysis of Charles I’s visit to Madrid in 1623. He has also written a life of the Spanish missionary in Jacobean England, Luisa de Carvajal, and edited a two-volume translation of her letters into English. Marta Revilla Rivas is a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Salamanca, currently teaching at the University of Valladolid while completing her thesis. Her research interests include early modern English Catholicism, book history, and Anglo-Iberian cultural relations in the early modern period. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Introduction Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano-Echevarría At the end of the sixteenth century, an anonymous English text presented Spaniards in a singularly unflattering light: ‘It is a most detestable slauery to be under a Spaniards subiection, worse then death it self, being hurtfull not only to the bodie but to the soule. Although he sometimes dissemble [sic] his nature, yet is he therefore not to be trusted’.1 This attitude of distrust and demonization of the political and religious ‘other’, stemming from actual early modern confrontations, has also shaped the scholarly discourse in more recent times. What Julián Juderías labelled as the ‘Black Legend’ more than a century ago2 became the point of departure for countless studies on the relations, not only between Spain and England, but also the British Isles and Iberia, thus hindering more nuanced understanding of the relations between the countries on Europe’s western periphery. This is the territory explored by Exile, Diplomacy and Texts: Exchanges between Iberia and the British Isles, 1500–1767. Focused on the dynamics of exchange resulting from early modern geographical mobility, this volume develops an interdisciplinary narrative of early modern religious, political, and diplomatic exchanges between the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles from the perspective of exchange rather than confrontation, bearing in mind Robert Muchembled’s view that ‘if conflicts [in early modern Europe] were destabilising, they also created a dialectic which contributed to the overall advance of European civilization’.3 Even at moments of sharpest military or religious confrontation, tension or antagonism, the exchanges of information and news, the movements and interactions of people, the transactions of objects and texts, and the representations of the ‘other’ never ceased between the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula. 1 A pageant of Spanish humours. Wherin are naturally described and liuely portrayed, the kinds and quallities of a signior of Spaine. Translated out of Dutche, By H.W. (London, [J. Windet for] Iohn Wolfe: 1599) n.p. 2 Juderías J., La Leyenda negra: estudios acerca del concepto de España en el extranjero (Barcelona: 1914). 3 Muchembled R., “Preface”, in Schilling H. – Tóth G. (eds.), Religious and Cultural Exchange in Europe 1400–1700 (Cambridge: 2006) xviii–xxi, here xx. See also the groundbreaking Hackett H.A. (ed.), Early Modern Exchanges: Dialogues between Nations and Cultures, 1550– 1750 (Farnham: 2015). The number of publications and book series on early modern exchanges has grown significantly in recent years, and has explored not only material exchanges, but also the immaterial ones. There is no space here to account for all of these studies. © SÁEZ-HIDALGO AND CANO-ECHEVARRÍA, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 2 Sáez-Hidalgo and Cano-Echevarría This volume poses the following question, then: how best to understand multiple forms of exchange carried out over a period of two-and-a-half centuries uniquely marked by phased contention and friendship, of inconstant alliances and corresponding antagonisms that challenged geographical binaries? Taking uncommon account of often-overlooked political manoeuvring between lesser players – Ireland and Portugal – amidst the greater rivalry of England and Spain, the essays included here gather testimonies and analyse texts that challenge conventional views of Anglo-Spanish relations as monolithic, consistent, and uniformly antagonistic, finding new evidence in a wide variety of littleknown or virtually forgotten materials: from manuscript letters to printed pamphlets and books and the traces of reading in them; from official reports – whether of soldiers or prisoners – to notarized inventories of libraries; from visual artefacts with narrative value to textual accounts of events and their performances, as well as fictionalized travellers’ accounts. The essays in this volume extract from these sources fresh and significant testimony of the heterogeneous transnational and transcultural conversations carried out among the diverse communities in early modern Iberia and the British Isles, through examination of a range of religious, cultural, and diplomatic encounters. Such encounters occurred across significant geographical and cultural distances in early modern Europe, largely due to the developments in traveling routes, global transportation and trade since the end of the Middle Ages, resulting in greater mobility of people and goods.4 The recent recognition of such an increase in geographical mobility has brought a redefinition of the period as one ‘more multidimensional and culturally fluid’.5 It is from this perspective that the essays in this volume transcend the traditional, overly simplistic binaries of the Anglo-Spanish, Anglo-Portuguese, Anglo-Irish, Hispano-Portuguese axes. Consequently, these essays open up the discussion of Anglo-Spanish and Anglo-Portuguese relations to interrogate the dynamics of the diverse communities of British and Irish people in the Iberian Peninsula, and of Spanish and Portuguese ‘others’ travelling to Britain and Ireland throughout the early modern period, an historical moment when the borders between Spain and Portugal, and Ireland and England were converted into much more 4 Lucassen J. – Lucassen L., “The Mobility Transition Revisited, 1500–1900: What the Case of Europe Can Offer to Global History”, Journal of Global History 4, 3 (2009) 347–377. See, for the use of the term ‘mobility’ rather than other near-synonyms like ‘migration’, Jürgens H.P. – Weller T.H. (eds.), Religion und Mobilität: zum Verhältnis von raumbezogener Mobilität und religiöser Identitätsbildung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa (Göttingen: 2010) 1–12. 5 Singh J.G. (ed.), A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion (Chichester: 2013) 5. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Introduction 3 liquid territories as a result of political take-over, plantation, and/or religious persecution. This essay collection investigates the varieties of exchange resulting from early modern networks of religious exiles, merchants and diplomats, as well as travellers, soldiers and captives, among others. Aligning this focus with the work of Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham, who have argued that a network is ‘not only a number of people in contact but also [in] the narrower sense […] a complex and dynamic system’,6 the contributors to this volume identify relevant networks of exchange between the British Isles and Iberia during the early modern period, and establish how, in a variety of ways, they disseminated transnationally a striking panoply of cultural elements, material and non-material, visual and textual. In that regard, the seminaries established by recusant British Catholics throughout the Continent can be considered prototypical. Working in concord towards one purpose, namely the re-conversion of Britain to Catholicism, and relying on the assistance of fellow-Catholics in France, Spain, and Portugal, these British exiles established webs of communication and transportation for students, professors and staff in and out of the British Isles and throughout continental locations, a mobility that, as Liesbeth Corens has demonstrated, shaped their identity and the nature of their relation to their homeland.7 Notably, too, as Liam Chambers and Thomas O’Connor have argued,8 these institutions were neither isolated nor removed, from their location, or from each other. Rather, they were among the most fertile and productive conduits of European interaction and exchange during the early modern period, even providing information from one country to another and hosting travellers of their own nationality. The movement of people between the British Isles and the Continent prompted by seminaries and colleges such as those in Valladolid, Lisbon and Seville necessarily brought about an exchange and dissemination of material objects for their worship, liturgy, education, and to support their ideological purposes, a range of which are considered in this volume. 6 Raymond J. – Moxham N. (eds.), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: 2016) 8. This idea is further developed in ch. 3, “News Networks: Putting the ‘News’ and ‘Networks’ Back in”, ibidem, 102–129. 7 Corens L., Confessional Mobility and English Catholics in Counter-Reformation Europe (Oxford: 2019). 8 Chambers L. – O’Connor T. (eds.), College Communities Abroad: Education, Migration and Catholicism in Early Modern Europe (Manchester: 2017) 1–33; see also their Forming Catholic Communities. Irish, Scots and English College Networks in Europe, 1568–1918 (Brill: 2018). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 4 Sáez-Hidalgo and Cano-Echevarría Similar networks of exchange proved integral to the dissemination of information and news throughout early modern Europe, as has been widely studied.9 Paul Goring has pointed out that ‘in the early modern period news rapidly became a highly developed enterprise, involving vast numbers of agents and communication routes’.10 These frequently overlapped with the networks used by other groups to pass on information or propaganda. There is evidence that some of the so-called ‘avisi’ or ‘avisos’ that were distributed in manuscript form among the English colleges on the Continent ended up in the hands of Spanish printers avid for news on the persecution in England, a best-selling topic.11 The part played by the dissemination of news in the ideologization of the ‘other’ was neither stable nor univocal, as the myth of the “Black Legend” insists. A range of groups competed to disseminate a stereotype that suited their purposes, politics and religion, but these again were mutable and adaptable to circumstances. Likewise diplomacy, as the institution epitomizing transnational relations, both in peace and war, was at the heart of numerous exchanges between the states, transcending the political to reach, as Tracey A. Sowerby and Joanna Craigwood have variously shown, the cultural, the artistic and the literary.12 Amicable conversation between courts was established by means of diplomatic missions, beginning in the sixteenth century, some more successful than others; but moments of tension could also prove richly productive, bringing an unprecedented interest in knowing the opponent and therefore paving the way for a variety of texts and objects that extended beyond the conventional reports from ambassadors. Visual artefacts, such as the paintings of battles decorating the Sala de las Batallas where ambassadors were received in the 9 10 11 12 See, apart from the abovementioned Raymond – Moxham, News Networks in Early Modern Europe, Davies S. – Fletcher P. (eds.), News in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: 2014); Dooley B. (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: 2010). Goring P., “A Network of Networks: Spreading the News in an Expanding World of Information”, in Brandtzæg S. – Goring P. – Watson C. (eds.), Travelling Chronicles: News and Newspapers from the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: 2018) 3–24, here 4. Some of these have been traced in Allison A.F. – Rogers D.M., The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640: An Annotated Catalogue, vol. 2: Works in Languages Other than English (Aldershot: 1989); see also Murphy M., St Gregory’s College, Seville, 1592–1767 (London: 1992) 115–122. Sowerby T.A. – Craigwood J. (eds.), Cultures of Diplomacy and Literary Writing in the Early Modern World (Oxford – New York: 2019); see also their “English Diplomacy, Textual Production, and Early Modern Publics: An Introduction”, Huntington Library Quarterly (forthcoming). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Introduction 5 monastery of El Escorial, or the Somerset House portrait representing the signing of the peace of London in 1604, present us with the double face of diplomacy: looking for peace and at the same time pointing towards the possibility of waging war. Their role as intermediators for groups of otherwise voiceless communities, such as captives or religious dissidents, is often neglected because their missions were sometimes surrounded by pomp and spectacle. In this volume we aim to shed light on this double side of ambassadors as at once silent mediators and visual representatives of their masters and monarchs. Thus, diplomats and their missions are not only vehicles of transmission but become themselves the focus of attention and the protagonists of accounts, poems, chronicles and texts such as Tomé Pinheiro de Veiga’s Fastiginia, which are difficult to classify generically. Reading these texts and artefacts in a new light is the purpose of this collection. To accommodate such diverse yet highly interrelated topics, the volume is divided into three sections that articulate the manners in which all these types of transnational exchanges took place between Iberia and the British Isles in the early modern period, as studied in the individual chapters. Thus, each section presents instances of interaction with the ‘other’: the encounter, the narration and the reading. The first section, ‘Encountering the Other’, explores occurrences of transnational relations ranging from military collaboration to the delicate intricacies and tensions derived from diplomatic missions, and passing through the complexities faced by nationals of Ireland in their interaction with other countries. Glyn Redworth’s re-evaluation of the English contribution at the Battle of Saint-Quentin (1557) brings to the discussion not only written documentary sources, but visual representations drawn by one of the witnesses of the battle, Antoon van den Wijngaerde, whose sketches would later be used in the grand fresco that decorates the Sala de las Batallas in the Escorial monastery. English historiography has been inclined to play down the level of English involvement when Mary Tudor lent her husband Philip II a substantial military force to help him in his war against the French. This interpretation is consonant with the sense of English national independence as, according to critics, the English would have been reluctant to join Philip’s multinational army. Early contemporary sources, however, tell a different story, and English testimonies proclaim the courage and commitment of their troops. Despite differing opinions of the English involvement, Redworth observes how Wijngaerde’s sketch of the march on the fortress of Ham pictures the English contingent in a very strategic position, by the side of the king himself, a place of honour that would not have been possible if the intervention of the English troops at the previous siege of Saint-Quentin had been nothing but significant. The reconsideration of this episode as an instance of collaboration Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 6 Sáez-Hidalgo and Cano-Echevarría between the English and the Spanish, rather than one of confrontation or obstruction, opens the door to different ways of reassessing the position of the various nationalities in their diverse encounters. This is the case with Anglo-Portuguese relations. Friction between Portugal and England may seem to be exceptional, given the long-term alliance between these two countries, but Susana Oliveira’s chapter underscores the diplomatic tensions that could arise from a perceived lack of balance in status and a transgression of each other’s territorial boundaries. This imbalance is illustrated by the fact that while successive Portuguese ambassadors were sent to the English court, only one embassy went to Portugal in the period before the Iberian Union of 1580. However, this English embassy demonstrates how successful an ambassador could be in even the most inauspicious circumstances. Thomas Wilson’s mission was to protest about and obtain compensation for the sinking by the Portuguese of an English ship with its crew and valuable cargo off the shores of Liberia. This delicate matter was made more difficult by the ongoing attacks of English privateers against the Portuguese, a matter that the successive ambassadors had been unsuccessfully bringing up as an issue with Queen Elizabeth. Sending a mission was, however, a way of acknowledging Portugal as a player in the international arena, not side-lined by Spain. It also opened up new networks of exchange with the merchant community and religious exiles, and certainly provided intelligence about the politics and the fluctuating power of the Portuguese court. So even when the goals of the mission were not met, its achievements proved rewarding. As Oliveira puts it, the aim of ‘every diplomatic mission is to put the rhetoric of ambiguity at the service of peace and agreement’. By making the most of the ambiguities of diplomacy, Wilson became the man-in-the-know about Portuguese affairs upon his return to England. Ambassadors were oftentimes involved in interceding for captives to be released. The priority was always the liberation of the most privileged, while the hard work of freeing the more common prisoners was usually undertaken by religious orders. The peripheral situation of Irish captives makes their stories especially poignant as they were left behind in many ransoming schemes because they were not a priority for the governments that they had been serving while taken captive. Thomas O’Connor offers a picture of the circumstances of Irish captives in northern Africa through a broad survey of archival sources. His focus is ‘located in the rapidly changing geo-political and commercial circumstances that marked Irish involvement in expanding British and Spanish activity in the Maghreb’. As the already uprooted Irish were a mobile, resourceful minority they undertook military service for Britain and Spain and also found opportunities to participate in Mediterranean trade networks. Their Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Introduction 7 ambiguous position as Catholic subjects of Protestant Monarchs allowed them to embed themselves both with English and Spanish communities, but this marginality also allowed for them to be left behind on too many occasions. The multiple stories of this human traffic have sometimes left a record when the captives were released, escaped or went through a process of reintegration into Christianity after having converted to Islam, but, in all probability, many anonymous lives in captivity left no trace. The second section of the book, ‘Narrating the Other’, brings together three studies of manners of representing the ‘other’, whether through the dissemination of popular pamphlets bringing news from another country, in accounts of military victories and their historiographical depiction, or in the description of people and customs from other countries in transnational encounters. The narration of the ‘other’ through half-truths and deceit is central to the argument in Berta Cano-Echevarría’s chapter. Showing how ‘the construction of a national enemy does not necessarily mean a vilification of the people of the opposing nation’, Cano-Echevarría analyses the ‘White Legend’ created in Spain to disseminate and promote an image of the English that best suited the Spanish government for its plans for the British Isles. Although news about England was sparse, what there was arrived via the English Catholic colleges in the Iberian Peninsula, where the information they received in the form of letters from England was selected and translated with the purpose of promoting their mission: to return their nation to the Catholic faith. Through a variety of texts (newsletters, martyrs’ accounts or even popular romances) the Spanish people were led to believe that most English citizens were subjected by a tyrant regime that persecuted them and prevented their natural inclination towards Catholic worship. The aim of the Spanish government was therefore to liberate them. Jesuitical equivocation played a significant role in this construction of identities, as not telling the truth in certain difficult circumstances was, though controversial, a way to protect the Catholic mission. Representations of national identity were not only projected onto ‘the other’; a concern with national self-representation was also prescient in the period, and this was best defined when the image of the self was constructed through opposing identities. Rui Carvalho Homem analyses a fascinating but neglected text that offers a rich tapestry of everyday life and courtly celebrations as experienced by the author in the guise of the invented persona of the extravagant warrior-bishop Turpin. The Fastigínia’s pastiche nature opens to all sort of observations, incidents and anecdotes derived from the visit of its protagonist to Valladolid in 1605, then the capital of Spain, a visit which coincided with the festivities that celebrated the birth of the new heir to the throne of Spain, and the arrival of a seven-hundred-strong English embassy, led by Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 8 Sáez-Hidalgo and Cano-Echevarría the Lord High Admiral of England, Charles Howard, to ratify the peace with England signed the previous year. In his reading of the Fastigínia Carvalho Homem introduces the perspective of imagology, which offers an alertness to ‘the comparative tropes energizing the narrative’, and brings to life the contrasts between Portuguese and Spaniards, Catholics and Protestants, northerners and southerners, and the role of women and religion in the midst of this revelry. The concept of ‘foreignness’ at a time when Portugal was under the Spanish crown fluctuates as the introduction of the English visitors breaks the binary: as Carvalho Homem remarks, the Fastigínia foregrounds ‘the uncertainties and perplexities that envelop the persona’s outspoken views, and a tertium comparationis that lends density and complexity to his otherwise polarized remarks’. The dissemination of news in early modern Europe as well as the interpretation and reinterpretation of this news according to the national prevailing ideology is the topic of the last chapter in this section. Tamara Pérez-Fernández focuses for this purpose on the Fall of Granada in 1492, the last remaining stronghold of Islam in Western Europe. The Catholic monarchs, who accomplished this final conquest in the Iberian Peninsula, were eager to present it not as a regional dispute over territories but as a ‘holy war that transcended the boundaries of the European kingdoms and that would be determinant in the final success of the Christian side in its clash against Islam’. As the news reached courts throughout Europe, various celebrations took place, and Ferdinand of Aragón made sure he had control over the narration of what had taken place. In England the Archbishop of Canterbury announced the news at St Paul’s Cross with a solemn oration that was followed by a general procession. The process of incorporating this episode and its national celebration in historiographical accounts after the Protestant Reformation shows the difficulties of reconciling ideology with a desire to include episodes of international magnitude into these texts. Pérez-Fernández analyses the variations between Edward Hall’s version of the event in his Chronicle, the rendering of the same event in Holinshed’s Chronicles of 1577, and the very different version in the 1587 edition of Holinshed. The third, and final section, ‘Reading the Other’, includes three chapters with a particular focus on the textual, as they analyse specific instances in which reading happens both through the material objects – books – or in the theatrical interpretation emanating from narratives of diplomatic encounters. In her chapter, Ana Sáez-Hidalgo analyses the traces of reading left in a Protestant book, The Second Part of Christian Exercise, that was used by English Catholics in Seville, during a period when the Spanish Inquisition tightly controlled Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Introduction 9 access to heterodox books, and particularly those coming from Protestant countries as does this one. Nevertheless, a number of copies escaped being seized and found their way either into the hands of English collaborators of the Inquisition, who checked the orthodoxy of their contents, or joined the holdings of English seminaries. In the latter case, such texts were essential for future priests as they learned to refute the arguments of their sectarian opposition. However, Sáez-Hidalgo argues, the peculiar features of the volume examined in this essay point toward different kind of usage: The Second Part of Christian Exercise is a Protestantization of Robert Persons’ Christian Directory. As Sáez-Hidalgo shows, instead of engaging with this Protestantized work in an ‘overtly hostile and combative’ manner, the English Catholics in Spain who left annotations and markings in this book collated the text against Persons’s original in order to restore it to Catholic orthodoxy, replicating Persons’ exact wording. Thus, corrections that on first glance might seem the work of censors result in fact from the circumstances of exile and persecution, the subsequent culture of economy of resources, and the strategies of scribal culture in the dissemination by recusant Catholics of their own texts. Thus, as Sáez-Hidalgo notes, ‘recycling the seized copy of The Second part by way of correcting the Protestant appropriations and reverting it to Persons’s own text […] constitutes a utilitarian (re)use of the book’. The education of the English Catholics who came to take refuge in the Colleges of the Peninsula was different to that offered in other Jesuit institutions. These young boys, trained to return to their country as Catholic priests and keep alive their religion, needed a specific education that is best understood through their access to books. Marta Revilla-Rivas’s chapter studies the library of the English College of St Alban’s in Valladolid as it existed in the earlier times of the College. Focusing on this period, when the persecution against Catholics was most fierce, and more specifically on the books in English, helps to see which works reached the shelves of the College and were then used as educational tools for the young English exiles. For this purpose, Revilla-Rivas analyses the inventory that was made in 1767, when the Jesuits were expelled from Spain and all their properties confiscated and inventoried. The inventory of the library in St Alban’s offered a special challenge to decipher the titles of the books in English as it is clear that the officers who undertook the task had no knowledge of the language and were phonetically transcribing a Spanish aural interpretation of English spelling. An added interest of the inventory is that it was made following the order in the shelves so that ‘the list acts like a snapshot of the topographical contents of the library, with a division into sections, one for each bookshelf, and one for forbidden books’. This helps us Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 10 Sáez-Hidalgo and Cano-Echevarría understand how each volume was understood and classified and which books were forbidden, placed in shelves also known as the infierno, to which the students had no access. Books of English history and literature, including some well-known classics, are among the holdings, but, as could be expected, the collection contains mainly religious titles. Mark Hutchings’ chapter revisits the episode of the English embassy’s visit to Valladolid on occasion of the ratification of the peace in 1605 that was central to Carvalho Homem’s chapter but through a different primary text and from a different angle. Hutchings proposes a reading of one of the English accounts of the embassy, Robert Treswell’s A Relation of Such Things, with the intention of exploring how texts such as this could function at the time as re-enactments of the actual diplomatic event. Accounts of diplomatic embassies tend to be dry and devoid of artistic aspirations. While modern historians make use of them, bringing together all the available sources in an attempt to come as close as possible to the actual event, contemporary readers of these accounts were certainly looking for a different experience, an experience that may be not that different from that of reading a performance text. The common assumption that diplomacy is theatrical is taken one step further by Hutchings. His exploration of how diplomatic accounts, in their obsession with rendering a record of events as they had happened, with no adornment or personal comment, argues that they can also be read as an extended stage direction. If we distinguish ‘between the Haupttext, or main text, i.e. the dialogue, and Nebentext, the apparatus of stage directions, or side text’, the cast of characters, entrances, exits, gestures, order in processions and description of the attire of the protagonists in Treswell’s account constitute the Nebentext, and the Haupttext is omitted, leaving the description of diplomatic ceremonial to speak for itself. Throughout these chapters, the volume Exile, Diplomacy and Texts: Exchanges between Iberia and the British Isles, 1500–1767 combines the philological, the historiographical and the cultural approaches into a multidisciplinary analysis of the relationship between these two geographic areas of Europe’s periphery, and the exchanges happening among them, the networks facilitating them, and their results in a variety of textual expressions. The presence of British and Irish people in the Peninsula, and vice versa, brought about complex networks that doubtlessly contributed to establish the basis of a common culture of exchange of ideas and artistic expression. These ‘visitors’ faced a world that was very different from their own. This is the type of situation in which exchange becomes a basic strategy for mutual understanding between communities and individuals. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Introduction 11 Bibliography Primary Sources A pageant of Spanish humours. Wherin are naturally described and liuely portrayed, the kinds and quallities of a signior of Spaine. Translated out of Dutche, By H.W. (London, [J. Windet for] Iohn Wolfe: 1599). Secondary Sources Allison A.F. – Rogers D.M., The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English CounterReformation between 1558 and 1640: An Annotated Catalogue, vol. 2: Works in Languages other than English (Aldershot: 1989). Chambers L. – O’Connor T. (eds.), College Communities Abroad: Education, Migration and Catholicism in Early Modern Europe (Manchester: 2017). Chambers L. – O’Connor T. (eds.), Forming Catholic Communities. Irish, Scots and English College Networks in Europe, 1568–1918 (Brill: 2018). Corens L., Confessional Mobility and English Catholics in Counter-Reformation Europe (Oxford: 2019). Davies S. – Fletcher P. (eds.), News in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: 2014). Dooley B. (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: 2010). Goring P., “A Network of Networks: Spreading the News in an Expanding World of Information”, in Brandtzæg S. – Goring P. – Watson C. (eds.), Travelling Chronicles: News and Newspapers from the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: 2018) 3–24. Hackett H.A. (ed.), Early Modern Exchanges: Dialogues between Nations and Cultures, 1550–1750 (Farnham: 2015). Juderías J., La Leyenda negra: estudios acerca del concepto de España en el extranjero (Barcelona: 1914). Jürgens H.P. – Weller T.H. (eds.), Religion und Mobilität: zum Verhältnis von raumbezogener Mobilität und religiöser Identitätsbildung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa (Göttingen: 2010). Lucassen J. – Lucassen L., “The Mobility Transition Revisited, 1500–1900: What the Case of Europe Can Offer to Global History”, Journal of Global History 4, 3 (2009) 347–377. Muchembled R., “Preface”, in Schilling H. – Tóth G. (eds.), Religious and Cultural Exchange in Europe 1400–1700 (Cambridge: 2006) xviii–xxi. Murphy M., St Gregory’s College, Seville, 1592–1767 (London: 1992). Raymond J. – Moxham N. (eds.), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: 2016). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 12 Sáez-Hidalgo and Cano-Echevarría Singh J.G. (ed.), A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion (Chichester: 2013). Sowerby T.A. – Craigwood J. (eds.), Cultures of Diplomacy and Literary Writing in the Early Modern World (Oxford – New York: 2019). Sowerby T.A. – Craigwood J., “English Diplomacy, Textual Production, and Early Modern Publics: An Introduction”, Huntington Library Quarterly (forthcoming). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access part 1 Encountering the Other ∵ Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access chapter 1 Where Were the English? Antoon Van Den Wijngaerde, the Evidence of Visual Culture, and the 1557 Siege of Saint-Quentin Glyn Redworth In March 1557, King Philip I of England travelled to London to implore his wife, Mary Tudor, to support his war against France. An army of 4,000 English foot soldiers, along with 1,000 cavalry, and over 1,500 military engineers and sappers went over to join him and the bulk of his army in what is today southern Belgium. Meanwhile, an advance party under his cousin, the Duke of Savoy, had besieged the prosperous northern French town of Saint-Quentin. English sappers under military escort arrived ahead of the rest of the English troops to help in the siege. On St Lawrence’s Day, 10 August, the duke scored a stunning victory over the French constable, the Duke of Montmorency, as he was trying to relieve the town. The constable and with him the cream of the French nobility were captured. King Philip’s army, along with the rest of the English troops, reached Saint-Quentin shortly afterwards on the 13th. The siege was tightened, and the town was overrun on 27 August 1557. … ‘Never children crept more unwillingly to school than the English contingent which joined the Spaniards after the battle of St. Quentin’.1 Thus spoke Sir John W. Fortescue, arguably the most influential twentieth-century historian of the British army. He was describing a time when King Philip I of England led an English army into the field against the French in the late summer of 1557. This article will assess largely overlooked visual evidence in order to re-evaluate what remains the prevailing view, barely modified in more recent scholarship, namely that the English arrived late, did little, and went home early. The 30-year-old King Philip evidently did not realise that he was cutting against the grain of his adopted country’s destiny when he took command of an English army. Modern historians have been just as much swept along by a similar assumption – perhaps even the prejudice – that stout Englishmen 1 Fortescue J.W., A History of the British Army, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (London: 1910) 125–126. © GLYN REDWORTH, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_003 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 16 Redworth could never have submitted enthusiastically to the will of a foreign monarch. In consequence, scholars are stubbornly mealy-mouthed about the contribution made by English soldiers, sappers, and mounted men-at-arms to the multinational campaign of 1557. The calamitous loss of Calais early in 1558 certainly played a part in souring historical memory, yet this ignores the fact that, by the time the town succumbed to the French, Philip’s English army had long since returned home across the Channel and no Spanish troops were inside its walls. Scholars persist in latching onto any contemporary criticism of English readiness to fight. This in turn feeds back into an atavistic view that early-modern England had a unique attachment to its sense of national independence, a set of feelings that supposedly meant that the English could never come to terms with being a member of the Habsburgs’ European-wide community. Even that most fair-minded of historians, David Loades, damned with faint praise. He conceded that the English contingent had eventually ‘done something to redeem their tarnished reputation […] but it is clear from [the King’s] own report […] that he believed them to have been tardy and negligent’.2 John Edwards, in his elegant study of the queen’s reign, grants that, although the English arrived too late to take part in the battle around Saint-Quentin, the English were ‘very much part of the action’, at least in the subsequent siege of the town.3 But if both Edwards and Loades acknowledge, almost in passing, that one Spanish officer present at the storming of the town on 27 August recognised that the English fought best of all,4 neither historian specifically mentions the English contribution to the capture of the strongly defended fortress-town of Ham. Ham is also ignored by Cliff Davies, who has written the most sensitive account of the whole campaign. His view, though again not wholly without justification, is that the king ‘evidently believed that England’s most useful contribution in 1557 lay in pioneers and miners for siege operations’. Davies then went 2 Loades D., The Reign of Queen Mary: government, politics and religion 1553–58, 2nd ed. (Abingdon: 2013) 313. Typical of English accounts of the campaign (and atypical of D.M. Loades) is the degree of minor inaccuracy; for instance, on 312, Loades twice indicates that Philip returned from London with his English army, as does John Edwards in his groundbreaking study, Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen (London: 2011) 303. Though the diarist, Henry Machyn, has the king departing on the 5th, Philip probably sailed from Dover on the 6th or even the early hours of 7 May, but even so it would be some weeks before his English army followed him across the Channel. For an excellent account of the willingness of former rebels to display their loyalty by signing up for the king’s army, see Adams S., “The Dudley Clientele”, in Bernard G.W (ed.), The Tudor Nobility (Manchester: 1992) 247–253. 3 Edwards, Mary I 304. 4 For Juan de Pinedo’s letter written during the assault, see below p. 27. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Where Were the English ? 17 on to minimise the contribution of the English land forces by remarking that ‘far more important was the navy’.5 If we examine what was said at the time about the campaign, we see that contemporaries were divided in their assessment of England’s involvement. There was undoubtedly heavy criticism from some observers. But to assume that negative comments must outweigh all praise is to normalize an already tainted view of this war. To expect that only an unambiguously decisive and triumphal intervention could indicate the nation’s willingness to accept its place within the Habsburg union would only be a further manifestation of English exceptionalism. At one time or another, all the countries fighting for King Philip would receive a degree of censure from those observing the fighting. Nonetheless, if we look first at what English commentators were saying at the time it is evident that they felt a rush of blood to the head when they reported on their compatriots’ achievements. The great London diarist, Henry Machyn, wrote that on the night of 3 September an order went out that every church in the capital and up and down the land was ‘to sing and make bonfires for the winning of Saint Quintin’.6 Another diarist, Charles Wriothesley, periphrastically noted that ‘the King laid siege to the town of Saint Quintins by the water of the Somme, and on Friday the 27 of August the town was won by the King with the help of Englishmen’.7 Holinshed put flesh on the bones in his chronicle. The same passage appears practically unaltered in both the 1577 and 1587 versions and merits quotation at length: … King Philip with the English army under the government of the earl of Pembroke, and others, came to the siege afore St. Quintins, and so was the siege greatly re-enforced, and on the xxvii of August by the special aid and help of the Englishmen, the town of Saint Quintin was taken. For when the other soldiers after diverse assaults were repulsed and gave over, the English men of a stout courage gave a new onset, by reason whereof the town was taken. And in reward of their well doing, King Philip granted them the sackage of the said town.8 5 Davies C.S.L., “England and the French War, 1557–9”, in Loach J. – Tittler R. (eds.), The MidTudor Polity, c. 1540–1560 (London: 1980) 159–185, here 164. 6 The Diary of H. Machyn, Citizen and Merchant Taylor of London, from AD 1550 to AD 1563, ed. J.G. Nichols (London: 1848) 150. All quotations from printed works English are modernised. 7 The italics are mine. Wriothesley C., A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, ed. W.D. Hamilton, vol. 2 (London: 1875, 1877) 139. 8 See under the year 1557, in The Holinshed Project at http://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/ (last accessed April 2020). Holinshed adds that this ‘sudden short gladness’ was quickly replaced by shame at the loss of Calais. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 18 Redworth Holinshed’s recollection of English bravery on the day of the siege is thoroughly attested. The anonymous Nuremberg Account of the campaign recorded how the English willingly took the lead in a direct assault on the town’s principal and most heavily defended gate, and how, after suffering notable casualties, despite being beaten back, they quickly rallied.9 Disapproval of England’s contribution is more readily found among Philip’s own courtiers. The time it took the English troops to link up with his army was used by the king and those around him to offer one excuse concerning why he arrived too late at the siege of Saint-Quentin to witness the Duke of Savoy’s destruction of the French army, in open fields a few kilometres to the south of the town. More pointed were comments made about the English sappers in an exchange between two high-ranking eyewitnesses to the final stages of the siege. One was the 5th Count (and later Duke) of Feria, Philip’s chosen interlocutor with Queen Mary during his absences from England. The other was Antoine de Perrenot, Bishop of Arras and later Cardinal Granvelle.10 Originally from Franche-Comté, Perrenot was to prove himself time and again no lover of the English. He was also a Jeremiah. His habit of offering logistical and financial advice infuriated the Duke of Savoy, even though the bishop jokingly conceded that war was beyond his job description.11 In April 1558, Perrenot laid into the performance of English sappers, contending this was the king’s own opinion too.12 He reported back that Edward Fiennes – who, as Lord Clinton, had also been present the previous year at Saint-Quentin – acquiesced in the view that the English sappers had neither been properly drilled nor well commanded. The count singled out the English commander, William Herbert, for blame, sarcastically arguing that ‘my friend the Earl of Pembroke had managed things very badly all round’.13 9 10 11 12 13 “Relation anonyme de la Guerre de 1557 en Picardie”, being Pièce Justicative VI in Lemaire E. et al., La Guerre de 1557 en Picardie: bataille de Saint-Laurent, siège de SaintQuentin, prises du Catelet, de Ham, de Chauny et de Noyon (St.-Quentin: 1896) 93; much the same story is told by the notable military commentator, Colonel Lazarus Schwendi, who also participated in the attack and whose account is to be found in the same volume at p. 310, where in his words the English ‘sy sich baldt wider gewendt’. For an overview, see Davies, “England and the French War”, 163–164. The international context is best surveyed in Rodríguez-Salgado M.J., The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II and Habsburg Authority (Cambridge: 1988). ‘la guerra siendo fuera de mi profesion’, Granvelle to Ascarnio Marzo, draft, Brussels 3 July 1557, Real Biblioteca, Madrid [RBM], Ms. II-2549, fol. 48. Granvelle to Feria, Brussels, 7 Apr. 1558, Tyler R. (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Spanish, vol. 13 (London: 1954) 377–378. The opinion was that at Montreuil and at Hesdin a few years earlier sappers from England had performed exceptionally well. ‘porq[ue] mi amigo el c[on]de de penbruc se guouerno muy ruin mente en todo’, Feria to Granvelle, Greenwich,14 Apr. 1558, RBM, Ms. II-2289, fol. 125 a–d, here c. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Where Were the English ? 19 Bishop, count, and king liked to agree that the sappers had done ‘little and badly’.14 Nevertheless, criticism of their contribution needs to be placed in context. It smacks of a political desire to marginalize the Earl of Pembroke (or at least to promote Lord Clinton as the man to represent the king’s interests at his wife’s court precisely because Clinton, unlike the earl, still believed that Calais might be recaptured). As for leadership at Saint-Quentin, Pembroke may well have been overall commander of the English forces, but the sappers’ immediate superior was Sir Richard Lee, who had already proved himself to be a valiant soldier as well as England’s best military engineer. As captain-general of the Pioneers, Lee had been accorded the handsome salary of £1 a day.15 But perhaps the most salient fact is that Perrenot included these reproaches in the very letter that contained the king’s insistent demand that a thousand English sappers be urgently recruited to serve him, barely over half a year after their alleged poor showing at Saint-Quentin. The death toll suffered by English sappers does not fit comfortably with later accusations that they had been slackers. Though barely mentioned if at all in modern accounts, the sappers arrived well ahead of the bulk of the English army, and so they, along with their armed escort, were on site several days before the battle that smashed the French army. To their swift arrival should be added the fact that they worked in exceptionally dangerous conditions. Out of over 1,500 pioneers and 200 miners, 98 sappers died, and 11 miners were recorded as wounded. The mortality rate among the sappers – during a relatively short campaign – was therefore over 6%. Almost 300 more were discharged; if the majority of these were too injured to continue, then the attrition rate might be 20% or even higher.16 The high number of pioneers lost or injured in August and September 1557 does not square with the notion that they contributed little, nor would it suggest that they were reluctant to support a foreign-born king. Their heavy losses chime better with the more positive assessments of the English 14 15 16 ‘el poco y malo que hizieron este año pasado los que Vuestra Magestad tuvo’, Feria to Philip, London, 6 June 1558, Kervyn de Lettenhove J.M.B.C. (ed.), Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre, vol. 1 (Brussels: 1882) 208–211, here 210. They also agreed that not long before at Thérouanne and Hesdin the performance of English sappers, apparently under a Spanish commander, had been exceptional. British Library, London [BL], Stowe Ms. 571, fol. 86. BL Stowe Ms. 572, fol. 90. The figures need to be interpreted carefully, not least as sickness was prominent at St.-Quentin, possibly aided by the intense August heat of that year. See also, Davies, ‘England and the French War’, 166 for his calculations; Paul Hammer, in his Elizabeth’s Wars: War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544–1604 (Basingstoke: 2003) 49 and passim, suggests the English rate of mortality, largely from sickness, during the campaigns of the late 1550s was high and not reached again till the end of the nineteenth century. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 20 Redworth contribution that were drawn up by fellow soldiers while the fighting was still going on. As we have seen, the attack on the town of Ham, following on almost immediately from the fall of Saint-Quentin, has received little attention at least from English-speaking historians. Situated some 20 kilometres to the south-west, Ham had provided a base for one attempt after another to throw more troops into Saint-Quentin. Given that there was no immediate prospect that it would be successfully reinforced, and despite the protection of both a moat and the river Somme, along with some very thick walls, the castle at Ham was ultimately too old-fashioned and too low-lying to withstand a modern artillery bombardment. This inherent weakness still pertained after it fell to Philip. In fact, the situation became more perilous since a significant part of Ham’s defences had been reduced to rubble by the king’s artillery, leaving it a sitting target. The need to repair the damage was paramount, and English sappers were assigned a central task. According to a Spanish soldier’s diary, the king ordered Ham to be refortified with three caballeros, tall platforms or towers which offer forward protection to existing fortifications. The English were allotted the first tower mentioned by the chronicler. It was to be built where the moat had been drained. The intention was to prevent the French from flooding it again and drowning all those working to rebuild the defences. The chronicler pointed out that ‘the English did this by working their fingers to the bone’.17 It was dirty work. There was mud everywhere, he added. Sickness was taking hold in the camp and several gentlemen had already succumbed. This is confirmed by the Earl of Bedford, who was with the English contingent at Ham. On 21 September, he wrote that ‘our general’ was sick with an ague, which presumably was a reference not to the Duke of Savoy but to the Earl of Pembroke.18 … By now it should be clear that a more nuanced account is long overdue of both the quality and the enthusiasm of the English who fought for their king in 1557. The everyday contribution of the English foot-soldiers, the cavalrymen, and their commanders has barely been commented on here even though it too deserves a thorough re-appraisal. At least it has been established that older views 17 18 Salvá M. – Sainz de Baranda P. (eds.), Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, vol. 9 (Madrid: 1846) 541–542 [hereafter, CODOIN]. The original text says: ‘este hace los ingleses a destajos’. Bedford to William Cecil, Ham, 21 Sept. 1557, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquis of Salisbury, preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, vol. 1 (London: 1883) 144. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Where Were the English ? 21 concerning an unwillingness to support King Philip need considerable modification. It is notoriously difficult to pinpoint exactly what any one military force contributed in a campaign as complicated as that of 1557. Philip’s multinational army was among the largest that early modern Europeans had yet raised, numbering perhaps 50,000 men or indeed many more. Assessing what the Earl of Pembroke and his men achieved is made all the more challenging by the sad fact that sources from the English side are virtually non-existent. Infantry and commanders alike among the Spaniards, Walloons, and Germans who fought for Philip were eager to write up and often publish their version of events, just as many Frenchmen tried to salvage their reputation by putting down the sword and taking up the pen. New information that sheds light on what the English did is therefore particularly welcome. The second part of this article will offer the first and by necessity preliminary assessment of the fresh light the contemporary sketches by Antoon van den Wijngaerde cast on the role of the English. Van den Wijngaerde the man remains mysterious. For a long time, it remained uncertain if he was one and the same as Antonio de las Viñas, or even another painter with a similar name. In Spain he is most famous for his meticulous drawings of Spanish cities. To English-speaking audiences he is known for a riverside panorama of London and various royal palaces. Wijngaerde is now assumed to have been born in Antwerp, in modern-day Belgium (but then part of the Spanish Netherlands), most probably around the year 1510.19 He died 1571, in Spain, as a ‘pintor del rey’. He first served in the royal household as an artist during the reign of Charles V. He specialised in drawing accurate pictures of cities, though the suggestion has now been made that his first battle scenes only date from the campaign of 1557.20 Interest in his legacy was renewed in 1998 when Jonathan Brown made a stunning observation. He realised that the frescos adorning the Sala de Batallas in the monastery-palace of El Escorial, 19 20 For the profusion of names and identities, see Galera i Monegal M. (ed.), Antoon van den Wijngaerde, pintor de ciudades y de hechos de armas en la Europa del Quinientos (Barcelona: 1998) 15, 33, 42; and, for a later date of birth, around 1525, see the outstanding catalogue, Mousset J. – L. – De Jonge K. (eds.), Un prince de la Renaissance: Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld (1517–1604), vol. 2: Essais et catalogue (Luxembourg: 2007) 418–429 and 82– 84. It contains Pieter Martens’s initial analysis of the relationship between the works of Wijngaerde and his son-in-law. Martens has since taken his comments further in his chapter, “Cities under Siege Portrayed ad vivum in Early Netherlandish Prints (1520–1565)”, in Balfe T., Woodall J. – Zittel C. (eds.), Ad vivum?: Visual Materials and the Vocabulary of Life-Likeness in Europe before 1800 (Leiden – Boston: 2019) 151–199. I am indebted to Dr. Martens for providing me with a copy of “Cities Under Siege” as this chapter was going to print. See Martens, “Cities Under Siege” 171. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 22 Redworth and which depict the campaign of 1557, ultimately derived from engravings that Wijngaerde had made and even published soon after the campaign finished. Since many who had been present at the battle were still alive, there was a clear commercial motive for a high degree of topographical accuracy in Wijngaerde’s depictions. This explains why the Italian painters who worked on the Sala in the 1590s were instructed to copy faithfully the paintings of the campaign already produced by Rodrigo de Holanda. Rodrigo de Holanda (or Diriksen) was Wijngaerde’s posthumous son-in-law, and Brown’s reasoning was that: […] in all probability, the source used by Rodrigo de Holanda was an engraving by his father-in-law, Anton van der Wyngaerde, who had been present at the battle in the service of Philip II. Similarly he was able to make use of other engravings by the same artist, to depict the fall of the fortresses of Le Catelet and Ham.21 I wish to take Brown’s thesis further and reformulate it by saying that the frescoes in El Escorial, thanks in the main to their reliance on Rodrigo de Holanda, are to all intents and purposes faithful not just to the engravings. They are also faithful to the compositions which Wijngaerde made while he was present during the hostilities and which have only recently begun to merit the attention they deserve. That is to say, because Wijngaerde’s engravings which he produced commercially in the Low Countries shortly after the great victories at Saint-Quentin are so closely based on his original sketches, we can just as well say that both the frescos in El Escorial and the earlier engravings were effectively inspired by the ink and watercolour sketches which Wijngaerde drew on site in August and September 1557.22 Of course, further aesthetic 21 22 Brown J., La sala de batallas de El Escorial: La obra de arte como artefacto cultural (Salamanca: 1998) 43: ‘Sin embargo, con toda probabilidad, la fuente utilizada por Rodrigo de Holanda fue un grabado de su suegro, Anton van der Wyngaerde, que había presenciado la batalla al servicio de Felipe II. También pudo disponer de otros grabados del mismo artista, para representar las tomas de las fortaleza [sic] de Le Catelet y Ham’. In this sense, I also go beyond the views of Carmen García-Frías Checa. In 2006 she argued only that (my italics) ‘se puede suponer que posiblemente Rodrigo tuvo la oportunidad de utilizar para la composición de sus famosos disinios y lienços los dibujos originales que Wijngaerde había realizado de la guerra’, in her wide-ranging essay, “Las series de batallas del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Frescos y pinturas”, in García García B.J. (ed.), La imagen de la guerra en el arte de los antiguos Países Bajos (Madrid: 2006) 135–169, here 141, where she also talks only of ‘una estrechísima relaçión’ between Wijngaerde’s drawings and engravings with Holanda’s paintings (some of which remain in El Escorial) as well as with the frescos. In addition to putting flesh on the relationship Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Where Were the English ? 23 research will almost certainly reveal more substantial differences and perhaps omissions in the later reformulations, but from a historical point of view the depictions of the campaign we have at El Escorial, and the many related engravings which have survived, are reformulations of original and contemporary battlefield sketches. By whatever route, the frescos at El Escorial lead us squarely back to the events of late summer in 1557. That all these representations have the imprimatur of the person who commissioned them, another eyewitness – that stickler for detail, King Philip – is but icing on the cake. The result is that we are able to take the visual evidence of Wijngaerde’s sketches as meaningful representations of what actually happened. In fact, the materiality of the way in which these drawings were put together underlines their accuracy.23 They comprise one or more large sheets of paper, presumably because a larger format was necessary to do justice to the topographical panorama before him. They have come down to us in varying stages of composition. As we can see from his preliminary sketch for the siege of Le Catelet, one of the five originals from 1557 preserved in Antwerp, it would appear that Wijngaerde’s method of operation was to produce a topographically accurate outline of the site and then to add a brief note stating which commander and what type of troops and how many were stationed on that spot.24 Part of his genius was an ability to translate what he saw into a bird’s-eye view. This is evident in the two Antwerp sketches of the battle and siege of 23 24 between Holanda and his father-in-law, García-Frias’s article remains invaluable for listing Wijngaerde’s works. Nonetheless, given the present state of knowledge, it is not possible to say which (or indeed if any) of his father-in-law’s drawings, extant or otherwise, Holanda may have had access to, that is besides any engravings or lost paintings by Wijngaerde. As Martens confirms, the reason for ‘the long afterlife’ of Wijngaerde’s drawings ‘was precisely their authority as first-hand records’, “Cities Under Siege” 189. For Martens’s view of how the drawings were made, 182. “The Assault on Le Catelet” [Beleg van Le Châtelet], being now conserved at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp (PK.OT.01171); the five others are “The Battle of SaintQuentin” [Slag bij Saint-Quentin] (PK.OT.01168); “The Assault on St.-Quentin” [Beleg van Saint-Quentin] (PK.OT.01167), reproduced here as Fig. 1.1; “The March on Ham” [Spaanse troepen op weg naar Hain] (PK.T.01169), reproduced here as Fig. 1.2. The Victoria & Albert Museum in London also holds a sketch of the events at Ham, VA 41 (also known as item 8455:21), which is catalogued under ‘Wyngaerde’ and called ‘Panoramic View of Picardy, with the Siege of Ham’. (In addition, Antwerp also possesses a sketch from later in Philip’s war, the 1558 March on Doullens PK.OT.01170). The staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London were most helpful, as were the staff of the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, in particular Mr. Jan de Bruyn and Ms. Virginie D’haene. In addition to the two reproductions in this volume, each of these sketches is available as zoomable high-resolution images on the relevant websites, and these images are also reproduced in Moussset – De Jonge, Un prince de la Renaissance. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 24 Redworth figure 1.1 Antoon van den Wijngaerde, “The Assault on St.-Quentin” [Beleg van Saint-Quentin]. The three English encampments are on the left-hand side of the image, over the river from Saint-Quentin. Saint-Quentin, where he chooses to adopt two different angles of sight. Of course, we should not believe that he is taking ‘photographs’ of the campaign. Just as with a written chronicler, he incorporates what he saw with what he learnt subsequently from other eyewitnesses, which is particularly obvious from his depiction of the Battle of Saint-Quentin. He includes in one drawing the three stages of the battle, each of which occurred at slightly different locations: the French attempt to throw in troops through the wetlands to the west of the town; the Duke of Savoy’s decision to outflank them from the east; and finally the battle as the French headed towards the safety of woods to the south. Wijngaerde’s original sketches and what they spawned have much more to tell us. There is space here only to begin an examination of the visual evidence they provide in order to support and to challenge what we know from the written record: first to supplement what we now know concerning English involvement in the attack on Ham; and finally to return to fundamental questions about the role played by King Philip’s English army in the storming of Saint-Quentin. England’s contribution to the campaign of 1557 was inevitably going to be limited, at least in terms of a strictly military contribution. Her army was Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Where Were the English ? 25 PK.OT.01167. Drawing, 115 × 43 cm. Collectie Stad Antwerpen, Museum Plantin-Moretus (Printroom Collection) Public domain quasi-medieval, with individual members of the nobility volunteering with their retinue to serve abroad. It was intended for mid-summer fighting and not the year-after-year service expected of Spanish professionals or German mercenaries. In addition to their admittedly formidable archers, the English combatants were armed not with the latest in guns but largely with long wooden bills and pikes. Crude if time-honoured, these weapons still had an important role to play, especially in close combat where firearms might prove slow or inaccurate. The English also brought with them 12 pieces of probably mediumsized cannon, which – on a strictly numerical basis – would have increased the number of artillery pieces at the king’s disposal by over 16%.25 But the English also brought with them soft power. After succeeding his father as ruler of the Spanish monarchy, Philip needed to show at the commencement of his reign that he was a worthy successor to a proven warrior. An ability to demonstrate that he could wield real power or influence over his wife’s kingdom was a necessary part of proving his virility as a ruler. Though the English had achieved little in France since the beginning of the fifteenth century, the historical memory 25 For an estimation of the combined forces, see Lemaire, La guerre de 1557 312–315, here 315. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access figure 1.2 Antoon van den Wijngaerde, “The March on Ham” [Spaanse troepen op weg naar Hain]. PK.T.01169. Drawing, 574 × 430 cm. Collectie Stad Antwerpen, Museum Plantin-Moretus (Printroom Collection) Public domain 26 Redworth Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Where Were the English ? 27 of their prowess and their violence in the 100 Years’ War remained strong, not least thanks to Froissart and his ever-popular chronicles. It therefore comes as no surprise that, after his arrival on the banks of the Somme, it was English archers whom Philip chose to fire arrows into the town with a message attached calling on its inhabitants to surrender to their rightful king.26 Wijngaerde’s sketch of the March on Ham is essential for grasping how much the English contributed in terms of soft power. All that the written sources tell us is that at dawn on 8 September the Duke of Savoy left the foul-smelling ruins of Saint-Quentin for Ham, with all the infantry and cavalry, ‘apart from the English and some Germans who stayed behind in order to go with His Majesty’.27 Wijngaerde puts pictorial flesh on this bald statement. Surrounded by a massive phalanx of bodyguards, the king is advancing on Ham at the centre of all his troops.28 Five units ahead is the vanguard, fittingly led by the Count of Egmont, the hero of the battle of Saint-Quentin, and behind him is the Duke of Savoy followed by a row of Spanish troops and another of various professional men-at-arms. Immediately preceding the king, both to his right and left, are two companies of English footmen. They have the place of honour. A little further to the side, his flanks are guarded by two detachments of English cavalry. How far this depiction is literally true may be debated. It is indeed curious that the English cavalry, uniquely, are not coloured in, yet this does not necessarily make them a later pictorial addition. This is because, if the space allotted to them had originally been intended to be left blank, this would have left the king, according to the configuration set out by Wijngaerde, dangerously exposed on each flank. Regardless of how later historians have argued over the competence of the English army at Saint-Quentin, the visual evidence suggests that King Philip continued to believe that their presence was invaluable. Perhaps it was a reward. Just a few days before the remove to Ham, at the storming of St. Quentin, the Spaniard, Juan de Pinedo, penned a note while moppingup operations were going on. Everyone, he said, had fought most choicely but the English above all!29 The second and final illustration of how we can use visual evidence leads us back to the great army that had besieged Saint-Quentin. 26 27 28 29 For this incident and the placing of the campaign in the context of Philip’s rule in England, see Redworth G., “Matters Impertinent to Women: Male and Female Monarchy under Philip and Mary”, The English Historical Review CXII, 447 (1997) 597–613. ‘menos los ingleses y algunos alemanes que quedaron para ir con S.M.’, CODOIN, IX 534. “Spaanse troepen op weg naar Hain” (PK.OT.01169). See Fig. 2. ‘muy es cogidam[en]te todos / y [interlineated] por estremo. Los ingleses. –’, Archivo General de Simancas, Juan de Pinedo to Spanish ambassador to Venice, Estado-K, 1490, fol. 77a. Two thousand English troops were ordered to join with 400 seasoned Spanish infantrymen and 3 companies of Burgundians in a head-on attack on the town’s principal gate, where the greatest number of casualties occurred. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 28 1 Redworth But Where Were the English? The deployment of the Earl of Pembroke’s troops has never been properly investigated, although it is fundamental for determining how were they regarded in terms of both hard and soft power. Were they relegated to an obscure corner of the battleground? Somewhere where their attendance would be seen, yet without strategic significance? Was their sole use to serve as cannon fodder, to protect more experienced and proficient troops? Born around 1591, already some thirty years after the fighting, Quintin de La Fons came from an established saint-quentinoise family. He was a canon of the great basilica dedicated to the Roman martyr, St Quentin, who gave the town its name. The churchman became the town’s pre-eminent chronicler. He was adamant that the English were stationed a little to the west of the town, near St Martin’s gate, between the chapel d’Epargnemaille and Rocourt, which is to say north of the river Somme and the extensive marshland surrounding the town both to the south and west.30 His account seems implausible for two reasons. First, given that the presence of the English army had become indispensable to Philip’s insistence that he be acknowledged as an effective King of England, it is highly probable that the English not only escorted him on 13 August to what became his headquarters on the east of the town but that they also remained in relative close proximity to him, at least for the first few days, that is until they were ordered to relocate on the 22nd. Second, the western approaches to the town were never fully invested, perhaps because they had been discovered to be too waterlogged and topographically unsuitable for positioning heavy artillery batteries. Written sources tell us that the English had been ordered to position themselves to the south of the Somme. They were to leave their lodgings for the part of the lake where yesterday the French tried to get in [to the town] using boats, and this was done to strengthen defences there against any type of help of relief that could come from there.31 The English were moved in response to a frantic attempt by the French to cross the swamps at night. Although innumerable of their soldiers were captured or 30 31 La Fons Q. de, Extraits originaux d’un manuscrit de Quentin de La Fons intitulé histoire particulière de l’église de Saint-Quentin: Publiés, pour la première fois, ed. C. Gomart, vol. 2 (Saint-Quentin: 1856), 71. CODOIN IX 501. The date given for the assault is 20 August at 1 o’clock in the morning. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 29 Where Were the English ? drowned, it was estimated that two hundred reinforcements had nonetheless managed to enter the town.32 In other words, Philip had sufficient trust in his English soldiers to order them to seal off a weak point in the encirclement of the town. It follows that the English must have been initially camped in a place from where they could move rapidly to secure the weak spot on the left bank of the river. Either the English were already encamped on the south side, or more probable were still with the king on the eastern side of the town, because the only feasible means for large numbers of troops to cross the river was, indeed, to the east.33 The definitive answer as to where King Philip placed his English army is surely provided by Wijngaerde. His sketch of the assault emphatically places the English forces to the south of the river, in the hills rising up from the eastern part of modern-day Gauchy, perhaps rising up from around an area now known as La Biette.34 This was a highly strategic position. The English infantry was closest to the river, defending the light cavalry above them, who in turn were protecting the English artillery placed highest of all. It made perfect sense that their military next-door-neighbour would have been Captain Julián Romero. For many years had served as a mercenary in England and liked to believe that he had been knighted by Henry VIII.35 Fanciful though it may seem, one can even see – but only if one has a mind to – that Wijngaerde has drawn a flag of St George atop the English gun emplacements. More prosaically, Gauchy was an ideal place to position Englishmen who were eagerly awaiting the king’s final order to make the relatively short journey to attack, head on, the town’s southern and heavily fortified gate. After all, their captains had gone to the king to ask him face-to-face to grant them this honour. … The great nineteenth-century American historian, William H. Prescott, was no Englishman but he was an anglophile and a Protestant to boot. His view of England’s involvement in the campaign of 1557 shared many of the prejudices of Sir John Fortescue, whose words opened this essay. Prescott said that the English were ‘discontented’. They brought ‘from home the aversion for 32 33 34 35 CODOIN IX 498. For the difficulties in crossing the river, see Oman C., A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (London: 1937) 257 and n.1. “The Assault on St.-Quentin” [Beleg van Saint-Quentin] (PK.OT.01167). See Fig. 1. Romero’s career has been meticulously documented by Fagel R.P., Kapitein Julián: de Spaanse held van de Nederlandse Opstand (Hilversum: 2011). Professor Fagel generously provided me with a copy of his book. For Romero’s career in England, see 16–21. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 30 Redworth the Spaniards which had been festering there since the queen’s marriage. The sturdy islanders were not at all pleased with serving under Philip. They were fighting, not the battles of England, they said, but of Spain’.36 The evidence, both written and visual, no longer supports such a view. Philip and Mary’s reign is increasingly seen in a more positive light. The failure to perpetuate Catholicism as the national religion is now viewed as the result of the queen’s premature death rather than from a structural weakness within the regime. No one is saying that England’s quasi-feudal army tipped the balance in favour of King Philip’s victory in 1557. Yet perhaps the unpalatable truth for some is that, 500 years ago, the English were prepared to accept a European destiny. Bibliography Primary Sources British Library London (= BL) Stowe Ms. 571 Stowe Ms. 572 Calendar of State Papers Spanish, ed. R. Tyler, 13 vols. (London: 1862–1954). Nichols J.G. (ed.), The Diary of H. Machyn, Citizen and Merchant Taylor of London, from AD 1550 to AD 1563, Camden Society 42 (London: 1848). Real Biblioteca, Madrid (= RBM) Ms. II-2289 Ms. II-2549 Salvá M. – Sainz de Baranda P. (eds.), Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, 112 vols. (Madrid: 1842–1896). Wriothesley C., A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, ed. W.D. Hamilton, 2 vols. (London: 1875–1877). Secondary Sources Adams S., “The Dudley Clientele”, in Bernard G.W. (ed.), The Tudor Nobility (Manchester: 1992) 247–253. Balfe T. – Woodall T. – Zittel C. (eds.), Ad vivum?: Visual Materials and the Vocabulary of Life-Likeness in Europe before 1800 (Leiden – Boston: 2019). 36 Prescott W.H., History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, vol. 1 (London: 1855) 204. I wish to record my gratitude to the members of the Société academique de Saint-Quentin, and to its president, Mme. Maryse Trannois, for their extraordinary kindness and assistance during my stay in Saint-Quentin. I am also grateful to Professors Peter Wilson, Hamish Scott, Paulina Kewes for their comments, along with those of Drs Christopher Henstock and Jenni Hyde. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Where Were the English ? 31 Bernard G.W. (ed.), The Tudor Nobility (Manchester: 1992). Brown J., La sala de batallas de El Escorial: La obra de arte como artefacto cultural (Salamanca: 1998). Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquis of Salisbury, preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, 24 vols. (London: 1883–1976). Davies C.S.L., “England and the French War, 1557–9”, in Loach J. – Tittler R. (eds.), The Mid-Tudor Polity, c. 1540–1560 (London: 1980) 159–185. Fagel R.P., Kapitein Julián: de Spaanse held van de Nederlandse Opstand (Hilversum: 2011). Fortescue Sir J.W., A History of the British Army, 2nd ed. (London: 1910). Galera i Monegal M. (ed.), Antoon van den Wijngaerde, pintor de ciudades y de hechos de armas en la Europa del Quinientos (Barcelona: 1998). García-Frías Checa C., “Las series de batallas del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Frescos y pinturas”, in García García B.J. (ed.), La imagen de la guerra en el arte de los antiguos Países Bajos (Madrid: 2006) 135–169. Hammer P., Elizabeth’s Wars: War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544–1604 (Basingstoke: 2003). Kervyn de Lettenhove J.M.B.C. (ed.), Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre, 11 vols. (Brussels: 1882–1900). La Fons Q. de, Extraits originaux d’un manuscrit de Quentin de La Fons intitulé histoire particulière de l’église de Saint-Quentin: Publiés, pour la première fois, ed. C. Gomart, 3 vols. (Saint-Quentin: 1854–1856). Lemaire E. et al., La Guerre de 1557 en Picardie: bataille de Saint-Laurent, siège de Saint-Quentin, prises du Catelet, de Ham, de Chauny et de Noyon (St.-Quentin: 1896). Loach J. – Tittler R. (eds.), The Mid-Tudor Polity, c. 1540–1560 (London: 1980). Loades D., The Reign of Queen Mary: Government, Politics and Religion 1553–58, 2nd ed. (Abingdon: 2013). Martens P., “Cities under Siege Portrayed ad vivum in Early Netherlandish Prints (1520– 1565)”, in Balfe T. – Woodall T. – Zittel C. (eds.), Ad vivum?: Visual Materials and the Vocabulary of Life-Likeness in Europe before 1800 (Leiden – Boston: 2019). Mousset J.L. – De Jonge K. (eds.), Un prince de la Renaissance: Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld (1517–1604), 2 vols. (Luxembourg: 2007). Oman Sir C., A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (London: 1937). Prescott, W.H., History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, 2 vols. (London: 1855). Redworth G., “Matters Impertinent to Women: Male and Female Monarchy under Philip and Mary”, The English Historical Review CXII, 447 (1997) 597–613. Rodríguez-Salgado, M.J. The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II and Habsburg Authority (Cambridge: 1988). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access chapter 2 Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese Sixteenth-Century Diplomacy and Thomas Wilson’s Mission to Portugal Susana Oliveira Alas, how should you govern any kingdom That know not how to use ambassadors? W. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3 (IV.3.35–36) ⸪ The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance is usually mentioned as one of the longest in history, dating back to the thirteenth century, conveying multiple networks of exchange: geopolitical strategies, trade policies, dynastic marriages and diplomatic negotiations.*,1 Nonetheless, Portugal was also close (perhaps too close from Elizabeth I’s perspective) to the Hispanic Monarchy of the Habsburg in a context of great antagonism between Elizabeth I and Philip II. First, the two Iberian nations shared the dominion of the seas and the great enterprise of the sea explorations (as confirmed by the Treaty of Tordesillas and the Treaty of Zaragoza). Second, they were neighbouring powers with a policy of royal marriages to strengthen their Iberian power (in the three generations before the birth of D. Sebastião, eight of the eleven marriages of the Portuguese royal house were performed in Castile),2 the most relevant for the purpose of this * Abbreviations: ANTT = Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon; BL = British Library, London; SP = Kew, The National Archives, Public Record Office, State Papers; SPF = Kew, The National Archives, Public Record Office, State Papers Foreign. 1 Attreed L., “Friends in Need or in Deed? Anglo-Portuguese Relations in the Fifteenth Century”, Mediterranean Studies 8 (1999) 143–156; Chapman A.B.W., “The Commercial Relations of England and Portugal, 1487–1807”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1 (1907) 157–179; Shaw L.M.E., The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance and the English Merchants in Portugal, 1654–1810 (Aldershot: 1998). 2 Such policy of royal marriages between the crowns of Portugal and Castile became a crucial factor for the Union of the Crowns in 1580. See Cunha M.S., “A questão jurídica na crise dinástica”, História de Portugal: no Alvorecer da Modernidade (1997) 465, 466. © SUSANA OLIVIERA, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_004 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 33 analysis being the marriage of João III with Catherine of Austria and that of Charles V with Isabella of Portugal. Third, analysis of sixteenth-century diplomatic correspondence discloses that while the Portuguese ambassadors maintained a cordial relationship with the English queen, the Spanish ambassadors to England were passionate and outspoken regarding the defence of the Catholic faith, often juxtaposing the religious and the political affairs in their diplomatic assignments which led to accusations of involvement in plots against the English queen.3 Despite the clear-cut difference between the Portuguese and the Spanish diplomatic policies, Elizabeth might have perceived Portugal as a Catholic power aligned with Spain with an anti-Protestant foreign policy. The religious asymmetries that distanced Portugal and England from the Henrician schism onwards became secondary, however, compared to the mutual benefits provided by the commercial ties between Protestant England and Catholic Portugal,4 especially considering the wealth generated by the overseas expansion and the campaign of the sea explorations. Nonetheless, serious conflicts arose when England, under Elizabeth’s rule, decided to systematically plunder Portuguese ships and traffic in the Portuguese territories in Northern Africa. Portugal regarded the English conduct as unfriendly and unacceptable, particularly in the context of the existing alliance, and dispatched several ambassadors to the Elizabethan court, in protest against English privateering. Between 1559 and 1564, Portugal sent three ambassadors to the Elizabethan court, on diplomatic missions: João Pereira Dantas, in 1559; Manoel d’Araújo, from 1560 to 1561; João Pereira Dantas again, whose friendship with Elizabeth was used as leverage and made Portugal reassign him to England, where he stayed from 1562 to 1563; and Ayres Cardoso, in 1564. Therefore, within a period of six years, Portugal carried out four diplomatic missions to England, almost in every way resembling a permanent-resident diplomatic assignment, only with greater costs. In contrast, Elizabeth did not send a single English envoy to Lisbon, that is, not until Dr. Thomas Wilson, in 1567. 3 Some instances that confirm the friendly relationship between Elizabeth I and the Portuguese ambassadors to her court may be found in SP 70/58, fol. 52 (Letter from João Pereira Dantas to the English Queen), SPF Elizabeth 15:721 (Letter from Elizabeth I to Philip II – I of Portugal – about the Portuguese ambassador António de Castilho’s approved character for prudence and disposition to preserve peace and amity between princes). On the contrary, the Spanish ambassadors Álvaro de la Quadra, Guerau De Spes and Bernardino de Mendoza were expelled from England: the first in 1563, the second in 1571, and the third in 1584. 4 Prestage E., “The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 17 (1934) 69–100; Oliveira S., “‘The Intolerable Business’: Religion and Diplomacy under Elizabeth’s Rule”, SEDERI 26 (2016) 159–174. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 34 Oliveira The surviving records referring to Elizabeth’s instructions to Wilson are held at the British Library, in the Cotton Manuscripts, and include two documents: the first, a draft corrected by William Cecil, Elizabeth’s Chief Advisor and Secretary of State, dated June 1567, under the heading “Instructions for Wilson, Dr. of Law and Master of St. Catherine’s, sent to the king of Portugal”;5 the second, is undated, although included in the section Portugallia 1567, with the following addition: “in Mr. Winter’s cause”.6 Thomas Wilson’s account of his mission to the Portuguese court is recorded in a letter addressed to Cecil, on 12 October 1567. The manuscript, in Latin, is also part of the Cotton Manuscripts.7 Bearing in mind that Wilson’s letter has not received a detailed analysis and that the early modern studies of Anglo-Iberian foreign policies tend to focus almost exclusively on England and Spain,8 I propose to examine this mission to Lisbon by focusing on Wilson’s narrative of events.9 1 Anglo-Portuguese Sixteenth-Century Quarrels10 For years, Portugal and England had exchanged arguments regarding the trade activities in Northern Africa, especially in Mina (the modern Elmina, in 5 6 7 8 9 10 BL Ms. Cotton Nero B1, fols. 125–126. Ibidem, fols. 127–128. Ibidem, fols. 135–136. Morales O.R., Review of O’Connor T., Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition: Migrants, Converts and Brokers in Early Modern Iberia, trans. M.J. Sánchez-de-Nieva SEDERI 27 (2017) 269–272, here 270. My approach is greatly indebted to Visconde de Santarém’s translation from the original Latin into Portuguese. Manuel Francisco de Barros e Sousa de Mesquita de Macedo Leitão e Carvalhosa, 2nd Viscount of Santarém, was born in Lisbon, in 1791, and died in Paris, in 1856. Historian, state archivist (Guarda-Mor) of the Portuguese National Archives (Torre do Tombo), diplomat, Minister of the Interior and of Marine and Overseas Territories, Santarém became one of the most prolific authors of his time, with significant contributions in the fields of Political and Diplomatic History, Geography and Cartography, Historiography, among others. For a more detailed approach to Santarém’s biography and work, see Protásio D.E., 2º Visconde de Santarém (1791–1856): Uma Biografia Intelectual e Política (Lisbon: 2018). Santarém’s comprehensive study on the Portuguese diplomatic relations resulted in a nineteen-volume work, entitled Quadro elementar das relações políticas e diplomáticas de Portugal com as diversas potências do mundo desde o princípio da monarquia portuguesa até aos nossos dias (Lisbon: 1842–1876), published with the collaboration of other prominent scholars from the Portuguese Royal Academy of Sciences. No other work of similar wide-ranging scope and attention to detail has been published so far. For the purpose of the present analysis, the societal and cultural phenomena associated with expansionism will not be considered. The native inhabitants of Mina would be Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 35 Ghana). About fifty years after the beginning of the exploration of the West African coast, the Portuguese finally arrived at Mina, probably between 1471 and 1472,11 as attested in several nautical charts, namely those included in the Cornaro Atlas, c. 1489.12 For example, chart 32 displays an image that represents the construction of the Castle of Mina, with a note specifying that the castle belonged to the King of Portugal. The castle would be named S. Jorge da Mina, in honour of the patron saint of Portugal, and its construction was completed in 1486, under the orders of Diogo de Azambuja.13 This cartography demonstrates the right of the Portuguese kingdom over the territories that would become the centre of the dispute between Portugal and England. As cartography evolved and improved both in technical and scientific accuracy, it also began to include the identifying symbols of the realms that dominated a given territory.14 In the context of the early modern sea explorations, this is an element of geopolitical significance, in the sense that the need of pointing out the rightful claim to a certain region with the symbol of the crown of the conquering kingdom, a ‘sign of right’, became apparent, as Manuel Francisco de Barros e Sousa, Visconde de Santarém observes: From the end of the fifteenth century on, cosmographers began to indicate the sovereignty of the different territories with the Coat of Arms of the Kingdoms that dominated them […]. The study of these indications shows that these ‘signs of right’ were not the result of their authors’ whim, but on the contrary, the authors of these charts were scrupulous in including this important information.15 11 12 13 14 15 dominated – not conquered – by the Portuguese. It should be made clear that the use of terms that in contemporary times are considered ‘imperialist’ or ‘colonialist’ do not reflect the author’s perspective. Hair P.E.H., The Founding of the Castelo de São Jorge da Mina: An Analysis of Sources (Wisconsin: 1994). Cornaro Atlas. BL Egerton Ms.73. Newitt M. (ed.), The Portuguese in West Africa: 1415–1670: A Documentary History (New York: 2010) 90–96. Bagrow L., History of Cartography, rev. R.A. Skelton (New Brunswick – London: 1985) 105. My translation from the original: ‘Desde os finais do século XV principiaram os Cosmographos a indicar a soberania dos differentes paizes que marcavam nas suas Cartas pelas Armas e Pavilhões nacionaes dos Principes que os dominavam […] O estudo d’estes monumentos mostra que n’estes signaes de direito, longe de haver o menor capricho do desenhador, antes pelo contrario, os auctores de taes Cartas punham n’isto o maior escrúpulo’. Demonstração dos Direitos que tem a Coroa de Portugal sobre os Territórios situados na Costa Occidental D’Africa (Lisboa: 1855) 6. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 36 Oliveira Portugal claimed the right over the territories, the sea and the commercial routes added to the kingdom by the sea explorations. However, numerous English adventurers and merchants were covertly involved in taking part of the riches that the Portuguese considered only they were entitled to, and they did so with Elizabeth’s agreement. João Pereira Dantas’s mission to England in 1562 was to complain against the English merchants that continuously infringed Portuguese commercial rights under the queen’s approval: The Crown of Portugal will never consent to share with others the sea explorations and conquest which have been so dearly purchased […]. The Portuguese Kingdom has (for a long time now) absolute superiority over the whole of Ethiopia and the right to make such regulations with respect to it as may seem most to his advantage […]. Apologises for the expression ‘disguises by means of sophisticated arguments’,16 in his former answer, and assures her of the goodwill of his King.17 In such an environment, diplomats worked to achieve some sort of compromise. Words had to be carefully chosen. On the one hand, João Pereira Dantas firmly advocates Portugal’s complete supremacy over the territories in Northern Africa, while, on the other hand, he apologises for the expression that entailed Elizabeth’s disguised attitude. The Portuguese ambassador addresses the English ambiguity in the negotiations (‘deguisements par arguments sophisticques’) and Portugal’s acknowledgment of it, but he does so by resorting to ambiguity, as well. As a result of his apologetic tone, he encourages discussions to continue. Ambiguity is essential to diplomatic activity. As Nathalie Revière de Carles suggests, the challenge embedded in every diplomatic mission is to put the rhetoric of ambiguity at the service of peace and agreement: Diplomatic ambiguation […] emerges as a means to generate appeasement whether on the domestic or the international level. Appeasement and peacemaking do not only rely on words or silence but on the conscious use of a material and commercial soft power.18 16 17 18 My translation from the original: ‘deguisements par arguments sophisticques’. MS Secretaries of State, SPF 70/38/146. An overview of the Portuguese ambassador’s address to the English queen on 19 June 1562. Carles N.R. (ed.), Early Modern Diplomacy, Theatre and Soft Power: The Making of Peace (London: 2016) 10. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 37 Portugal and England had benefited from a long-established alliance; despite going through a difficult period, both nations were still allies. Therefore, the ambassadors’ negotiating skills became of the greatest importance within this context of apparent peace. Carles observes how early modern diplomacy was deeply associated with a consensus christianus and ultimately with the prospect of maintaining the peace among monarchs and diplomatic figures of all Christian faiths.19 However, in face of the English piracy and privateering activities,20 some Portuguese ambassadors found it difficult to uphold a peaceful or compliant conduct. For instance, the Portuguese ambassador Francisco Pereira wrote to the Portuguese Public Treasury overseer, arguing that the Portuguese would be better served by ‘showing their teeth’ to the English.21 Clearly, the ambassador was suggesting that the Portuguese crown should act more aggressively towards the English. Nevertheless, instead of presenting a blunt accusation regarding the queen’s covert support of her subjects’ privateering enterprise, the Portuguese ambassador focuses on the Portuguese attitude towards the English, while the representation of the queen’s character is subtly implied. 2 Wilson’s Diplomatic Mission According to G.H. Mair, Thomas Wilson’s career ‘presents him as a man closely in touch with the three greatest forces in the England of his time – the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the revival of the State under the Tudors’.22 He was the author of the Arte of Logique (1551), Arte of Rhetorique (1553), and A Discourse upon Usury (1572), in addition to his English translation of Three Orations of Demosthenes (1570). He was also Master of St Katherine’s Hospital in the Tower of London, Advocate of the Court of Arches, Master of Requests, and a diplomat.23 Wilson was, therefore, a humanist and a statesman, celebrated, 19 20 21 22 23 Ibidem 2. English privateering caused great concerns within the merchants’ community as well, since it ‘interrupted a vigorous trade, that employed and enriched thousands of merchants, mariners, artisans, and clothworkers’. Eldred, J., “‘The Just will Pay for the Sinners’: English Merchants, the Trade with Spain, and Elizabethan Foreign Policy, 1563–1585”, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 10 (2010) 5–28, here 6. The Cotton Collection contains several documents that confirm the merchants’ anxieties concerning the trade interruption between Portugal and England. BL Ms. Cotton Nero B1, fols. 146–152. My translation from the original: ‘mostrar os dentes’. ANTT Corpo Cronológico 1/103/61. Mair G.H., “Introduction”, Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique 1560 (London – Edinburgh – New York – Toronto – Melbourne: 1909) xiv. Tawney R.H., “Introduction”, in Wilson T., A Discourse upon Usury (London: 1925) 2. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 38 Oliveira as Anthony Wood noted, ‘1) for quick dispatch and industry, 2) for constant diligence, and 3) for a large and strong memory’.24 By their very nature, Thomas Wilson’s attributes must have earned him the Privy Council’s trust and respect. Moreover, one other significant factor emerges in the context of Wilson’s diplomatic assignment to Lisbon. As mentioned in the ‘Instructions’, Wilson’s purpose was to defend ‘Mr. Winter’s cause’,25 and, coincidentally, the naval officer and Admiral William Winter was also Wilson’s brother-in-law. Thomas Wilson had married Winter’s sister, Agnes Brooke, sometime after 1560, and would now use his attributes and skills in the service of the English crown, as well as of his own entrepreneurial family.26 Selecting Wilson emerges, therefore, as a wise governmental decision, in line with the epigraph of this chapter. Santarém clarifies the incident involving Wilson’s brothers-in-law, Captain William Winter and his brother George Winter: In […] 1565, the Portuguese warships attacked and sent to the bottom, near the Rio dos Cestos [today’s Nuon or Nipoué river, in Liberian territory], a ship of the Winter Brothers, with 24 crew members and a load valued at £7,600 pounds. As the people who were interested in this business were of great influence, it caused a great irritation, especially in the merchants of the coast cities of England, who complained to the Queen.27 The Winters’ episode had become a source of indignation for the English community of merchants, and the queen acted in their defence. Wilson’s task in the Portuguese court was to formally express the English queen’s displeasure and make a firm protest against the Portuguese conduct at sea: she simply could not approve of Portugal’s policy, which included sinking English ships, seizing their cargo and imprisoning their crews. The fact that English privateers had been 24 25 26 27 Wood A., Athenae Oxonienses: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford. To which are Added the Fasti, Or Annals of the Said University, vol. 2 (London: 1815) 174. BL Ms. Cotton Nero B1, fols. 127–128. Derrick T.J., “Introduction”, in Wilson T., Arte of Rhetorique (New York: 1982) xxxvi; Tawney, “Introduction” 6. My translation from the original: ‘No anno seguinte de 1565 os navios de guerra Portuguezes, atacárão e metterão no fundo perto do Rio dos Cestos um navio dos Irmãos Winter, com 24 pessoas de tripulação; e a carga avaliada em 7,600 libras esterlinas. Como fossem os interessados neste negocio personagens de grande influencia, causou este facto uma grande irritação principalmente nos mercadores das cidades marítimas d’Inglaterra, que representarão á Rainha contra elle’ (Santarém, Quadro Elementar, vol. 15 [1865] cxix, cxx). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 39 endangering both the Portuguese economy and the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance for decades was an irrelevant coincidence, a matter that the English emissary would have to avoid at all costs. In fact, the irony regarding Wilson’s task was that all the previous Portuguese diplomatic missions to the Elizabethan court had envisioned the exact purposes of complaint and compensation, only the other way around. Therefore, Wilson’s embassy involved considerable political and economic complexities, as well as disagreements. Elizabeth further declares that England does not recognise the authority or jurisdiction of Portugal to judge or imprison English subjects, which was the case with several English held captive by the Portuguese in the Castle of Mina.28 Nonetheless, the Portuguese crown regarded this political measure to be legally justified, as Diogo Barbosa de Machado reports: At the same time […] news came […] that the Queen, equally unfaithful to God, had resolved to break the peace and friendship […] with this kingdom. As it happens, among the English who traded in Costa da Mina, a man called Winter, loathing the orders with which our King banned the navigation of foreigners, continued the trade in that port. To this insolence the Portuguese responded by seizing Winter’s ships and their cargo. Seeing that he had been deprived of the wealth from his greed, Winter complained to the Queen, who, irritated against the Portuguese actions, granted him a Letter of Mark so that as a pirate he might be satisfied, repaying the Portuguese for the damage they had caused him. With this pardon, unworthy of a sovereign, Winter navigated in these seas, stealing all our merchant ships.29 28 29 BL Ms. Cotton Nero B1, fols. 125–126. My translation from the original: ‘Ao tempo, […] lhe chegou a noticia [a D. Sebastião] de outro aggravo, com que a Rainha igualmente infiel a Deos, como ao nosso Principe se resolvera a romper a paz, e amiſade, que observava com este Reyno. Succedeo, que entre os Inglezes, que comerciavaõ na Costa da Mina, hum chamado Vinter desprezando as ordens, com que o nosso Monarcha pohibira aquella navegação aos estrangeiros, se atraveo a continuar o commercio naquele porto, por cuja insolencia lhe tomaraõ os Portuguezes o navio com todas as fazendeas, que levava. Vendo se privado de tudo quanto tinha adquirido na sua cubiça, se queixou à Rainha, a qual irritada deste procedimento lhe concedeou Carta de marca para que como pirata se satisfizesse nas fazendas dos Portuguezes do damno, que deles recebera. Com este indulto indigno da soberanía de huma Princeza discorria Vinter por aquelles mares roubando a todas as nossas naos mercantes, que navegavaõ na segurança da paz, que esta Coroa tinha com todos os Principes da Europa’ (Barbosa de Machado D., Memorias para a História de Portugal: Que Conprehendem O Governo del Rey D. Sebastião, vol. 2 (Lisbon: 1737) 734–735). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 40 Oliveira If Machado’s words are an accurate account of the Portuguese government spirits, then the Queen of England was construed as disloyal and untrue, both to God (as a Protestant monarch) and to the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. Portugal was determined to preserve the monopoly over its territories, although the Portuguese ambassadors rejected the use of the term ‘monopoly’.30 England, on the other hand, maintained an ambiguous policy, declaring the prohibition of the English trade in the territories under Portuguese rule, while simultaneously issuing Letters Patent as in the case of Captain William Winter. Wilson’s mission was, therefore, challenging: he had to ask for financial compensation in favour of Winter’s cause; but, if Winter had been plundering the Portuguese ships under the queen’s indulgence, that would mean a double compensation for an activity that the Portuguese considered a crime. Moreover, Wilson’s commission was also inauspicious: the English queen had broken her loyalty to a long-lasting ally, and each Portuguese ambassador sent to London had come back to Lisbon empty-handed. Should Elizabeth expect the Portuguese king to act differently towards her ambassador? Wilson may have associated the complexity and inauspiciousness of his diplomatic assignment with the great storm that he had endured at sea and the illness that followed.31 The English ambassador arrived in Lisbon on 5 October 1567. He may well have taken a while to contemplate the bustle of the Lisbon port, significant in the overseas traffic system of the time, representing a market increasingly important to England,32 in the context of the political and religious revolts in the Netherlands (which in turn affected the English trade in Antwerp) and the Spanish embargo that had started in 1563 due to English privateering and the deteriorating Anglo-Netherlands relations.33 The seaport of Lisbon had achieved an important standing, especially considering geo-political, economic or even logistical contexts as a result of the overseas expansion. The merchants’ networks, ‘sustained by capital transfers, by the placement of agents in trade markets’, specialised labour force, shipbuilding activities, the connections to other international (and national ports) introduced different 30 31 32 33 As confirmed in João Pereira Dantas’s speech to the English queen, in which he refers that he is glad that the word ‘monopoly’ is not associated with his king (SPF 70/38, fol. 146). The following details of Wilson’s mission in Lisbon are taken from his letter to Cecil. BL Ms. Cotton Nero B1, fols. 135–136; Santarém, Quadro Elementar vol. 15, 171–176. Croft P., “English Mariners trading to Spain and Portugal, 1558–1625”, Mariner’s Mirror 69 (1983) 251–266. Wernham R.B., Before the Armada: The Growth of English Foreign Policy 1485–1588 (London: 1966) 282. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 41 commercial and social dynamics in various levels and scales of influence.34 Additionally, Lisbon’s market was linked to a solid, ‘trans-imperial networks of merchants’, who shared intelligence across well-established networks about the ‘presence of non-Portuguese ships on the African coast’.35 Unfortunately, instead of establishing some sort of communication with the English community living in Lisbon straight away, Wilson was hospitalised.36 There, he was visited by Ayres Cardoso, the Portuguese ambassador he had formerly met in London, who welcomed him. The diplomats spoke in French and, on behalf of the Portuguese King, D. Sebastião, Cardoso requested the hospital to offer the best services to the English envoy and a physician was sent to him. Wilson mentions that the doctor was so diligent, that he recovered his ‘strengths and wits’ right away. Wilson further informs that after the doctor’s call, he had another visit, this time from an officer of the Inquisition. Both men talked initially in Latin, although Wilson mentions that they switched into French, as the official’s Latin was poor, and Wilson did not speak Portuguese. Despite the communication difficulties, the ecclesiastical representative asked Wilson if he was in possession of forbidden books, and Wilson replied that, as a scholar, he had only brought Law books, once they were a useful resource to carry out the mission entrusted by the English queen. It was common procedure for the Familiares, or the Inquisition agents, to come and visit English foreigners, looking for 34 35 36 Polónia A., “European Seaports in the Early Modern Age: Concepts, Methodology and Models of Analysis”, Cahiers de la Méditerranée 80 (2010) 17–39. Ebert C., “European Competition and Cooperation in Pre-Modern Globalization: ‘Portuguese’ West and Central Africa, 1500–1600”, African Economic History 36 (2008) 53–78. In his letter, Wilson states that he had to be admitted into a hospital as soon as he arrived. It is impossible to tell which hospital it was. In the sixteenth century, Lisbon had about 76 hospitals, an average of 5 beds per hospital, and 100,000 inhabitants, which meant a hospital bed for each 263 inhabitants. Such low ratio may explain why some hospitals were turned into care homes, specially intended for lodging people passing through. If that was Wilson’s choice, then perhaps he might have stayed in Albergaria dos Palmeiros, close to Terreiro do Paço, where he had come ashore. Another possibility might have been Albergaria de Payo Delgado, one of the most important hospitals in Renaissance Lisbon, close to Palácio dos Estaus, in Rossio, a palace used by foreign embassies until 1584, when it was turned into the Inquisition quarters under the reign of Philip II of Spain, I of Portugal (Brearley M., Hugo Gurgeny: Prisoner of the Lisbon Inquisition (London: 1947) 19). If, on the other hand, Wilson decided to admit himself into a conventional hospital, then, Hospital Santa Maria dos Mártires, close to Terreiro do Paço, or Hospital Real de Todos os Santos, close to Rossio, are also to be considered, for the same reasons. For more on sixteenth-century Lisbon hospitals see Correia F.S., “Os Velhos Hospitais da Lisboa Antiga”, Revista Municipal 2, 10 (Lisbon: 1941) 3–13. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 42 Oliveira Bibles and prayer books in luggage and ship cargoes.37 In fact, Games observes ‘the chilly effect’ the Inquisition had on English merchants’ businesses and even on national pride.38 So, the Inquisitorial officer’s visit to Wilson would have been expected, and the envoy’s reply might have also been prepared, in the sense that he strategically mentioned the Queen of England and the King of Portugal to display his rank in the political sphere and to discourage further enquiries. Be that as it may, ‘the man of the Inquisition’ did not leave Wilson without a message, warning: ‘I caution you to conduct yourself piously and to not arise amongst us any schism’.39 Religious asymmetries distanced the two kingdoms even further, while simultaneously emphasised the role of diplomacy in the establishment of a common ground of understanding, a bridge between two worlds. Among the foreign communities in sixteenth-century Portugal, the English were the most prominent and, according to Brearley, ‘probably the most numerous’.40 Nonetheless, Games observes that the English community in Lisbon was small (only twelve merchants in 1610), although she adds that this was ‘the most prominent of the foreign merchant communities in Portugal’.41 Unlike the records that were preserved through the centuries on the English community living in Oporto, the Lisbon archives do not offer much information on the English community living in Lisbon in the sixteenth century, most probably because it was lost in 1755 Lisbon earthquake. However, it is possible to collect some evidence about this community in scattered documents. With the Reformation, many Englishmen arriving in Lisbon and Oporto held opinions and doctrines which were perceived as a social and religious menace by the Portuguese Catholics. Religion and politics were intertwined and inseparable. Therefore, the ever-present schismatic question became apparent in the words of the Portuguese Inquisition officials. The National Archives in Torre do Tombo hold numerous documents recording how Englishmen were sentenced by the Portuguese Holy Office of the Inquisition. One such instance is the trial of Richard Heron and Peter Starne, in the same year as Wilson’s visit.42 The 20-folio record refers to the accusation of 50-year-old Heron, a 37 38 39 40 41 42 Brearley, Hugo Gurgeny 18. Games A., The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560–1660 (Oxford: 2008) 100. In the original: ‘ego moneo tē, ut pie te geras, et schisma nullum inter nos excites’. BL Ms. Cotton Nero B1, fol. 135; Santarém, Quadro Elementar vol. 15, 172. Brearley, Hugo Gurgeny 23. Games, The Web of Empire 100. ANTT Tribunal do Santo Ofício IL/28/01672. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 43 Welsh merchant, and 45 year-old Starne, an English sailor. Both men were accused of Lutheranism. The role of a Protestant diplomat in a Catholic foreign court embodied, therefore, the absolute need for prudent and expert negotiating skills, if a common ground of understanding were to be established. Wilson’s reply to the Inquisitor’s message of warning was simply to state that his affairs in Portugal were not religious but rather the business of the two kingdoms. He notes that this answer particularly pleased the officer; then, he resumes to describe his audience with the Portuguese king and his advisors, on 9th of October: he delivered a speech at the High Chambers, stated his demands and exchanged some laudatory words with the King (D. Sebastião spoke in Portuguese and Wilson in Italian). Then, Wilson describes his meeting with the queen dowager, Catherine of Austria, D. Sebastião’s grandmother.43 She was old, large, with a majestic posture, sitting on the throne, surrounded by court ladies. The conversation with the queen was held in Spanish, and numerous compliments were shared. Ultimately, Wilson observes that the Portuguese sovereigns were very friendly and pleasant. After the audience, he was accompanied by a large entourage of Englishmen, one hundred on foot and six on horseback, to the house of Botolph Holder, a wealthy English merchant with a great reputation within the Portuguese court. This account emphasises the success and vitality of the English community in sixteenth-century Lisbon and how Wilson’s mission broadened the network of intelligence that would be vital to England’s approach to Portugal’s strategies. In fact, according to the Spanish ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza, Botolph Holder would become ‘hand in glove’ with Wilson from this assignment to Lisbon onwards. In a letter to Philip II, Mendoza observes how Holder sent information to Wilson on everything that occurred in Portugal, for the queen’s knowledge.44 If this sort of collaboration favoured England politically, it also worked to the advantage of the English community of merchants established in Lisbon, since the peaceful resolution of the Anglo-Portuguese commercial disagreements would advance their prospects of trade. Holder’s letter to William Cecil, on 14 May 1568, confirms not only that he was by then at the queen’s service, undoubtedly following Wilson’s recommendation, but also that he was supplying detailed intelligence on the number of Portuguese ships departing from Lisbon, the situation of the English sailors that were captive at Terceira Island, in the Azores archipelago, and on the great loss resulting 43 44 Catherine of Austria, from the House of Habsburg, was the regent of Portugal from 1557 to 1562. Hume M.A.S. (ed.), Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas, vol. 3 (Cambridge – New York: 1896) 183. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 44 Oliveira from the currency devaluation, which seriously affected the reputation of the English living in Lisbon.45 In this context, we should also consider another network of exchange: the one between the English community in Lisbon and the religious institutions. As a result of the 1535 Oath of Supremacy, which required all English subjects to pay allegiance to their monarch as the Supreme Head of the Church of England, numerous English Roman Catholics were driven out of their country and settled in Lisbon. Most of the English and Irish priests took refuge in the Church of São Roque, a Jesuit church since 1553. Two such cases were those of John Rolles and Sir Francis Tregian, who obtained board and pension at Jesuit and Franciscan monasteries in Lisbon. Sir Tregian’s tomb in São Roque, commissioned by the local English Catholic community seventeen years after his death in 1608, stands out as a commemorative symbol of the resistance to the Elizabethan establishment of the Church of England and to the fostering of English Catholics in Portugal. Additionally, there was no English foundation in Lisbon except the Brigittine nuns’ sanctuary. The nuns had left England in the course of the dissolution of the convents and monasteries and arrived in Portugal in 1594. They finally settled in 1599 in Rua das Quelhas, founding the sanctuary. It is still possible to perceive the sixteenth-century Anglo-Portuguese network of exchange in today’s toponomy of the city of Lisbon, namely Travessa dos Inglesinhos, in the ancient quarter of Bairro Alto. The name of the street echoes the founding of the English College of Saints Peter and Paul, a project that started in 1568, under ‘the design of establishing a College at Lisbon for Secular Priests who should serve on the English Mission’.46 During Wilson’s stay in Lisbon, he would have become familiar as this initiative was being designed, funds assembled, and assistance provided to an increasing English Catholic community living in Lisbon. Wilson was also received by Cardinal D. Henrique, D. Sebastião’s great-uncle and regent of Portugal.47 Despite the Cardinal’s very pleasing words and promise of an expeditious dispatch of business, Wilson complains that eleven days went by without an official reply from the Portuguese court. As a consequence, he visited the Portuguese Royal Secretary, who received him and very kindly promised to take care of the matter. They also talked a great deal about John Hawkins’s navigation, and Wilson informed Cecil that the Portuguese had 6 ships, 4 galleys and 4 triremes ready to prevent such navigation, since it was 45 46 47 Crosby A.J. (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, vol. 8 (London: 1871) 448–457. Croft W., Historical Account of Lisbon College (Barnet: 1902) 2. D. Sebastião was then 13 years old and took office as King of Portugal in January of the following year. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 45 believed that Hawkins’s project was to seize the Castle of Mina and to devastate those parts. By this time, Wilson had already interacted with the three people responsible for the Portuguese policy of foreign affairs and diplomacy during the reign of D. Sebastião. In 1557, when D. Sebastião inherited the throne, he was just a three-year-old child. It was his grandmother, Catherine of Austria, who assumed the regency, maintaining the foreign affairs policy of her husband, King D. João III, that is, one of close collaboration, even at times subordination, to Philip II’s goals and Spain’s interests. This line of government generated many internal conflicts and precipitated the beginning of Cardinal D. Henrique’s regency (from 1562 to 1568), who assumed a frequently distant, silent, and always cautious alignment regarding Portugal’s position in the geo-political framework of the times. Although he was not openly hostile to his nephew in Castile, Cardinal D. Henrique clearly demonstrated that he was not going to maintain Catherine of Austria’s policy of preferential treatment and partisanship with Spain. He started to enforce a foreign policy which favoured Portuguese interests, carefully measuring, scrutinising and adjusting each negotiation in favour of the national benefit.48 Although D. Sebastião only assumed the government of his reign a few months after Wilson’s departure, by the time the English envoy was staying in Lisbon, D. Sebastião was already taking an active part in many political decisions, especially those which concerned his uncle, Philip II. The King of Spain tried to maintain his interference in the Portuguese affairs, but now he found a greater resistance: both from the Cardinal D. Henrique and from D. Sebastião.49 In January 1568, when D. Sebastião became King of Portugal, he distanced his foreign policy from that of his Castilian uncle’s even further, seeking a trade agreement with England, dealing with the multiple consequences of an Atlantic full of English and French privateers and pirates, pursuing a balanced political relationship between the various kingdoms and republics (Catholic or otherwise, precisely in line with the consensus christianus mentioned by Carles), and working for a prominent position of Portugal in Christendom, especially within the context of the rising threat of the Ottoman Empire.50 48 49 50 Magalhães J.R., “D. Sebastião”, in Mattoso J. (ed.), História de Portugal: no Alvorecer da Modernidade (Lisbon: 1997) 453, 460. This resistance to Philip II’s interference became even more overt when the King of Spain decided the rightful suitor to marry the Portuguese king. That decision was not approved by D. Sebastião, who openly defied his uncle. Cruz M.A.L., D. Sebastião (2006) 108; Baños-Garcia A.V., D. Sebastião: Rei de Portugal (2006) 96–100. Amorim P.A.S., A Política externa de D. Sebastião: Portugal na Cristandade às vésperas de Alcácer-Quibir MA thesis (University of Lisbon: 2019) 5. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 46 Oliveira In his letter, Wilson mentions the English merchants in Lisbon, namely those who were treated very harshly and put in prison, despite being innocent. Since he does not mention the reason behind such behaviour by the Portuguese authorities, we may speculate that the Inquisition and the matters of faith might have been involved. Games mentions that ‘insufficient observance of Catholic rituals by a single mariner might condemn an entire crew to interrogation and punishment’ and that merchants complained about this sort of ‘collective retribution’.51 Although this account refers to the English community in Lisbon some decades after Wilson’s assignment (and after the union of the crowns of Portugal and Spain, in 1580), we may presume that differences would not have been substantial and that the English merchants lived as if in a city within the city of Lisbon to protect themselves.52 Wilson also reports an incident that had occurred in July: a ship loaded with goods, carrying no weapons and with a crew of ten sailors, had left Lisbon for San Lúcar, in Spain. Immediately after its departure, a Portuguese fleet apprehended it near the Berlengas islands, under the pretext that it was, in fact, a pirate vessel and the crew was, consequently, stripped of everything and imprisoned. Wilson adds, however, that he does not excuse them, because they were regarded as pirates. Using J. Eldred’s analysis of what he calls the two distinctive groups of English merchants (that, in turn, embodied opposing perspectives about English foreign policy), we presume that here Wilson is referring to the ‘martial maritime faction’, whose fierce undertakings at sea promoted private gain instead of the public good and long-term interests and gains of the commonwealth championed by the peaceful trade defended by the other group, ‘the mercantile merchants’.53 Wilson’s mission was also to recognise how the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance could be maintained in terms of commerce, despite the Spanish embargo on ships sailing from English ports and the continuous English violence at sea that damaged peaceful trade negotiations. England found in the ports of Portugal and in those of Portuguese islands alternative markets.54 It is my understanding that although the English government perceived the Iberian nations as kingdoms with much in common, the differences between Portugal and Spain were also apparent and Wilson makes reference to the English martial maritime men that endangered the peaceful negotiations with Portugal. 51 52 53 54 Games, The Web of Empire 100. Games refers to “a cautious insularity” (Ibidem 102). Eldred, “‘The Just will pay for the Sinners’” 5–9. Croft P., “Trading with the Enemy 1585–1604”, The Historical Journal 32, 2 (1989) 281–282. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 47 The English envoy continues to refer to other English seamen (about thirty of them) confined in the horrible prison of the Castle of Mina, despite being innocent. Wilson’s account confirms that the Portuguese had increased and reinforced their position of guardianship against English voyages. The unsatisfactory results for compensation of the Portuguese diplomatic missions to the Elizabethan court had undoubtedly led to this state of affairs, even though Wilson assures Cecil that the Portuguese detest war (‘Lusitanus a bella abhorrore’),55 and do not want to break treaties. The uneasy relationship between the two kingdoms included at this stage mutual reprisals and armed hostilities, emphasising the importance both of the English and the Portuguese diplomatic missions. Despite being allies, the two kingdoms were on the verge of ending their friendly Alliance. Bearing in mind that the Iberian kingdoms had such strong familial, political, economic and religious ties, Wilson’s mission must have included the surveillance of Spanish activities and indeed he informs Cecil that the Spanish ambassador, resident in the Portuguese court, visited him regularly, treated him with the greatest courtesy and shared with him rumours about French naval activities. Wilson’s stay in Lisbon provided him with numerous opportunities to expand his political intelligence, not only regarding the Anglo-Portuguese affairs, but also at a wider level of international concerns. 3 The Aftermath of Wilson’s Mission to Lisbon Given what Elizabeth hoped to achieve, Wilson’s diplomatic mission was partly unsuccessful: the Portuguese king did not accept England’s demands for Captain Winter’s compensation. But not all of Wilson’s endeavours were in vain. Following the English queen’s instructions, Wilson resorted to the authority of a public notary, who registered the envoy’s protest in his final audience with the Portuguese king, on 30 October 1567.56 Religion, politics and economy are evoked by the English diplomat to fulfil a purpose, that of his mission and, underlying it, the preservation of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. Notwithstanding Portugal’s irreversible position regarding both the English commercial activities on the African coast and Winter’s claim for compensation, Wilson’s mission to Lisbon succeeded in the release of the Englishmen held captive in the Castle of Mina, as confirmed in a letter from the Portuguese 55 56 BL Ms. Cotton Nero B1, fol. 136r. Ibidem, fols. 131, 132. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 48 Oliveira king to the English queen.57 Furthermore, Wilson’s diplomatic mission also meant the establishment of a wider net of important and influential connections, as well as the reinforcement of the liaisons within the English community living in Lisbon, as was the case with Botolph Holder. One should also consider the fact that Wilson had become the first envoy to be sent to Lisbon by Queen Elizabeth, which established a predisposition to keep the negotiations concerning the protection of trade and naval traffic between the two kingdoms, a central subject within the context of the Anglo-Portuguese relations. The fact that the only envoy sent to Portugal from England during this period was sent to claim the rights of English merchants is significant. Ambassadors on both sides were working laboriously to avoid a commercial embargo, such as the one with Spain, although Portugal was by now reaching breaking point. Following Wilson’s mission, Portugal decided to send another envoy to London, the fourth since the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. That also confirms Wilson’s successful and effective performance in Lisbon: Portugal was still willing to reach an agreement. In April 1568, the Portuguese ambassador Manoel d’Alvares requested the queen’s prohibition of all the English trade in the coast of Guinea, that those of her subjects disobeying her orders be punished with death, and a restitution of 60,000 ducats to compensate the Portuguese kingdom for the English pirates’ activities.58 In the following month, Elizabeth replied: […] the Queen does not admit of the King’s right to make laws binding on her subjects, since his are excluded from trading in no part of her territory […] she will warn her subjects not to traffic in those parts of Ethiopia owning the King’s rule or paying tribute to him […] it is unreasonable to hold her liable for the faults of her subjects in which she was in no way participant.59 Elizabeth maintained an ambiguous political strategy, although the discourse reveals an increasingly clearer response to Portugal’s demands. We must assume that, at this stage, Wilson would be completing the above-mentioned English translation of Three Orations of Demosthenes. According to Blanshard and Sowerby, Wilson’s work politicises classical translation and rearranges the role of Demosthenes from orator into statesman. Wilson is therefore emphasising the importance of experienced statesmanship (such as diplomacy), while 57 58 59 Ibidem, fols. 133, 134. Ibidem, fols. 138–140. Crosby, Calendar of State Papers Foreign vol. 8, 457–472. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 49 simultaneously advocating against the English queen’s foreign policy and in favour of a reinforced action against Spain.60 Regarding the other Iberian nation, and due to Wilson’s mission to Portugal, ‘he continued to be consulted as a recognised specialist in Portuguese affairs and questions of trade’.61 He exchanged correspondence with the English trade consul and representative of the English community in Lisbon, John Lee, who was kept in office for twelve years.62 When the Portuguese ambassador Manoel d’Alvares was involved in an incident that could endanger the delicate balance of the Anglo-Portuguese affairs, Thomas Wilson emerged on the scene.63 Ultimately, diplomacy, mercantile and religious networks of knowledge and intelligence exchange became crucial in the decisions of the Portuguese king and the English queen regarding their kingdoms’ foreign policy. Wilson’s recently-added skills became considerably more important when England and Portugal ceased their friendly political and economic alliance, in 1569. For a period of seven years, Anglo-Portuguese affairs, as well as their national treasuries, suffered deeply on account of the differences confronting both nations.64 Wilson worked alongside the Portuguese resident ambassador Francisco Giraldes, whose mission in London from 1571 to 1578 intended to reinstate Anglo-Portuguese commercial trade. This was a period for energetic diplomatic agency, confirming that the role of the ambassador had become essential on the political stage, as the diplomatic skills and services had become indispensable in (re)establishing and maintaining the peace. Thomas Wilson, died in May 1581, only a month after the legal establishment of the Iberian Union and Philip II’s recognition as King Philip I of Portugal, on 16 April 1581. Portugal ceased its diplomatic representation in England from then onwards, a practice that was only resumed in 1641, after the Restoration of the Portuguese monarchy. 60 61 62 63 64 Blanshard A.J.L. – Sowerby T.A., “‘Thomas Wilson’s Demosthenes and the Politics of Tudor Translation’”, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 12, 1 (2005) 46–80. Tawney, “Introduction” 4. Games A., The Web of Empire 100. See also the letter from Hugh Lee to Thomas Wilson, 3 June 1610. SP 89/3/140v. Manoel d’Alvares’s house in Hoxton was invaded by the agents of the Bishop of London and the Portuguese envoy was accused of covering Englishmen attending the Catholic mass. Thomas Wilson arrived on the scene, as reported by the Spanish ambassador, Guzman da Silva. Hume M.A.S. (ed.), Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas, vol. 2 (Cambridge – New York: 1894) 80–81. The Cotton Manuscripts hold several records attesting to the merchants’ concerns and complaints as a consequence of the Anglo-Portuguese commercial interregnum. See section Nero B1, fols. 162–168. The original of the declaration of the merchants trading to Portugal is in SP12/83/37. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 50 4 Oliveira The Anglo-Portuguese Diplomatic Enterprise As this chapter suggests, the theme of networks of exchange in the sixteenth century is inextricably entwined with diplomacy. This period witnessed a substantial expansion in diplomatic correspondence. It should be noted that the information network depended not only on diplomatic envoys and resident ambassadors in foreign courts, but also on numerous agents and intelligencers. This expanded network of correspondence would ultimately result in a vast exchange of intelligence, with enormous political and financial benefits. This chapter’s primary sources, the accounts regarding Thomas Wilson’s assignment to Lisbon, those of the Portuguese ambassadors dispatched to the Elizabethan court, are mainly held at the British Library and the National Archives, in London. Unfortunately, the Portuguese diplomatic accounts are often overlooked as a resource in early modern studies.65 The difficult access to these records, along with the challenging interpretation of their contents, may explain why we rarely find any references to the Portuguese ambassadors’ written accounts. Nonetheless, one expects that the contemporary interpretation of early modern times will expand, as more records of diplomatic correspondence are salvaged from the existing archives, such as some of the manuscripts cited in this chapter. In this regard, the Portuguese National Archives hold several significant letters concerning the way in which the ambassadors gathered information and how they perceived the importance of their missions. In a letter to D. Sebastião, the Portuguese ambassador in Rome, Lourenço Pires de Távora, affirmed: And those who acquire a reputation for being obedient should not only show it in observance and respect, but also in all external activities. And since ambassadors represent the names of their kings and are necessary so that their kings are remembered, it seems in a way that where they are missing, forgetting is easier.66 65 66 Even in the context of the Iberian Peninsula, as pointed out, early modern studies tend to focus almost exclusively on Spain. First, that may be due to the fact that the sixteenthcentury Portuguese correspondence is rare, either because it was lost in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, or during the French invasion in 1807, or because it remains forgotten in the private papers of the Portuguese ambassadors’ families. A second reason may lie in the fact that the Portuguese diplomats often wrote between the lines, as an evidence of political caution. A third reason may be related to the fact that the surviving records of the Portuguese ambassadors in the Elizabethan court are scattered in several European archives, mostly remaining uncatalogued. My translation from the original: ‘E os que quiserem ser tidos em reputação de obedientes, não devem somente mostrá-lo na observância e acatamento, mas ainda em todas as obras exteriores. E como os embaixadores representam o nome dos seus Reis e são Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 51 Pires de Távora reflects on how ambassadors contribute to the achievement of compromises, but the apology he puts forward goes beyond the practical question that, at first glance, seems to be the focus of his missive. In a way, Pires de Távora appeals to the Portuguese king, so that he regards his ambassadors, especially resident ambassadors, as visible signs of his authority, for ‘they represent the name of their kings’. Underpinning this idea is the metaphor of ‘exterior paintings’, which symbolised the real, and royal, persona. For such an ambassador, the authority of the monarch did not depend only on the demonstration of ‘observance and respect’, that is, on the passive, intrinsic and required qualities in international political relations. At a broader level, the monarch’s authority also depends on the active demonstration of authority in a given foreign court, on the agency of the resident ambassadors as the embodiment of such authority. They represented – as a process of mimesis in the artistic creation of the ‘exterior paintings’ – the real authority of their sovereigns and thus functioned as a constant evocation and reminder of the reality they reproduced. In the external political context, that would undoubtedly be of decisive importance. Drawing on the epigraph of this chapter, governance and leadership presuppose, among other things, the wise use of ambassadors: Alas, how should you govern any kingdom That know not how to use ambassadors? W. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3 IV.3.35–36 These lines sum up, with the expressive virtuosity Shakespeare renders Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, not merely the core of the play, but also the political shift of events within the context of the Wars of the Roses. The causal explanation is indeed pointed out: King Edward IV had discredited Warwick’s diplomatic mission, depriving it of its content. The dramatic mimesis of the political stage evokes the correlation between the sovereigns’ political status and the international signs that embody it, as the ambassadors, their representatives. To void the diplomats of the content of their representation means to void the very sovereign of his/her authority; contrarily, empowering ambassadors and reinforcing the importance of diplomatic missions amplifies the sovereign’s influence and authority. Such seemed to be the case with the Portuguese ambassadors, with the English ambassadors and with their sovereigns, mentioned in this chapter. [“sejam” no original] umas pinturas necessárias para a lembrança, parece de certo modo que onde eles faltam é mais fácil o esquecimento’ (ANTT Corpo Cronológico 1/105/50). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 52 Oliveira Bibliography Primary Sources Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (= ANTT) Corpo Cronológico 1/103/61; 1/105/50 Tribunal do Santo Ofício IL/28/01672 Ascham R., The whole works of Roger Ascham, ed. Rev. Dr. Giles, 2 vols. (London: 1864). British Library, London (= BL) Ms. Cotton Nero B1 Ms. Egerton 73 Crosby A.J. (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, 23 vols. (London:1871). Hume M.A.S. (ed.), Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas, vols. 2–3 (Cambridge – New York: 1894–1986). The National Archives Kew, Public Record Office State Papers (= SP) 12/83/37 State Papers 70/58/37 State Papers 89/3/140v State Papers Foreign (= SPF) 70/38/146 Shakespeare W., Henry VI Part III, ed. R. Martin (Oxford – New York: 2001). Wilson T., Arte of Rhetorique ed. T.J. Derrick (New York: 1982). Wilson T., Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique 1560, ed. G.H. Mair (London – Edinburgh – New York – Toronto – Melbourne: 1909). Wilson T., A Discourse upon Usury, ed. R.H. Tawney (London: 1925). Wood A., Athenae Oxonienses: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford. To which are Added the Fasti, Or Annals of the Said University, 5 vols. (London: 1813–1820). Secondary Sources Amorim P.A.S., A Política externa de D. Sebastião: Portugal na Cristandade às vésperas de Alcácer-Quibir, MA thesis (University of Lisbon: 2019). Attreed L., “Friends in Need or in Deed? Anglo-Portuguese Relations in the Fifteenth Century”, Mediterranean Studies 8 (1999) 143–156. Bagrow L., History of Cartography, rev. R.A. Skelton (New Brunswick – London: 1985). Baños-Garcia A.V., D. Sebastião: Rei de Portugal (Lisbon: 2006). Barbosa de Machado D., Memorias para a História de Portugal: Que Conprehendem O Governo del Rey D. Sebastião, 4 vols. (Lisbon: 1736–1751). Blanshard A.J.L. – Sowerby T.A., “‘Thomas Wilson’s Demosthenes and the Politics of Tudor Translation’”, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 12, 1 (2005) 46–80. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Networks of Exchange in Anglo-Portuguese 16TH-C. DIPLOMACY 53 Brearley M., Hugo Gurgeny: Prisoner of the Lisbon Inquisition (London: 1947). Carles N.R. de (ed.), Early Modern Diplomacy, Theatre and Soft Power: The Making of Peace (London: 2016). Chapman A.B.W., “The Commercial Relations of England and Portugal, 1487–1807”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1 (1907) 157–179. Correia F.S., “Os Velhos Hospitais da Lisboa Antiga”, Revista Municipal 2, 10 (Lisbon: 1941) 3–13. Croft P., “English Mariners Trading to Spain and Portugal, 1558–1625”, Mariner’s Mirror 69 (1983) 251–266. Croft, P., “Trading with the Enemy 1585–1604”, The Historical Journal 32, 2 (1989) 281–302. Croft W., Historical Account of Lisbon College (Barnet: 1902). Cruz M.A.L., D. Sebastião (Lisbon: 2006). Cunha M.S., “A questão jurídica na crise dinástica”, in Mattoso J. (ed.), História de Portugal: no Alvorecer da Modernidade (Lisbon: 1997) 452–559. Ebert C., “European Competition and Cooperation in Pre-Modern Globalization: ‘Portuguese’ West and Central Africa, 1500–1600”, African Economic History 36 (2008) 53–78. Eldred J., “‘The Just will Pay for the Sinners’: English Merchants, the Trade with Spain, and Elizabethan Foreign Policy, 1563–1585”, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 10,1 (2010) 5–28. Games A., The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560–1660 (Oxford: 2008). Hair P.E.H., The Founding of the Castelo de São Jorge da Mina: An Analysis of Sources (Wisconsin: 1994). Magalhães J.R., “D. Sebastião”, in Mattoso J. (ed.), História de Portugal: no Alvorecer da Modernidade (Lisbon: 1997) 449–460. Morales O.R., Review of O’Connor T., Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition: Migrants, Converts and Brokers in Early Modern Iberia, trans. M.J. Sánchez-de-Nieva SEDERI 27 (2017) 269–272. Newitt M. (ed), The Portuguese in West Africa: 1415–1670: A Documentary History (New York: 2010). Oliveira S., “‘The Intolerable Business’: Religion and Diplomacy under Elizabeth’s Rule”, SEDERI 26 (2016) 159–174. Polónia A., “European Seaports in the Early Modern Age: Concepts, Methodology and Models of Analysis”, Cahiers de la Méditerranée 80 (2010) 17–39. Prestage E., “The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 17 (1934) 69–100. Protásio D.E., 2º Visconde de Santarém (1791–1856): Uma Biografia Intelectual e Política (Lisbon: 2018). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 54 Oliveira Santarém M.F. de Barros, Visconde de, Demonstração dos Direitos que tem a Coroa de Portugal sobre os Territórios situados na Costa Occidental D’Africa (Lisbon: 1855). Santarém M.F. de Barros, Visconde de, Quadro elementar das relações politicas e diplomaticas de Portugal: com as diversas potencias do mundo, desde o principio da monarchia portugueza até aos nossos dias, 18 vols. (Lisbon: 1842–1876). Shaw L.M.E., The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance and the English Merchants in Portugal, 1654–1810 (Aldershot: 1998). Tawney R.H., “Introduction”, in Wilson T., A Discourse upon Usury (London: 1925). Wernham R.B., Before the Armada: The Growth of English Foreign Policy 1485–1588 (London: 1966). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access chapter 3 Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 1580–1760 Thomas O’Connor The early modern Irish were agents in numerous international networks, usually riding on the coattails of English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese contemporaries.* It has been usual to examine these Irish agents within, rather than across, the different imperial systems that alternately sheltered, shunned and shared them.1 However, like other mobile minorities at the time, the Irish operated opportunistically across, as well as within, imperial systems. Although their choices were more often than not buffeted by the winds of necessity and circumstance, the Irish, when occasion allowed, could be strategic in their choice of host networks, particularly during times of war, as in the 1590s, 1640s, 1690s and throughout the eighteenth century. It was in conflictual situations that the Irish most effectively straddled colonial boundaries, as soldiers, clerics and merchants. This permitted them a significant role in enabling connectivities between Britain and Iberia in the early modern period. It was within the interlocking English and Spanish spheres in particular, that the Irish learned to play on the ambiguities of their identity as (generally) Catholic subjects of a Protestant monarch. This was the case notably on the shifting frontiers between Central and North America, where Irish military, clergy and traders moved between English and Spanish zones of influence.2 They displayed similar talents on the Canary Islands, notably in the commercial * Abbreviations: AGS = Valladolid, Archivo General de Simancas; AHN = Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional; ANTT = Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional do Torre do Tombo; APF = Rome, Archivio Storico di Propaganda Fide; TNA = Kew, The National Archives; TSO = Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional do Torre do Tombo, Tribunal do Santo Oficio. 1 For overviews of recent work on the Irish overseas, see O’Reilly W., “Ireland in the Atlantic World: Migration and Cultural Transfer”, in Ohlmeyer J. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. 2: 1550–1730 (Cambridge: 2018) 385–408; Chambers L., “The Irish in Europe in the Eighteenth Century 1691–1815”, in Kelly J. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. 3: 1730–1880 (Cambridge: 2018) 569–592. 2 O’Connor T., “Irish Collegians in Spanish Service (1560–1800)”, in Chambers L. – O’Connor T. (eds.), Forming Catholic Communities. Irish, Scots and English College Networks in Europe, 1569–1918 (Leiden: 2017) 15–38. © THOMAS O’CONNOR, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_005 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 56 O ’ Connor sphere.3 Less well known are their trans-imperial activities in another zone of English-Spanish overlap, the Western Mediterranean.4 As will be seen, these activities were largely mediated through the military, commercial and slaving networks of Britain, Spain and the North African Moors.5 As a result, Hiberno-Maghreb contacts in the period tended to be confrontational, whether the Irish were on British military campaigns in North Africa,6 members of Spanish naval missions in the Mediterranean,7 trading on the corsairridden high seas8 or resisting Moorish land raids and enslavement at home.9 Such encounters could and did lead to the Moorish imprisonment of Irish subjects, some of whom had already been uprooted from their traditional lands and occupations by the progress of the English conquest in Ireland.10 Their captivity and enslavement in North Africa entailed a further dramatic change in their social status and, in the case of renegades, of religion too. Returning renegades of all nationalities were required to undergo ritual reintegration into Christendom,11 a process supervised, in the Spanish sphere, by the Inquisition. This processing generated a considerable paper record, much of which has survived. Bartolomé and Lucile Bennassar analysed about 1,500 of these reconciliation accounts, estimating that, for the period 1550– 1700, they represent about one half of one per cent of the total number of 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 On the activities of the Walsh and Cologan families in Tenerife, see Guimerá Ravina A., Burguesía extranjera y comercio atlántico: la empresa comercial irlandesa en Canarias (1703–71) (Tenerife: 1985). See O’Connor T., Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition: Migrants, Converts and Brokers in Early Modern Iberia (London: 2016) 83–86. The Moors were North African peoples of Muslim religion, one portion of whom, prior to the Reconquista, was firmly established in Iberia. There is no comprehensive treatment but see Bejjit K., English Colonial Texts on Tangier 1661–1684: Imperialism and the Politics of Resistance (London: 2015) passim; Barrio Gozalo M., “Los cautivos españoles en Argel durante el siglo illustrado”, Cuadernos Dieciochistas 2 (2003) 135–174. See, for example, AGS GA Leg 883 (12 Jan. 1622). For example, the incident report in AHN INQ Lib 1021, fols. 271r–281r. On Gráinne Ní Máille’s (c.1530–c.1603) alleged encounters with Turkish corsairs in 1567, see Druett J., She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea (New York: 2000) 58; Chambers A., The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley (Dublin: 1979). Murray T.D., “From Baltimore to Barbary: The 1631 Sack of Baltimore”, History Ireland 14, 4 (2006) 14–18; Barnby H., “The Sack of Baltimore”, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 74 (1969) 101–129. On the sale of these Irish slaves in Algiers, see Pierre D., Histoire de la Barbarie et de ses Corsaires […] divisée en dix livres (Paris, Pierre Rocolet: 1637) especially vol. 2, 178ff and vol. 3, 277ff. For a general account, see Davis R.C., Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy (1500–1800) (London: 2003). Ibidem 19, 184. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 57 Christians imprisoned by the Moors.12 These included a handful of Irish cases. Supplementing the Inquisition files are the Spanish and Portuguese state records of ransomed Christian slaves. In the seventeenth century, Spanish state ransoming was largely in the hands of the redemptive orders, the Trinitarians and Mercederians, who worked closely with the state.13 Between them, church and state archives in Spain contain references to several dozen Irish captives.14 In Protestant England and Ireland, both church and state organised ransoming schemes.15 The surviving documentation, notably the English state papers, contains records pertaining to over one hundred enslaved Irish.16 Overall, these English, Spanish and Portuguese records permit a partial reconstruction of how Irish captives crisscrossed British and Spanish spheres of influence. Their experience offers an insight into the complexity of British-Hispanic relations in the Western Mediterranean in the early modern period. It is tempting to view these Hiberno-Maghrebin encounters predominantly through the romantic but distorting lens of piracy, slavery and apostacy. They are, in fact, more appropriately located in the rapidly changing geo-political and commercial circumstances that marked Irish involvement in expanding British and Spanish activity in the Maghreb.17 Despite their rivalries, Britain and Spain shared the same mercantilist outlook. Protecting their commercial interests in the Mediterranean required naval backup, bringing ever larger numbers of Europeans into contact with North African populations. This explains, for instance, the heavy English military investment in the city of Tangier, which had come into temporary English possession (1661–1684), as part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry.18 With the seizure of Gibraltar (1704) and Minorca (1708), the British presence in the Mediterranean was copper-fastened. British forces in the Mediterranean, notably in Tangier, included several hundred Irish 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Bennassar B., Les chrétiens d’Allah. L’histoire extraordinaire des renégats XVI–XVII siècles (Paris: 1989) 174; Davis, Christian Slaves 3–26. Martínez Torres A.J., Prisioneros de los infieles: vida y rescate de los cautivos cristianos en el Mediterráneo musulmán (siglos XVI–XVII) (Barcelona: 2004). O’Connor, Irish Voices, passim. See the transcript of the Laudian rite for returned renegades (1637) in Vitkus D.J. (ed.), Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (New York: 2001) 361–366. Matar N., British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563–1760 (Leiden: 2014). For more recent work, see Davis, Christian Slaves; Bennassar, Les chrétiens; Heers J., Les Barbaresques (Paris: 2008). For the later period see Panzac D. Les Corsaires barbaresques: la fin d’une épopée, 1800–1820 (Paris: 1999). For a contemporary account see [Philips George], The present state of Tangier: in a letter to his Grace the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and one of the Lords Justices there to which is added The Present State of Algiers (London: Henry Herringman, 1676). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 58 O ’ Connor subjects. The Spanish, of course, had preceded the English in North Africa by over a hundred years and, during the Reconquista, seized several territories there. By the end of the seventeenth century, Spanish footholds in Africa included Melilla, Alhucemas, Peñon de Vélez de la Gomera, Ceuta, Oran and Mazalquivir.19 Maintaining these North African enclaves required significant garrisoning and provisioning capacity, for part of which the Spanish, like the English, relied on Irish military migrants and commercial networks. By the eighteenth century, there were three Irish regiments in Spanish Bourbon service, all intermittently stationed in North Africa.20 1 Irish Captives in the Maghreb The mobility of sections of the Irish population from the 1590s, coupled with their presence in the Spanish and British military establishments, coincided, in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, with a period of increased corsair activity.21 Consequently, from the 1590s, more and more Irish ended up, temporarily or permanently, in Moorish captivity. For the Moors, Christian captives, like the Irish, were valuable for their skills and labour but their captors valued them most for ransom, particularly if they were of rank or in holy orders. For instance, the Irish cleric, Cornelio Naughten, who was chaplain to the Thomas Stukley-led force commandeered by the Portuguese King Sebastião in 1578, was taken prisoner by the Moors and enslaved in Algiers. In 1591, his master was paid off with a Spanish ransom.22 Other ransomed Irish clerics included the Lisbon-based Irish Dominican, Andrew O’Hurley, redeemed in 1635.23 After his capture in 1615, another Irish Dominican, Anthony Lynch spent eight years in captivity prior to ransoming.24 Had it not been for their clerical status these individuals would have languished longer, if not permanently, in captivity. 19 20 21 22 23 24 The last two were lost in 1708 but retaken in 1732 as the Spanish Bourbons decided to flex their naval muscle in response to growing British influence in the area. Murphy D., The Irish Brigades 1685–2006 (Dublin: 2007) 41–56. For periodisation, see Martínez Torres, Prisioneros de los infieles 151–54. García Hernán E., La cuestión irlandesa en la política internacional de Felipe II (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad Complutense, Madrid: 1999) 214–215. APF, SOCG, 103, fols. 122–139; 104, fols. 141–144; 135, fol. 529, cited in Fenning H., “Irish Dominicans at Lisbon before 1700: A Biographical Register”, Collectanea Hibernica 42 (2000) 27–65, here 51. He has been previously active in Pamplona (1622) and elsewhere in Spain. Fenning H., “Irish Material in the Registers of the Dominican Masters General: 1390–1649”, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 39 (1969) 249–336, here 281. He had entered the Irish College in Lisbon as a late vocation, later moving to Salamanca and, in 1605, joined the Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 59 The majority of captives were not so fortunate. It has been estimated that, on average, less than three per cent of all Moorish captives in any one year, were ransomed.25 Unless a captive was of high birth, well up the ecclesiastical hierarchy or a member of a religious order, prospects were grim. True, two religious orders, the Trinitarians,26 active mostly in Algiers and Tunis, and the Mercederians in Morocco, worked to raise ransom funds in Europe.27 In the early seventeenth century, the Irish, as foreigners, were ineligible for relief.28 However, the growing importance of Irish military in Spanish forces, the increasing numbers falling into captivity and the persistence of Irish petitioners at court persuaded the king, in the 1620s, to admit the Irish to Spanish ransoming schemes.29 This improved the ransoming prospects, however, of only a very small number. For long-term and permanent captives, their treatment depended on their usefulness to their owners. If slaves were educated, they were often put into domestic service and lived in their masters’ households; skilled workers like shipwrights were especially valued by the Moors and often sent to local arsenals.30 The owners of skilled slaves were unlikely to accept ransoms, unless they were sufficiently attractive. Unskilled, run of the mill slaves of low social status, were destined for menial tasks like agricultural labouring, water carrying, quarrying and, worst of all, the galleys. They were permanently housed in the infamous bagnios, released every morning to take up their work and 25 26 27 28 29 30 Dominicans. He submitted two memorials describing his captivity and providing strategic information about his captors to the Spanish king. See AGS Estado Leg 2752. Davis, Christian Slaves 21. The Trinitarians had had a house in Ireland, in Adare, suppressed, in the sixteenth century. See Giblin C., “Documents of the Irish Trinitarians, 1621–71”, Collectanea Hibernica 27/28 (1986) 11–43. Later attempts to refound the Irish Trinitarian were supported by claims that they would contribute to the care of Irish captives and other subjects of the English king held in the Maghreb. See Petition of Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda on behalf of Irish Trinitarians (APF, SOCG, 402, fol. 456r (1641)), cited in Giblin, “Documents” 28. The best account is Martínez Torres, Prisioneros de los infieles. See also Davis, Christian Slaves 149. Records of 10,000 redemptions, carried out by these two religious orders between 1575 and 1769 exist. See Martínez Torres, Prisioneros de los infieles, passim and Friedman, “North African Piracy” 5. In their petitions, the Irish argued that their common Milesian ancestry with the Spanish, entitled them to equal treatment. See AGS GA Leg 954, Council of War, 18 Aug. 1627. In the early eighteenth century, for instance, an Irishman called Carr acted as founder for the Moroccan sultan, Ismael Ibn Sharif (d. 1727). See Braithwaite J., The History of the revolutions in the Empire of Morocco upon the death of the late Emperor Muley Ishmael (London, J. Darby and T. Browne: 1729) 180. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 60 O ’ Connor returning for lockdown in the evening. Most of these died in captivity and have left no archival record. There were some concessions to captives. For instance, Catholic clerics were sometimes allowed to minister to their fellow slaves.31 Following his capture in the late 1620s, the Dominican, Raymond O’Hehir provided pastoral services to other Christian captives.32 Moorish indulgence in this regard extended to Protestants too. In 1641, Devereux Spratt, an Anglican minister in Munster was captured with 120 others, off the Irish coast. He was taken to Algiers, acquired a tolerant master who allowed him to minister to other Anglicans in the city.33 Over time, certain informal bagnio ministries developed into organised chaplaincies,34 with other slaves paying for the serving priest to be relieved of slave service in order to administer the sacraments. From the 1620s, missionaries were sent by Roman Congregation of Propaganda fide to serve bagnio slave groups.35 In general, Christian captives were not required to convert to Islam although certain owners might insist that they did. In 1677, the Irish Lord Lieutenant was informed that ‘if a slave turns runnegado, it is at the pleasure of his patron to have him written in the pay for he continues still a slave, unless his patron give him his liberty’.36 The evidence tends to bear this out. An Irish student for the Dominican order, taken on the high seas on his way to Spain in the late seventeenth century, was enslaved and was reportedly tempted to convert by his master’s offer of his own daughter’s hand in marriage.37 He appears to have demurred. For the few Irish female slaves for whom we have records, conversion, if ordered by their master, could not be resisted. In the 1720s, when he took an Irishwoman named Mrs Shaw as one of his wives, Ismael Ibn Sharif insisted that she convert.38 However, in general, conversion seems to have reduced the worth of the slave as chattel. Moorish captors were more concerned to convert 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Davis, Christian Slaves 88. Flynn T.S., The Irish Dominicans 1536–1641 (Dublin: 1993) 115; Fenning, “Irish Dominicans at Lisbon before 1700”. See, for instance, Papal collector to Propaganda, APF, SOCG, 104, fols. 131–132 (ibidem, 27). Colley L., Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600–1850 (London: 2002) 106. Martínez Torres Prisioneros 68–74; [Philips] The present state of Tangier 92–93. Filesi T., “L’attenzione della Sacra Congregazione per l’Africa settentrional”, in Metzler J. (ed.), Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide memoria rerum: 350 anni al servizio delle missioni, vol. 1.2: 1622–1972 (Rome: 1972) 381–393. [Philips] The present state of Tangier 100–101. O’Heyne John, The Irish Dominicans of the Seventeenth Century (Louvain: 1706; reprint Dundalk: 1902) 76. Braithwaite, The History of the revolutions 191. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 61 their property into hard currency than into believers.39 It has been estimated that no more than perhaps four per cent of the total number captured ‘took the turban’ and turned renegade.40 In this context it needs to be borne in mind that at least some renegades went to the Maghreb voluntarily, in flight, perhaps, from the law or in search of a new life.41 In 1735, Richard Murphy of Galway, in a fit of pique against the English consul in Tunis, took the turban.42 In general, European authorities were loath to admit that any Christian could ‘turn Turk’ voluntarily.43 However, in 1636, Sir Henry Blount (1602–1682) lamented, ‘Seeing how many daily goe from us to them and how few of theirs to us; it appears of what consequence the prosperity of a cause is to draw men unto it’.44 Later, in the eighteenth century, the English emissary to Morocco, John Russell, noted how many Irish renegades served the Moroccan sultan Ahmed ed-Dehebi (d. 1729), acting as mariners, interpreters and soldiers.45 At least some of these voluntarily chose life in Africa and Muslim observance.46 This was perhaps most often the case with captives of military origin, for whom desertion was one way of escaping army discipline and the dangers of war. 2 Irish Military and Naval Captives Indeed, the earliest cases of Irish captives processed by the Spanish Inquisition concerned skilled military or naval personnel. Typical in this regard was Irish naval gunner, Nicholas Vualles (possibly ‘Wallace’), processed by the Lisbon Inquisition in 1585.47 In 1618, Dominic Rice, another Irish gunner, appeared before the Lisbon Inquisition charged with Islamism.48 Later, in 1631, the Inquisition expedited the processing of James Treves because the defendant was already destined for service in the Spanish navy.49 Their testimonies do not make clear why they converted to Islam and it cannot always be assumed, as they generally claimed themselves, that their apostacy was forced. 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 Matar, British Captives 153. Davis, Christian Slaves 22. Martínez Torres, Prisioneros de los infieles 121. ANTT TSO IL 028/4675. Matar N., Islam in Britain 1558–1685 (Cambridge: 1998) 21. Ibidem 22. Braithwaite, The History of the Revolutions 180. Martínez Torres, Prisioneros de los infieles 117–128. O’Connor, Irish Voices 56, 215. ANTT TSO IL 028/01100. ANTT TSO IL 028/04891. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 62 O ’ Connor In the early seventeenth century, the number of Irish entering Spanish service rose sharply. Many of these had been associated, in the 1590s and 1600s, with the O’Neill-led rebellion against Elizabeth I and, following their defeat by the English, were absorbed into Spanish forces, largely in the Netherlands.50 Smaller numbers, drawn mainly from Munster and Connaught maritime families, joined the Spanish navy, bringing them to the Mediterranean zone and contact with the Moors.51 In the first half of the seventeenth century, at least two vessels with Irish companies fell prey to Maghrebin corsairs. The first, under Captain Arthur O’Morachen, were aboard the Imperial when it was taken by North African corsairs off the coast of Cartagena in 1620. Only nine company members survived the initial assault and they were taken to Algiers as prisoners, where they appear to have been sold to a Greek renegade and held for ransom.52 O’Morachen, who repeatedly petitioned the Spanish for ransom, was later sold to an Ottoman officer, who, because he was organizing a prisoner exchange with the Spanish, may have calculated that the Irish captain would be a useful pawn. At the conclusion of these negotiations, in 1622, O’Morachen was released at Oran while his companions remained incarcerated. They were soon joined by another group of Irish military captives. In 1622, a second Irish company, under Cornelius O’Driscoll, was engaged against the Dutch, abroad the Nuestra Señora del Rosario. Temporarily separated from the main fleet, they were intercepted by Moorish pirates. All the officers were killed and the surviving crew, on surrender, were taken to Algiers.53 This group of detainees, along with the still-imprisoned crew of the Imperial were the object of representations by certain Irish petitioners to various Spanish Councils. A prisoner exchange was attempted but the officer accompanying the Moorish prisoner to Africa, John Fleming, was himself captured and held for ransom. Over the following years, negotiations for prisoner exchange continued but the Spanish authorities were reluctant to pay up. Some Irish captives attempted to apply their arrears for military service to their ransom, but this was a complex process, requiring influence at court. Charles McCarthy, for instance, repeatedly petitioned the court on this count but eventually died in captivity in 1636. Some of the Irish appear to have benefited, eventually, from ransoms 50 51 52 53 See de Mesa E., The Irish in the Spanish Armies in the Seventeenth Century (Woodbridge: 2014); O’Scea C., Surviving Kinsale: Irish Emigration and Identity Formation in Early Modern Spain, 1601–40 (Manchester: 2015). The author acknowledges the generosity of Dr Eduardo de Mesa in sharing unpublished information on the Irish in Spanish naval service. AGS GA Leg 883 (12 Jan. 1622). Ibidem. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 63 organized by the religious orders.54 Other prisoners, like Florence O’Driscoll were redeemed by Irish merchants. For his part, Florence McCarthy was released in 1624 and some others, including Phelim Kavanagh in 1626, managed to escape. Thaddeus O’Driscoll was not freed until 1630, following drawn-out exchange negotiations with the Moors. But as late as 1641 one of the prisoners, the unfortunate Cormac Phelan, from the Rosario was still enslaved.55 Throughout the 1640s, Irish military captives in Spanish service continued to appear before the Inquisition and also feature in state archives. In 1645, for instance, James Morlim, sailor and gunner, appeared before the Coimbra tribunal charged with conversion to Islam.56 However, from mid-century, peripatetic Irish soldiers were less well viewed in Spain, as they gradually shifted their loyalty from the Spanish Habsburgs to the French Bourbons.57 It was at this stage too that they became more visibly active in British overseas service and, between 1661 and 1684, about a thousand Irish soldiers served in the British garrison stationed in Tangier.58 The vulnerability of the Tangier garrison greatly increased the risk of capture and enslavement. This was largely because the garrison was provisioned from abroad. Supply lines were unreliable, so the men were obliged to forage locally. Their sallies were often intercepted by the Moors, resulting in heavy British casualties and many hostages.59 The plight of the garrison did not improve under its third Irish governor, Thomas Dongan (1634–1715).60 In fact, Moorish pressure on the garrison increased in the late 1670s, necessitating the deployment of fresh troops from Britain and Ireland.61 Local insecurity, the 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 Irish petitioners in Spain argued that because of their common Milesian ancestry with the Spanish, the Irish ought to be treated equally. See AGS GA Leg 954 (18 Aug. 1627). AGS GA Leg 1399 (28 June 1641; 11 Sept. 1641). ANTT TSO IC 025/06752. Stradling R.A., The Spanish Monarchy and Irish Mercenaries (Dublin: 1994) 154. This followed Tangier’s transfer from Portuguese to British authority as part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry. On Tangier, see Routh E.M.G., Tangier: England’s Lost Atlantic Outpost 1661–1684 (London: 1912); Childs J., The Army of Charles II (London: 2013) 115–151; General Percy Kirke and the Later Stuart Army (London: 2014) 31–66. [Philips], The present state of Tangier. He was later 2nd Earl of Limerick and governor of New York. The Tangier establishment was charged to the Irish Exchequer until 1684, when it was abandoned, Tangiers cost about £30,000 annually. See Moody T.W. – Martin F.X. – Byrne F.J. (eds.), A New History of Ireland, vol. 3: Early Modern Ireland 1534–1691 (Oxford: 1976) 440–441. One of the few permanent Irish legacies in Tangier is the ruined ‘Irish Battery’ (Cubelo do obispo) in the ancient city walls. See Carabelli R., “The ‘Oldest Modern’ Colonisation in Africa”, in Nunes Silva C. (ed.), Urban Planning in North Africa (London: 2016) 31–42; and “The ‘Oldest Modern’ Colonisation in Africa”, in Nunes Silva C. (ed.), Urban Planning in North Africa (London: 2016) 31–42. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 64 O ’ Connor expense of supporting the garrison and Protestant suspicions concerning the eventual destination of the Catholic portion of the Tangier garrison led to the port’s abandonment in 1684. At this time several soldiers were ransomed from Moorish bagnios but it is unclear if many of these were Irish. In general, the Stuarts had limited interest in ransoming any of their subjects and were particularly neglectful of the Irish, who rarely appear in the records.62 Of the captives taken in Baltimore in 1631, for instance, no more than two of the women are known to have been freed and this in spite of the fact that many of the captives were recently arrived English settlers in the Baltimore area.63 In fact, it was only under the Commonwealth that the Irish won entitlement to the benefits of treaties negotiated between London and Algiers.64 This situation proved temporary. In 1670, when Charles II raised ransom money by letters patent, he was careful that only money raised in Ireland be applied to Irish captives.65 Complicating the matter still further was the fact that not all the Irish captives in the Maghreb in the seventeenth century were enslaved sailors or victims of Moorish land raids in Ireland. Some, captured on their way to indentured service in the Americas, were already unfree when intercepted by corsair missions. Neither the Stuarts nor the Commonwealth appear to have had much interest in ransoming them. This must have dismayed their Moorish captors whose principal hope of profit lay in the ransoming of their recently acquired human property.66 Domestic wars in Britain absorbed Irish mercenaries at the end of the 1680s, but with the defeat of James II in 1691, their numbers surged, first in French and, following the wars of the Spanish Succession, in Spanish Bourbon service too. At this time, three Irish regiments were established in Spain (Irlanda, Hibernia and Ultonia), and, because all of these saw African service, some Irish soldiers inevitably fell into Moorish custody. In 1724, a 2nd lieutenant, one Matthew Molony, appeared before the Lisbon Inquisition to purge his Islamism.67 Having previously served in France, he had been in Spanish service in Melilla. He claimed to have fallen into Moorish hands while crossing Muslim territory, having assumed that, as an Irish subject and hence of a kingdom not at war 62 63 64 65 66 67 MacLean G. – Matar N., Britain and the Islamic world 1558–1713 (Oxford: 2011) 129. In 1647 two women from this group were ransomed. See MacLean – Matar, Britain and the Islamic World 129. One of the female captives, called O’Driscoll, allegedly stabbed her Moorish master in the middle of his seraglio. See White-Spunner B., Horse Guards (London: 2006) 74. Earlier, from 1637, there is a record of the ransom of two Irish women: Grace Marten from Bantry and Elizabeth Renordan from Kinsale. They may have been part of the Baltimore group. See ibidem. 130. Matar, British Captives 106. Ibidem 155. Ibidem 111. ANTT TSO IC 028/13113. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 65 with the Moors, he had free passage. He was mistaken: captured at Meknes, he was held for ten years prior to his escape. The majority of the Irish hostages in this period were members of the Spanish garrison in Oran.68 The Algerian port had been a Spanish enclave from 1509 but fell to the local Moors in 1708. In 1732, the Spanish decided to attempt to retake it, in part to counter English influence in the zone.69 Among the thousands of Spanish soldiers on this mission were Irish battalions under General William Lacy (1682–1753). One of the Irish officers, Arthur Magennis, was captured and held in Algiers for five years,70 before ransoming in 1737.71 Thereafter, the Ultonia regiment was stationed in Oran between 1740–1748 and later from 1786–1787.72 It seems to have been a tough station, as over 450 regimental members deserted during that period.73 How many of these ended up in Moorish custody is unclear. The fact that they were in Spanish service did not prevent certain of these Irish soldiers, once in Moorish captivity, requesting British assistance. This provides a revealing example of the trans-imperial agency of the Catholic Irish. In this case, however, the evidence suggests that they received scant sympathy from either their Hanoverian or their Bourbon overlords. Apart from their Catholicism, their Jacobitism, putative or otherwise, disqualified them from British succor. British authorities were especially piqued by the participation of the Irish regiments in the Anglo-Spanish War (1727–1729), notably at the siege of Gibraltar and consequently suppliant Irish captives got short shrift.74 Thus, when Captain Thomas Barry led an escape bid from the Algiers bagnio in 1737 and succeeded in taking to sea in a small boat, he was not only repelled from a visiting English vessel but the ship’s captain returned him to the Algerians.75 A similar cold shoulder awaited Irish officers in Algerian custody in 1748. They 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 Alonso Acero B., Orán-Mazalquivir 1589–1639: una sociedad española en la frontera de Berbería (Madrid: 2000). Fé Cantó L.F., “El desembarco en Orán en 1732. Aproximación analítica a una operación compleja”, Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar 5, 10 (2016) 89–110. Kerney Walsh M., “The Irish College Madrid”, Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society 15, 2 (1993) 39–50, here 47, citing AGS GM Leg 2866; AGS Secretaría de Hacienda Leg 966; AHN Santiago Leg 5974. He was later ordained priest, becoming rector of the Irish college in Madrid in about 1751. According to some sources, it was while imprisoned that he made a promise to enter religious life and, on release, reportedly took vows as a Trinitarian friar (Archivo Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales, 15, 27, fols. 1r–4v (Madrid, 1769)). Mous L., Estudio del manuscrito árabe de Mustafá Ibn Abd Allāh al Dahāwi sobre la liberación de Orán en el siglo XVIII (Ph.D. dissertation: University of Oran: 2013) 73. Ibidem 73. Murphy D., The Irish Brigades 1685–2006 (Dublin: 2007) 45. Tomás Barry to Duke of Montemar, Algiers, 12 Dec. 1737 (AGS GM Leg 1531) cited in Barrio Gozalo M., “Los cautivos españoles en Argel durante el siglo ilustrado”, Cuadernos Dieciochistas 2 (2003) 135–174, here 168, n. 117. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 66 O ’ Connor included Nicholas O’Reilly, a member of the Hibernia regiment76 who was to spend over three years in captivity.77 The plight of the Spanish-Irish was reported to London but English authorities disclaimed all responsibility for these Jacobites, ‘inflamed’ as they saw them ‘with the quixotism they have learned in Spain’.78 It would seem from this passage that part of the British problem with the Irish was the extent to which they allegedly resembled the Spanish. 3 Civilian Captives Although Irish captives were usually military men, some of the best documented cases recorded by the Inquisition concerned Irish civilian renegades. In 1619, for instance, Michael Hor [Hoare] presented before the Lisbon tribunal, charged with Islamism.79 His appearance was the result of an inquisitorial visitation to the island of Terceira in the Azores. Civilian Irish subjects who appear in the Iberian inquisitorial records were generally captured on trading or fishing trips to the Spanish coast. In 1626 David Gaudid (Wadding), a twenty-year-old Wexford-born sailor, processed by the Lisbon Inquisition,80 recounted how four years previously he had been aboard a vessel out of the port of Wexford, bound for Calais with a cargo of salt. Having disembarked there, he joined another crew bound for the sardine fisheries off the Portuguese coast. Shortly after arriving there, their vessel was taken by North African corsairs and brought to Salé. A similar fate befell James Treves, a merchant’s son from Tredart (Tarbert?). In 1631, while returning with his uncle from a trading trip to Bilbao, their vessel was captured and he was taken to Salé as hostage. Captives such as Treves and Wadding could expect to be moved around following capture. Wadding, it appears, was initially sold to a Moor name Mustafat. Capitalizing on his maritime experience and calculating, no doubt, that his chances of regaining his freedom would be enhanced if he secured a seafaring position, Wadding gained his master’s confidence and was placed 76 77 78 79 80 AGS GM Leg 2592, C IV, fol. 20, cited in Recio Morales Ó., “Una aproximación al modelo del oficial extranjero en el ejército borbónico: la etapa de formación del teniente General Alejandro O’Reilly (1723–1794)”, Cuadernos dieciochistas 12 (2011) 171–195, here 187, n. 60. He had two other brothers in Hibernia, Domingo and the more famous Alejandro (1723– 1794). The latter led a famously disastrous Spanish mission against Algiers in 1775. See Augustin Guimerá A., “Historia de una incompetencia: el desembarco de Argel, 1775”, Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar 5, 10 (2015) 135–155. Matar, British Captives 150, citing TNA SP 71/8/335–337. ANTT TSO IL 028/12428, fols. 1–22. ANTT TSO IL 028/05626. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 67 in a corsair crew. For the following four years they plied the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. No doubt because he lacked Wadding’s maritime experience, Treves’ movements, were more landbound. After a month in captivity he was sold in a market near Tetouan. Seven years later he was sold on to an ‘alfaate andalus’ who had him transported back to Salé and thence to Fez. He was later sold on to a Moor called Jozejo, in Salé and taken to Algiers. In 1636, another Irish mariner, Peter Hall, reported to the Barcelona tribunal that he had been captured in the English Channel en route from Ireland to France and was taken to Algiers where he was sold to a Moorish soldier. He converted, was given the name Assan and subsequently participated in a number of missions against Christian shipping, under a renegade English captain called Marri.81 In contrast to most captives, skilled prisoners like these seem to have been pressurized to convert, probably because their Moorish masters counted to holding on to them permanently. At least that is what they told the Inquisition. Once before the inquisitors, renegades generally explained their apostacy as strategic, committed in order to avoid punishment or to enhance escape opportunities. In his account, Hall claimed that he had been forcibly circumcised. Wadding, for his part, was more nuanced. He said he was pressurized to convert with a mixture of inducements and threats. Only in extremis did he acquiesce to circumcision and don Moorish garb. Treves’ account was not dissimilar. After some time in captivity he was dressed as a Moor and given a Moorish name. His circumcision, he claimed, required the assistance of no fewer than half a dozen Moors. His only reason for taking the turban, he recounted, was to have greater liberty to procure his eventual freedom. If Wadding calculated that conversion and high seas servitude might provide an escape opportunity, he was right. On one of his corsair missions in 1626, the Moorish crew, on breaking the Ramadan fast, became inebriated. The apparently abstemious Wadding told the inquisitors how, with his Christian fellows, he had overpowered the Moorish crew members and taken the vessel to Lisbon. Treves’ escape narrative was less dramatic. Re-sold in Salé, he was placed on a ship for Algiers which was intercepted by Spanish galleons at Sintra. Peter Hall’s 1636 escape opportunity occurred during a corsair mission led by an English renegade. They were intercepted by Spanish forces, but, rather than regaining his liberty, the Irishman was imprisoned by the Spanish and set to row in their galleys.82 The consolidation of British naval power in the Western Mediterranean in the early eighteenth century permitted the development of a consular network 81 82 AHN INQ Lib 734, fols. 37v–38v. Ibidem, fols. 37v–38v. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 68 O ’ Connor in North Africa, helping to bring Irish hostages into sharper focus in British records and facilitating their ransoming as British subjects.83 Captain George Paddon was the first English envoy to Morocco after the treaty of Utrecht. He succeeded in negotiating a peace and friendship treaty in 1714, according to which all British residents of Gibraltar and Minorca were granted immunity from slavery. Nevertheless, contemporary accounts spoke of over four hundred English captured between 1714 and 1721, with nearly 300 of these in Meknes, including a number of renegades.84 In 1720, the English counsel in Tetouan, Anthony Hatfield (1717–1728) reported that a woman, Margaret Shea, had been taken from the Welcome out of Cork, and had been forced to convert.85 She was not the only Irish subject who came to consular attention. In his diary of his mission to Morocco (July 1727–February 1728), Captain John Braithwaite (1696–1740) reported that an Irishman called Carr, a renegade of thirty years standing, acted as interpreter to the local ruler.86 Carr, apparently known as ‘Alcaide Ally’ or ‘Believer’ to the Moors, was an excellent example of trans-imperial mobility, successively adopting the Protestant, Catholic and Mohammedan faiths and associated political loyalties.87 During dinner with the English visitors, he claimed that his brother was a Royal Navy officer88 and he also alleged that he had served the English well, notably in the ransoming of Admiral George Delaval (c.1667–1723).89 Carr also ran the Moroccan sultan’s foundry and oversaw the production of ordnance. In Meknes, the English counsel, George Russell reported a visit by a ‘Mrs Shaw’, an Irishwoman.90 This 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 Matar, British Captives 142. The cases of captive Catholics tended to be less well recorded. We know, for instance, of the 1719 capture of an Irish count’s daughter only from French sources. Ibidem 130, citing Comelin F., de la Motte P. and Bernard J., Voyage pour la redemption des captifs, aux royaumes d’Alger et de Tunis, fait en 1720 (Paris, 1720) 26–42. Anonymous, Description of the Nature of Slavery among the Moors (London, J. Peele: 1721) 13. Matar, British Captives 144 and 287, citing TNA SP 71/16/309. The other passengers were Daniel Healey, master, John Healey (d. 1721), Edmond Butler, Edmond Sheely, Dennis Birdan, Michael Gale and James Mahoney. See also Meunier D., Le consulat anglais à Tétouan sous Anthony Hatfield (1717–1728): étude et édition de textes (Tunis: 1980). He also claimed to have been governor in Guinea and commander of the emperor’s Jewish Guards. See Braithwaite, The History of the revolutions 180. Pellow, T., The Adventures of Thomas Pellow of Penryn, Mariner (London: 1890) 32. Ibidem 186. Delaval had acted as English envoy to Morocco. In 1700 he negotiated the release of English captives and, in 1708, a British-Moroccan agreement not to molest each other’s ships. See Byng G., Viscount Torrington – Byng J., The Byng papers: selected from the letters and papers of Admiral Sir George Byng, first Viscount Torrington, and of his son Admiral the Hon. John Byng, ed. B. Tunstall, vol. 2 (London: 1932) 270–273. Braithwaite, Revolutions 191. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 69 is probably the already mentioned Margaret ‘Shea’ as, according to Braithwaite, she had been captured by the Moors about nine years previously and forced to convert, at the insistence of the then sultan, Ismael Ibn Sharif. Having apparently tired of ‘Mrs Shaw’, he reportedly gifted her to a renegade Spanish soldier who allegedly reduced her to the unfortunate state in which Russell found her. If ‘Mrs Shaw’ was in fact, Margaret Shea, she was not among those ransomed with the surviving crew of the Welcome in 1734.91 4 Conclusion The usually violent encounter between early modern Christendom and Islam, so vividly recorded in the experiences of Irish captives in the Western Mediterranean, is an intriguing instance of the triangular traffic between the English, Spanish and Moorish spheres. It is also an illustration of the increasingly unequal North-South confrontation between the European powers and their Moorish enemies. As European naval power, commercial clout and slaving enterprises grew, North Africa slowly shrank into relative economic and political subjection. This did not prevent, of course, corsair predations nor Islam’s continued representation, in the European imagination, as a threat to both faith and dynasty. As Nabil Matar has pointed out, early modern English representations of Moorish captivity persistently communicated a stylized view of the historical experience that reveal more about changing geo-political realities, religious prejudice and personal advantage at home than about the lived cultural encounter in North Africa.92 The Spanish presentation of the Moor differs in detail but not in nature from its English contemporary. To say this is to take nothing, of course, from the hardships of enslavement in North Africa, so forcefully narrated in the surviving English, Portuguese and Spanish accounts. Nor is it to overlook Islam’s allure, as a religion and as a way of life, for certain Christian renegades, especially the poorer and more socially marginalized.93 It does, however, set that encounter within the larger context of the expanding European slaving enterprise within the emerging global economy, one that was 91 92 93 Matar, British Captives 291. Matar N., “English Accounts of Captivity in North Africa and the Middle East, 1577–1625”, Renaissance Quarterly 54, 2 (2001) 553–572. This also seems to have been the case with accounts drawn up by other European captives. See Gracián, J., Tratado de la redención de cautivos en que se cuentan las grandes miserias que padecen los cristianos que están en poder de infieles y cuán santa obra sea la de su rescate, ed. M.A. de Bunes Ibarra – B. Alonso Acero (Sevilla: 2006). Martínez Torres, Prisioneros de los infieles 120–127. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 70 O ’ Connor comprehensively backed-up by naval and military might. Inevitably, European state and ecclesiastical records tend to present a partial view of the complexities of Moorish enslavement, one-sidedly Europhile and Islamophobe, with the Moors cast alternately as barbarically heathen or fecklessly exotic.94 It is, of course, possible to interpret the record more subversively. For instance, one could argue that the Christian fortitude so clearly on display, for instance, in Western accounts of Moorish captivity, is less evidence of any individual’s religious integrity than a decoy from the attractions to Islam. One wonders, for example, if English, Scots or Irish indentured servants, on their way to servitude in the New World, would have thought themselves unfortunate if diverted, by corsair capture, to captivity in North Africa. The specifically Irish dimension to the early modern encounter with Islam does little to modify this general assessment. The experience of Irish captives conforms to the general European model, though the specificities of their activities in both British and Spanish Mediterranean expansion owe something to their unusual politico-religious status. The fact that the majority of Irish captives were Catholics, for instance, lessened their chances of redemption by the British and Irish Protestant authorities. At the same time, thanks to the special status accorded them in Spain, Irish Catholics were eventually included in ransoming schemes supported by the monarquía. It can be argued that it was the civil disadvantaging of Irish Catholics under the Stuarts and Hanoverians, that drove them to act as agents of British expansion, especially in locations like the Tangier garrison, so unattractive to the London monarchy’s more civilly protected subjects. Ironically, it was precisely the same set of disadvantages that channelled Irish subjects into Spanish networks, again in roles that the Madrid monarchy’s better-placed subjects preferred to avoid. Bibliography Primary Sources Anon., To his grace James duke of Ormonde, Lord Lieutenant General and General Governour of Ireland, the humble petition of Mercurius Lascary, a Grecian Priest (Dublin, s.n.: 1677). Anon., Description of the Nature of slavery among the Moors (London, J. Peele: 1721). 94 For the other side of the story, see Matar N., Europe through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727 (New York: 2008). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Irish Captives in the British and Spanish Mediterranean 71 Archivo General de Simancas (= AGS) Estado Leg 2752. GA Legs 883, 954, 1399, 2866 GM Leg 1531, 2592 Hacienda Leg 966 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid (= AHN) Inquisición, Libs 734, 1021 Santiago Leg 5974 Archivo Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales Archivio Storico di Propaganda Fide (= APF) SOCG, 103, 140, 402 Arquivo Nacional do Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (= ANTT) Tribunal do Santo Oficio (= TSO) IC 025/06752; IL 028/01100; IL 028/04891; IL 028/13113; IL 028/12428; IL 028/05626; IL 028/4675. Braithwaite John, The History of the Revolutions in the Empire of Morocco upon the Death of the Late Emperor Muley Ishmael […] (London: J. Darby – T. Browne, 1729). Byng G., Viscount Torrington – Byng J., The Byng Papers: Selected from the Letters and Papers of Admiral Sir George Byng, First Viscount Torrington, and of his Son Admiral the Hon. John Byng, ed. B. Tunstall, 3 vols. (London: 1931–1932). 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Meehan C.P., The Rise and Fall of the Irish Franciscan Monasteries […], 5th ed. (Dublin: 1877). Mesa E. de, The Irish in the Spanish Armies in the Seventeenth Century (Woodbridge: 2014). Meunier D., Le consulat anglais à Tétouan sous Anthony Hatfield (1717–1728): étude et edition de textes (Tunis: 1980). Moody T.W. et al. (eds.), A New History of Ireland, vol. 3: Early Modern Ireland 1534–1691 (Oxford: 1976). Mous L., Estudio del manuscrito árabe de Mustafá Ibn Abd Allāh al Dahāwi sobre la liberación de Orán en el siglo XVIII (Ph.D. dissertation: University of Oran, 2013). Murphy D., The Irish Brigades 1685–2006 (Dublin: 2007). Murray T.D., “From Baltimore to Barbary: the 1631 Sack of Baltimore”, History Ireland 14, 4 (2006) 14–18. O’Connor T., Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition: Migrants, Converts and Brokers in Early Modern Iberia (London: 2016). O’Connor T., “Irish Collegians in Spanish Service (1560–1800)”, in Chambers L. – O’Connor T. (eds.), Forming Catholic Communities. Irish, Scots and English College Networks in Europe, 1569–1918 (Leiden: 2017) 15–38. O’Reilly W., “Ireland in the Atlantic World: Migration and Cultural Transfer”, in Ohlmeyer J. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland: vol. 2: 1550–1730 (Cambridge: 2018) 385–408. O’Scea C., Surviving Kinsale: Irish Emigration and Identity Formation in Early Modern Spain, 1601–40 (Manchester: 2015). Panzac D., Les Corsaires barbaresques: la fin d’une épopée, 1800–1820 (Paris: 1999). Recio Morales Ó., “Una aproximación al modelo del oficial extranjero en el ejército borbónico: la etapa de formación del teniente General Alejandro O’Reilly (1723– 1794)”, Cuadernos dieciochistas 12 (2011) 171–195. Routh E.M.G., Tangier: England’s Lost Atlantic Outpost 1661–1684 (London: 1912). Stradling R.A., The Spanish Monarchy and Irish Mercenaries (Dublin: 1994). White-Spunner B., Horse Guards (London: 2006). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access part 2 Narrating the Other ∵ Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access chapter 4 The Construction and Deconstruction of English Catholicism in Spain: Fake News or White Legend? Berta Cano-Echevarría The Spanish English Lady, one of Miguel de Cervantes’ Exemplary Novels (1613), combines fictional and historical characters to tell the love story between a Spanish girl, Isabela, and an Englishman who is secretly Catholic, Ricaredo. The story begins in Spain, in 1596, with the Sack of Cadiz by the English forces where Isabela, still a child, is made hostage and taken to England; it continues in England, where she is kept hidden from the authorities by the family of her captor Clotaldo, until Queen Elizabeth finds out and claims her as her property; and it concludes back in Spain, where the protagonist is able to return to her family and finally reunite with her English fiancé, Clotaldo’s son, Ricaredo, after he has proven worthy of her through a series of trials. Critics have long been baffled by Cervantes’ positive construction of England, and more specifically of Queen Elizabeth as a mostly benign character; even Clotaldo, who has kidnapped the child, contravening the orders of the Conde de Leste (presumably the Earl of Essex), is not treated as the odious character we might expect. To explain the sympathetic treatment of most of the English characters critics have resorted to focusing on the secret Catholicism of Clotaldo and his family, thus making young Ricaredo a suitable match for the Spanish girl and enabling her to be raised in captivity according to her religion.1 But the most persuasive explanation has been to establish the composition of this particular novella to around 1605, the year when the peace between Spain and England was ratified 1 E.g. Cairns E.C., “Crypto-Catholicism in a Protestant Land: ‘La Española Inglesa’”, Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 36, 2 (2016) 127–144; Ricapito J.V., Cervantes’ Novelas Ejemplares: Between History and Creativity (West Lafayette: 1996) 34–36. A number of critics believe that Cervantes is obliquely advocating for religious tolerance or ecumenism e.g. cf. Luttikhuizen, F., “Cervantes and International Affairs: A Historical Interpretation of Two Episodes in the ‘Novelas ejemplares’”, Mediterranean Studies 15 (2006) 62–78; Da Costa Fontes M., “Love as an Equalizer in La Española Inglesa”, Romance Notes 16, 3 (1975) 742– 748. For E. Allison Peers the charm of the story derives from the generosity with which the English are portrayed: ‘Queen Elizabeth, so recently the Spaniard’s bete noire, is idealized to such a degree that one might suppose the author to have been deliberately working for an Anglo-Spanish understanding’ (Peers A.E., “Cervantes in England”, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 24 (1947) 226–238, here 227). © BERTA CANO-ECHEVARRÍA, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_006 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 78 Cano-Echevarría following almost twenty years of war between the two countries.2 According to this theory Cervantes willingly contributed to the promotion of international friendship by writing this story about an Anglo-Spanish love affair in the romance genre, and may even have been commissioned to write it by those involved in negotiating the treaty.3 However this may be, what the early modern Spanish readers encountered in this story was a very mild version of the life of religious dissidents in England. Despite their Catholicism Clotaldo’s family is wealthy and admitted to the court; they have to keep their faith a secret but this does not prevent them from arranging a marriage with a Scottish Catholic family for their son, and they only fear detection when the queen summons Isabela to court. At this point Clotaldo dreads becoming a martyr but Isabela reassures him that she will know how to answer for her Catholicism, not telling lies about her upbringing or causing any damage to her adoptive family: yo confio en el cielo, que me ha de dar palabras en aquel instante, por su divina misericordia, que no solo no os condenen, sino que redunden en provecho vuestro.4 [for I trust in the divine goodness and mercy of Heaven, that it will put such words into my mouth as will not only not condemn you, but redound to your advantage.] Isabela’s suggestion of the use of equivocation in case she is asked about religion does not necessarily suggest that Cervantes was particularly well 2 For a discussion of the historicity of Cervantes novella and its connection with the peace cf. Johnson C.B., “La Española Inglesa and the Practice of Literary Production” Viator 19 (1988) 377–416. 3 The dating of the Novelas Exemplares is open to debate as the collection was published in 1613 but the different tales were written throughout an extended period that may have gone as far back as the 1590s. Cf. Rico F., “Sobre la cronología de las novelas de Cervantes”, in Pellistrandi B. – Couderc C. coord., ‘Por discreto y por amigo’: mélanges offerts à Jean Canavaggio (Madrid: 2005) 159–165. Cervantes was in Valladolid when the English embassy arrived in the city to ratify the treaty that had been negotiated and signed the previous year in London, and it has been proposed that he was one of the authors of the anonymous account that chronicled the celebrations that took place in the city. See Marín Cepeda P. (ed.), Relación de lo sucedido en la ciudad de Valladolid desde el punto del felicísimo nacimiento del príncipe Don Felipe (Burgos: 2005) 33–40. 4 Cervantes Saavedra Miguel de, Novelas Exemplares (Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1613) 88. Cervantes Miguel de, The Exemplary Novels by Cervantes, trans. W.K. Kelly (London: William Clowes, 1881) 278–314. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 79 informed about the pressures Catholics had to face in England.5 It may just be a happy coincidence, but the truth is that the doctrine of equivocation that Cervantes seems to be invoking through Isabela was central to the debate over truthfulness and untruthfulness that was at the heart of the religious controversy in England. English Catholics were specifically concerned with these debates as they were forced to demonstrate their loyalty to the crown by attending Protestant services, so they were constantly confronted with the dilemma between protecting their lives and possessions and remaining true to their faith: managing to avoid confessing their religious identity without openly telling a lie became an art, an art Isabela seems able to master.6 But how much information did Cervantes have about English Catholics? Did he have any direct sources? And, more importantly, were these available generally to his contemporaries? Some answers to these questions may lie in the distribution of news about England and the English available in Early Modern Spain during the years of the Anglo-Spanish war, an issue this essay explores through the reading of a number of texts that provided information about English affairs. There was a comparative scarcity of news reports concerning England in Spain.7 The reason behind this apparent lack of information is complex and ranges from the poor knowledge of the English tongue to Inquisitorial intervention banning books from outside Spain, more in particular, books from Protestant countries.8 I argue, however, that the knowledge, or lack of knowledge, about 5 Equivocation as understood by the Catholic controversialists of the time referred both to ambiguous speech and to mental reservation, so that both forms of utterance or partial utterance could be used without committing the sin of untruthfulness. Cervantes could be familiar with the doctrine of equivocation and mental reservation through a variety of sources. His probable Jewish converse ascendancy and his experience as a captive in Argel had undoubtedly confronted him with the dangers of openly confessing a persecuted faith. Moreover, the work of the Spanish theologian Martín de Azpilicueta Humanae Aures (1584) was one of most fervent apologies of the possibility of reserving a meaning in the mind to avoid the sin of lying in certain situations, and circulated more amply in Spain than those of the English proponents of this practice, who were themselves indebted to Azpilicueta. Cf. Zagorin P., “The Historical Significance of Lying and Dissimulation”, Social Research 63, 3 (1996) 863–912. 6 Robert Persons, the head of the English mission in Spain, was one of the main apologists of the lawfulness of this strategy in certain situations. Cf. Carrafiello M.L., “Robert Parsons and Equivocation, 1606–1610”, Catholic Historical Review 79, 4 (1993) 671–680. 7 By ‘comparative’ I mean compared with news about Spain in England Cf. Sowerby T., “Elizabethan Diplomatic Networks and the Spread of News”, in Raymond J. – Moxham N. (eds.), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: 2016) 305–327. 8 Warren A.R., “Inquisitions and Scholarship”, Social Science History 39, 4 (2015) 667–702, here 683–684. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 80 Cano-Echevarría English affairs derived not so much from a lack of interest, but from a certain political convenience that suited both the Spanish authorities and the English exile community in order to promote an image of England as a primarily Catholic country subjected to a temporary Protestant rule that would necessarily end, an image that very often was based on mis/disinformation. To explore my argument I have chosen texts from three different genres representative of the different channels that delivered information and news in Early Modern Spain: the newsletter, the biographical-hagiographical account and the cordelsheet. Each of these genres had a different formula for delivering supposedly trustworthy information about a topic, and responded to the demands of different sets of audiences. I will be referring to a period (1588–1605)9 prior to the development of the periodical press when information about contemporary affairs spread mostly as single events and the channels of international communication were fragile, based primarily on diplomatic correspondence, travellers’ accounts and the communication established by the exile community.10 Much has been written about the Black Legend and the construction of the Spanish Machiavel, about how the racial difference in skin colour signified or how the fear of an invasion from Spain instigated a fierce anti-Catholic sentiment, but little about how the English were regarded by the Spaniards.11 The Black Legend that circulated in England about Spain’s evil practices and arrogant character was not publicized in Spain and was not challenged by a 9 10 11 From the Armada defeat to the ratification of the Anglo-Spanish peace in Valladolid. Cf. Díaz Noci J., “The Iberian Position in European News Networks: A Methodological Approach”, in Raymond J. – Moxham N. (eds.), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: 2016); Borreguero Beltrànin C., “Philip of Spain: The Spider’s Web of News and Information”, in Dooley B. (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: 2010) 23–50. The earliest periodical news publication in the peninsula dates from 1619, and the biggest boom of the press news in Europe can be dated to the second half of the seventeenth century. Earlier, other forms of non-periodical publications contributed to the dissemination of news in Europe and particularly in Spain. Cf. Espejo C., “El primer periódico de la Península Ibérica: la Gazeta de Valencia (1619)”, Obra Periodística 2 (2012), and Chartier R. – Espejo C., Comunicación y propaganda en el Barroco. La aparición del periodismo en Europa (Madrid: 2012). The Black Legend about Spain has been an endless topic of debate around the deserved or undeserved cruel image of Spanish Imperialism. Only recently a highly popular and polemical book explaining the Black Legend as a campaign of racist prejudices launched by the northern Protestants towards the Southern Catholics has received an avalanche of critical responses from prominent historians. Cf. Roca Barea E., Imperiofobia y leyenda negra. Roma. Rusia, Estados Unidos y el Imperio Español (Madrid: 2016); and for the opposite view: Villacañas J.L., Imperiofilia y el populismo nacional-católico (Madrid: 2019). For a study on how the Black Legend blends with anti-Catholicism cf. Álvarez-Recio L., Fighting the Anti-Christ: A History of Anti-Catholicism in Tudor England (Brighton: 2011). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 81 mirror negative image in response. Rather, we can identify a ‘White Legend’ of sorts, equally based on selected news and partial information but delivering an image with which the Spanish people could identify and empathise.12 The image of the English that transpires from the few pieces of information that circulated in Spain represented the common population as composed of primarily secret Catholics at heart who were either persecuted for their ideas or remained silently waiting for their country to return to the path of reconciliation with Rome, a situation that justified Spain’s interference with English affairs as a policy of liberation. If we compare the stereotype of the typical Spaniard in England, which we can find in Black Legend propaganda, with Spain’s English stereotype (if indeed there was one), even in the toughest years of the war, we observe an imbalance. Fictional characters such as those presented in Cervantes’ novella are few and far between; moreover, they do not seem to be portrayed distinctively as “the other”. Don W. Cruickshank carried out a systematic analysis of the English characters that appear in Golden Age Spanish drama and arrived at the conclusion that: What all these Spanish plays have in common is a lack of caricature of English people. One can find caricatures of Moors and Frenchmen and other foreigners who “speak funny” in Spanish drama, but not, it seems, English people. If English people are portrayed unfavourably it is not because of their nationality. Spanish dramatists tended to portray the English as no different from themselves, and, when historical facts in the plot obliged them to refer to religious differences, they showed a considerable tolerance.13 It could be argued that Spanish theatregoers lacked cultural referents to form for themselves a stereotype to share and ridicule. Even the historical tracts 12 13 By “White Legend” I refer to the positive image that the Spanish people had of the English as opposed to the negative image of the Spaniards that gave way to the Black Legend. The term “White Legend” has been used previously to refer to historiographical responses to the Black Legend that are criticized for going too far in the “whitening” of the practices used by the Spanish empire by highlighting Spanish altruism and tolerance through a legal system that protected the weak from oppression. Cf. Keen B., “The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke’s ‘Modest Proposal’”, The Hispanic American Historical Review 51, 2 (1971) 336–355. Cruickshank D.W., “Lisping and Wearing Strange Suits: English Characters on the Spanish Stage and Spanish Characters on the English Stage, 1580–1680”, in Fothergill-Payne L. and P. (eds.), Parallel Lives: Spanish and English National Drama 1580–1680 (London – Toronto: 1991) 203. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 82 Cano-Echevarría that had framed in narrative form the events that had driven the English to a schism with Rome such as Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Historia Ecclesiastica del scisma del Reyno de Inglaterra (1588) or Gonzalo de Illescas’ Historia Pontifical (1573) were censored to remove some of the most critical passages about the behaviour of English monarchs.14 The absence of overt criticism is the more intriguing if we take into account that the English nation was one of the most powerful national enemies that the Spaniards had to confront in this period. It is common wisdom that to ‘know your enemy’ is one of the principles of a successful war strategy. However, there seems to have been a certain carelessness about keeping the English under close surveillance. Whereas in England (despite the loathing) there was a sincere interest in learning the Spanish tongue and translating and adapting all sorts of documents, from literary works to travel narratives, Spaniards made no effort to learn the language of the enemy.15 Even ambassadors who spent long periods in the country relied heavily on language secretaries.16 Thus, the bulk of texts in Spanish that either translated original English documents or transmitted news about England were written by English nationals who knew Spanish. Most of these texts were produced by English Catholic exiles who established themselves temporarily in the colleges of the Iberian Peninsula, with the purpose of returning to their country to proselytise in favour of a reconversion to the old faith.17 This small and unified group of translators had a clear 14 15 16 17 In Illesca’s Historia Pontifical explicit references to the dishonesty and doubtful chastity of Queen Elizabeth I had to be erased; whereas in Ribadeneyra’s Historia Ecclesiastica of 1588, coinciding with the failed Armada expedition, some attacks against Elizabeth were allowed to be printed, but the 1592 edition that contained the edict against seminary priests and its consequences to Catholics was sequestered by direct order of Philip II. See Burguillo J., “Pedro de Ribadeneyra y la inestabilidad del discurso histórico literario en torno a la empresa de Inglaterra”, in Montes D. – Lillo V. – Vega M.J. (eds.), Saberes Inestables: Estudios sobre expurgación y censura en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: 2018) 174–200. In Calderón de la Barca’s play Historia de la Cisma de Ingalaterra, based on Ribadeneyra’s Historia Ecclesiastica, even though the plot is centred on Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s affair and ends with Mary Tudor’s coronation, Elizabeth is not even mentioned, thus avoiding such thorny issue. For a study on the literary appropriations from Spanish sources by English writers, see Fuchs B., The Poetics of Piracy: Emulating Spain in English Literature (Philadelphia: 2013). The notorious Spanish ambassador Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar, spent long years in England but there is lack of proof that he was fluent in English. Francis Fowler is known to have been his interpreter and secretary for most of his embassy. Cf. Loomie A.J., “Francis Fowler II, English Secretary of the Spanish Embassy, 1609–1619”, Recusant History 12, 1 (1973) 70–78. On the dearth of translations from English into Spanish cf. Santoyo J.C., “Bibliografía tentativa de traducciones inglés-español, 1577–1800”, Bells 1 (1990) 161–187 and CanoEchevarría B., “Sidney Scribbled: The Mysterious Case of Deffensa de la Poesia”, Viator 46, Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 83 agenda of what the Spanish readers needed to know about England and they were the first filter of information and textual transmission. 1 Letters from England The English colleges established in Valladolid (1589), Seville (1593) and Madrid (1610) were the main centres of reception for correspondence from England apart from the court, and Joseph Creswell, successor to Robert Persons as head of the English mission in Spanish territory, was the recipient and supervisor of much of it: The Jesuite Creswell hath so good intelligence that their waggeth not a strawe in the Inglishe court but he heareth of it […] this Creswell hath weekly a porter’s burden of letters of intelligence from all places which is the cause of his estimation in this land.18 Not all of this correspondence remained in manuscript. Some of the letters were purportedly translated and printed so that Spaniards would learn about the reports sent by English Catholics to their families or friends in exile. The printed letter in early modern Spanish culture can be considered a genre in its own right, and English exiles used it as a way to colour with verisimilitude and intimacy the news that came from England. Some of the most important pamphlets about the English mission take the epistolary format as their model. These ‘printed single events newsletters’, as Henry Ettinghaussen calls them, were one of the most common ways of reporting news between countries and became ‘an international phenomenon, based on – and doubtless further developing – Europe-wide news networks, long before the birth of the periodical press’.19 Their personal tone suggested there was an exclusive transmission of information from one correspondent to another, but when they were printed 18 19 2 (2015) 357–374. Ernesto Oyarbide believes that Gondomar’s knowledge of English was patchy at best. He was able to read some texts but there is no proof that he could hold conversations in English and he constantly used his secretaries of letters as translators. I am grateful to Ernesto Oyarbide for allowing me to read his article “Collecting ‘Toute l’Angleterre’: English Books, Soft Power and Spanish Diplomacy at the Casa del Sol (1613– 1622)” before its publication in Helmers H. – Cumby J. (eds.), Print and Power in Early Modern Europe (forthcoming). Loomie A.J., The Spanish Elizabethans (New York: 1963) 194–195. Ettinghausen H., “International Relations: Spanish, Italian, French, English and German Printed Single Event Newsletters Prior to Renaudot’s Gazette”, in Raymond J. – Moxham N. (eds.), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden – Boston: 2016) 261–279, here 262. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 84 Cano-Echevarría this exclusivity was lost in favour of a broader audience that was now able to glimpse apparently eye-witnessed documentary evidence about a given event. Thus we have printed letters with information about the situation of the English nuns in exile,20 the circumstances of the early years of the English College at Valladolid,21 the death of Luisa de Carvajal in London,22 and the martyrdoms of Catholic priests on English soil.23 All this material, originally in English and in manuscript form, went through a process of selection, translation and editing – probably under the supervision of Joseph Creswell himself – until it was ready to reach Spanish readers. The implicit and explicit claim to truth of these letters does not mean, of course, that they were not embellished or carefully edited to serve the purpose for which they were designed, though this is difficult to ascertain because the original letter seldom survives. One of the most remarkable examples of the use of the epistolary form to construct a powerful narrative for domestic consumption is an exchange of letters between a father and son, the latter studying to become a priest at one of the Spanish Seminaries.24 This Carta, whose title could be rendered into English as Letter from a Gentleman in England written to his eldest son, who is in one of the seminaries and had faltered in his purpose to become a priest, is all the more interesting because it is followed by two letters in which the son responds to his father, thus establishing a dialogue that serves as a bridge between the two countries, moving the story forwards and advancing, as it were, the plot. The printed text gives little information about the circumstances surrounding this exchange. For reasons of confidentiality the names of the protagonists 20 21 22 23 24 Sander Elizabeth, Traslado de una carta de cierta monia inglesa llamada Isabel Sandera […] escrita en Ruan ciudad de Francia a Francisco Englefild, Cavallero Ingles residente en Madrid, en que le da cuenta de las persecuciones, y trabajos, que a pasado por nuestra Santa Fe en Inglaterra (Sevilla, Clemente Hidalgo: n.d.). Eclesal Tomas, Relacion de un Sacerdote Ingles, escrita a Flandes a un cauallero de su tierra, desterrado por ser Catolico: en la qual le da cuenta de la venida de su Majestad a Valladolid, y al Colegio de los Ingleses, y lo que allí se hizo en su recebimiento. Traducida de Ingles en Castellano por Tomas Eclesal cauallero ingles (Madrid, Pedro Madrigal: 1592). Peralta Francisco de, Copia de una carta que el padre Francisco de Peralta de la Compañia de Jesus, rector del colegio de los Ingleses de Sevilla, escrivio al padre Rodrigo de Cabredo […] en que da cuenta de la dichosa muerte que tuvo en Londres la santa señora doña Luysa de Carvajal (s.l.: 1614). Anon., Carta embiada De Londres de vn Religioso Catholico, a otro de España, delos ocho de Nouiembre De 1611. Recebida a 25. de Enero de 1612 en que da noticia de lo que passa a cerca de la persecucion de Los Catholicos en dicho Reyno (Barcelona, Sebastian de Cormellas: 1612). A. – N.N., Carta de un Cavallero de Inglaterra, escrita a su hijo Mayorazgo, que esta en uno de los Seminarios, y avia blandeado en su proposito de ser Sacerdote (n.p.: 1602). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 85 are not given, the father signs as A. and the son as N.N.;25 nor do we know the identity of the college (Valladolid or Seville), or the whereabouts in England of the family home. We do have, however, some precise dates in the letters. The first is dated 24 August 1602, though we read that it did not reach the College until the 20 November, ‘con un mensajero propio’ [with a private courier];26 the second was written five days later; and the third, the last response from the son to the father, is dated 6 December of the same year. The fact that we do not have the first letter in the exchange, that of the son presumably announcing his decision to leave the College, opens up all sorts of questions. What were the reasons alleged by the student for his decision? Homesickness? Lack of vocation? The rigours of College life? And – most significantly – why was this letter not included in the printed sequence? The letter written by the father opens expressing love towards his son and praising his early religious vocation, but soon moves on to declare that now that trust has been broken his sentiments have changed to shame and misery. He believes his son has been tricked by the devil who wants him back into the world to enjoy the material possessions of the family and throw him into eternal condemnation. His decision will also crush the expectations of the younger brother who is about to follow his sibling’s example in joining the mission abroad, and of the sister who has always learnt from her brother’s advice in his letters home; and as for the rest of the brothers, ‘que ponen su contento en seguir al mundo, dellos no hago caso’ [who content themselves with following the world, them I ignore].27 To heighten the drama the despair of the mother on hearing the news of her son’s return is vividly portrayed, ‘sus oraciones, sus ruegos, sus lagrimas’ [her prayers, her suplications, her tears].28 And so, since the son has decided to abandon his post at the College and leave a vacancy, the father is willing to travel to Spain and replace him there rather than wait for him to come back. In a highly rhetorical passage, the father imagines his son’s soul devoured by wolves: Es possible que esta es la ropa manchada de mi hijo, muerto por aquel sangriento salteador de almas, el Demonio? Es esta la ropa tan adornada en otro tiempo de ricas joyas, y recamada de todo genero de virtudes, que esta agora teñida y affeada con cuaxarones de sangre del desseo y sed 25 26 27 28 The acronym ‘N.’ was used in Spain as a cipher for someone whose name is unknown or intends to remain anonymous. A. – N.N., Carta de un Cavallero 1. My translation, here and elsewhere for this text. Ibidem 3. Ibidem 5. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 86 Cano-Echevarría de cosas perecederas, de descuydo, de tibieça, de floxedad? Ay de mi, y quien la ha assi afeado? Que lobo carnicero ha tragado a mi hijo, y dexado su vestidura teñida desta manera?29 [Is it possible that these should be the stained garments of my child, killed by that bloody thief of souls, the devil? Are these the garments that in other times were adorned with rich jewels and embroidered with all sorts of virtues, now tainted and spoilt with clots of blood from desire and thirst of temporary goods, with indolence, with indifference, with laxity? Woe on me! And who has thus disgraced him? What butcherly wolf has devoured my son and has left his garments tainted in this way?] The son’s response is feeble and brief, but expresses his determination to return. He can only reassure his father that despite his determination he remains a Catholic and a despiser of heresy, his only defence being that when he decided to become a priest he was too young to know his true vocation. However, this letter is followed by a longer one in which he declares that he retracts from his decision: ‘he vencido al Enemigo, que me hazia guerra’ [I have defeated the Enemy that was at war with me];30 and in a similar rhetorical vein (occasionally using the third person) he explains that it all has been but a dream and a trial by God to test his fortitude. He ends up expressing gratitude to his father and to the fathers in the College for helping him see the dangers to his soul repenting his momentary weakness. What are we to make of this epistolary exchange? Clearly it would be a mistake to take it at face value. What sort of pressures were behind this sudden alteration in the student? Indeed, can we even be sure that this father and son composed their respective letters? And what kind of interventions took place in the process of translation? There seems to be a similarity between the letter of the father and the second letter of the son in that both are highly rhetorical and full of rich, figurative language, which helps avoid references to specific circumstances regarding the student and the College life. It is tempting to consider this exchange as a complete fiction, possibly a book of instruction for the collegians, who could take it as a model of both behaviour and epistolary style, and indeed this might have been the textual origin of the translation.31 But the 29 30 31 Ibidem 3. Ibidem 7. The existence of a very similar exchange between a father in England and a son studying in a college in Spain was published a few years later, also in Spanish. In this exchange, however, the father’s intentions are to convince his son to desert his faith while the son remains resolved. Cf. N.N. – A.A., Carta, escrita a uno de los colegiales Ingleses que residen Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 87 fact that it is in Spanish points to a rather different kind of target audience. The readers of this book were Spaniards interested in the circumstances of life in the English Colleges and the progress of the mission; some of them may have been donors or would-be donors in support of the whole enterprise, so it was important that they believed in the truthfulness of the account, but would also understand that their generosity was bearing fruit. Such an interpretation is encouraged in the colophon: Por estas cartas, en parte, se puede ver lo que pretende Dios nuestro Señor, con los trabajos que permite en Inglaterra, pues por ello han venido los seglares a cobrar la estima que aquí se vee de la Dignidad Sacerdotal.32 [These letters show, in part, what God our Lord intends with the struggles that he allows to happen in England, because due to them laymen have come to obtain the esteem that is shown here, that of priestly honour.] Taken in a broader sense this exchange of letters could ultimately be taken by Spanish readers as an allegory of English religious strife, the father representing ‘the old religion’ and the son standing for the temporary loss of spiritual direction that currently afflicted England as a nation. At the end, due to the firmness and advice of his father the son returns to the right course, as England would undoubtedly reconcile itself to the Church of Rome. 2 Misunderstood Martyrdom The higher purpose of the mission in England lies behind many of the halftruths about England that circulated in Spain. Propaganda, however, was not the aim of all distortions of truth. Andrew Hadfield discusses how in this period telling lies had a different kind of resonance than it would receive in later historical periods, partly because of the strain suffered by the victims of religious persecution who put their lives at risk.33 Individual self-conscience had to confront social, economic and often legal pressures so that a virtuous balance was sometimes impossible to maintain. Hadfield argues that at 32 33 en Madrid, por su padre, para apartarle de su resolucion de ser sacerdote, Traduzida en nuestra lengua. [Signed: N.N.] (La respuesta del hijo a su padre. [Signed: A.A.] (Barcelona, s.n.: 1611)). A. – N.N., Carta de un Cavallero 9. Hadfield A., Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance (Oxford: 2017). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 88 Cano-Echevarría a time when the need for untruthfulness could be anticipated because of the contradictions imposed on the individual ‘there is always a simple response to set beside the complicated one, the two frequently intermingled, overlapping and even confused’.34 The language produced under these circumstances was double edged and could often be interpreted in more than one way; this double-entendre sometimes became the only escape route for victims of religious suspicions. Not telling the truth was a sin under any circumstances, but lying could be the only way available to preserve one’s life or even those of your own community and therefore it became the responsibility of religious groups, such as the Jesuits, to instruct their followers on how to act when forced to choose between two evils. The most famous pamphlet that the Jesuits circulated secretly among the Catholic community was a manuscript written by Henry Garnet (who would later be executed for his alleged participation in the Gunpowder Plot) which clearly announced in its title how deception was to be embraced in special circumstances: A Treatise of Equivocation wherein is largely discussed the question whether a Catholicke or any other person before a magistrate beying demaunded upon his oath whether a Prieste were in such a place, may (notwithstanding his perfect knowledge to the contrary) without Perjury and securely in conscience answere No, with this secreat meaning reserued in his mynde, That he was not there so that any man is bounde to detect it.35 Of course, this pragmatic position was attacked by Protestants, who accused the Jesuits of sophistry and duplicity, while at the same time attacking them for wanting to become martyrs.36 In Spain news of the ordeals Catholics had to endure if they remained on or re-entered English soil were among the most sought-after stories concerning England. Among them, one stands out as the best known and most widely circulated of the martyrs’ accounts in Spanish. Historia de la vida y martyrio que padecio en Inglaterra, este año de 1595 el P. Henrique Valpolo, was written by Henry Walpole’s Jesuit colleague and correspondent, Fr. Joseph Creswell.37 34 35 36 37 Ibidem 29. For a discussion on the significance of the treatise in the polemics over equivocation cf. Malloch A., “Father Henry Garnet’s Treatise of Equivocation”, Recusant History 15, 3 (1980) 387–395. Both Garnet and Persons (above) partly derived their arguments from Martín de Azpilicueta. Cf. Zagorin, “The Historical Significance” 895–897. John Donne attacked this option in Pseudo Martyr (1610) where he accuses the Jesuits of casuistry while at the same time using it himself. Donne J. – Sypher F. J. Pseudo-Martyr […] A Facsimile Reproduction with an Introduction by Francis Jacques Sypher (New York: 1974). Creswell Joseph, Historia de la vida y martyrio que padecio en Inglaterra, este año de 1595 el P. Henrique Valpolo, sacerdote de la Compañia de Iesus q fue embiado del Colegio de los Ingleses de Valladolid, y ha sido el primer martyr de los Seminarios de España: con el Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 89 Walpole’s martyrdom and its textual footprint are particularly revealing of the complexities that were faced by the witnesses of the very crude experiences that surrounded the whole process of martyrdom. Providing testimony of such ordeals was understood as the natural outcome of the mission and it was important that the people involved in the transmission were trustworthy and well informed; however, not everything could be under control when dealing with human reactions to suffering and fear. The experiences of Walpole in England and their rendering in Spanish for the benefit of Catholic readers is a very good example of the sharp edges these stories could expose and the necessity to cover them with forgetfulness or misrepresentation. The documents that have survived provide us with two contradictory versions of Walpole’s last year, the first version is the one contained in the original transcriptions of Walpole’s depositions of his interrogations after he was taken prisoner. These were reproduced in two obscure publications of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Augustus Jessopp’s One Generation of a Norfolk House (1879),38 and John Hungerford Pollen’s Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs (1908).39 The other version is the one rendered by Joseph Creswell in Spanish, of which different contemporary copies have survived as well as a translation into French, but no extant copy in English.40 This was the only account that reached contemporary readers. The reason for the popularity of Historia de la Vida has to do with the fact that Walpole was the first martyr produced by the Spanish seminaries and therefore he was taken as a symbol of the seed that the Spanish mission was planting. Even though his stay in Spain was not for very long, his contribution to the consolidation of the Colleges was significant. He participated in the establishment of the new seminary in Seville, where he arrived in December 38 39 40 martyrio de otros quatro sacerdotes los dos de la misma Compañia, y los otros dos de los Seminarios (Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1596). Jessopp A., One Generation of a Norfolk House: A Contribution to Elizabethan History (London: 1879). Pollen J.H., Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs, 2 vols. (London: 1908–1919). Richard Verstegan expressed in a letter the convenience of printing Robert Southwell and Henry Walpole’s martyrdom in Spanish “and afterwards they may be put together in Latin with others the like, and in the meantime, it would mean much to be in the vulgar tongue”. This opens up the possibility that copies of Creswell’s account in Latin and English might have existed, but Jessop was only able to find one translation into French in the Noviciate at Tronchiennes licenced at Arras in 1596. Jessopp A., One Generation 169– 170. Many English Catholic pamphlets have not survived because their owners destroyed or burned them for fear of incrimination. This may explain the loss of the English copies of Walpole’s martyrdom pamphlet. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 90 Cano-Echevarría 1593, just a month after its foundation and in time for the consecration of its chapel, and shortly afterwards he was sent to Valladolid as vice-rector. However, he stayed there only a couple of months before Robert Persons, the head of the Colleges in Spain, deemed him unsuitable for the job and considered moving him back to Seville or to Lisbon (where another new College was starting) as a confessor. This would have certainly been a demotion, but finally the decision was taken that he would be most useful if he returned to England.41 Returning to their homeland was in fact the purpose of all the students of the Spanish Colleges; indeed, they had to pledge to do so in an oath they took when admitted.42 Even so, Henry Walpole’s seniority – he had been at the Colleges of Reims and Rome, he had served as a priest with the regiments of Flanders, he belonged to a wealthy family and had mastered several languages – put him in a special position. Persons must have pondered thoroughly his decision and considered that in sending Walpole to England he was demonstrating how much the colleges were willing to sacrifice. Before Walpole left for England he had an audience with King Philip II, from whom he received a commission and monies to establish yet a new College in France, this one specifically designed for younger children who would receive their first instruction there to be later sent to the Spanish or Roman seminaries for further instruction.43 Thus, it was that Walpole sailed from Bilbao to Calais in the late summer of 1594, from whence he travelled to St Omer in Northern France to make the preliminary arrangements for the new institution. Once the first part of his mission was over he was delayed longer than expected by bad weather and the plague that was raging in England but finally he managed to embark on a ship in December in the company of two soldiers of fortune, one of them, his own brother, Thomas. They were disembarked north of the river Humber, at Flamborough Head, and just a few hours later they were apprehended by Lord Huntingdon’s men and taken to the village of Kilham for their first cross-examination.44 Here commenced a series of interrogations and tortures that have been difficult to express by his biographers. Jessopp, who portrays the history of the Walpole family over a period of fifty years in his engaging 41 42 43 44 Jessopp A., One Generation 182–184. For the text of the oath in its different forms Cf. Williams M.E., St Alban’s College Valladolid: Four Centuries of English Catholic Presence in Spain (London – New York: 1986) 243–244. Creswell, Historia de la vida. The Earl of Huntingdon was Lord President of the Council in the North and became a relentless persecutor of Catholics in the area of York. Margaret Clitherow is perhaps his most renowned victim. See Lake, P. – Questier, M., The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (London – New York: 2011). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 91 One Generation of a Norfolk House, refers to the autographed document of Walpole’s confession under torture with extreme tactfulness: Alas! It is a painful document; painful, i.e., to those who would wish to find a man who had endured so much exhibit more heroism than in this case can be claimed for him. But who of us can estimate the power which immeasurable bodily pain must exercise upon a highly sensitive and nervous temperament?45 Similarly, Pollen, in his Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs, which was published as an addition to his renowned earlier work, Acts of the English Martyrs (1891), introduces the hitherto unprinted transcriptions of Walpole’s examinations and autographed confession with these words: The confessions of Father Walpole are more ample than those of any other of our Martyrs, and though they begin admirably, they end sadly. Though they are upon the whole extremely clear, their conclusion is somewhat mysterious, both to the extent of the future Martyr’s waverings, and also as to the reason for his instability.46 What can be read in these transcriptions published by Pollen of the examinations carried out by the torturer Richard Topcliffe and his associates, first in York prison and later at the Tower of London, is the gradual destruction of human resistance. In his first deposition, Walpole managed to keep most of the information to himself, and though he recognised having met Philip II and some senior, well-known Catholics on the continent, he refused to incriminate other people and expressly denied giving the names of the students who had taken refuge in the Colleges. However, the torments in the Tower must have destroyed his resolve, and after three ‘examinationes’, in which he confesses little, by the month of June he starts giving important information. The quantity of names he reveals both from abroad and in England, is staggering: this includes the names of all the students in the colleges and their families, informants abroad, people undercover in England, houses that were used as lodging for priests, and various collaborators in strategic positions. Since he was captured almost as soon as he landed, it is perplexing how many names of people and places he was able to provide, so much so that it should not be discounted that some of these names may have been suggested to him by his interrogators. 45 46 Jessopp, One Generation 261. Pollen, Unpublished Documents 244–245. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 92 Cano-Echevarría This confession did not stop at names; he embraced the rule of the queen and the new religion and even offered to preach it. In an autographed document he writes: I never allowed of the ambition of the Popes or any of their unjust usurpation over princes and their kingdoms, and do think hostilitye or invasion of the Spanyard would preiudice both the commonwealth and the catholike religion; and therfore as a true Englishman and subiect to her Matie, and denizen of this realme I would in desire and all endeavour and prayer concurr in the defence and conseruation of my countrye, conforming myselfe to the lawes of the realme, whether I live or dy […] so not refusing to go to the church, and if I were worthy as others be (I being very meane in learning) there preach only such doctrine as my conscience doth tell me and the spirite of God to be manifestly deduced out of the word of God.47 Despite all these confessions, however, following further detention at the Tower he was taken back to York for his trial and execution on 7 April 1595. As could be expected, none of these features in Joseph Creswell’s Historia de la Vida y Martyrio, which instead presents exemplary behaviour in every aspect of Walpole’s life, both as a Jesuit on the continent, and following his capture. The hagiographic, idealized status of the text is hidden behind the semblance of reliability: more than half of it is composed of supposedly transcribed letters, some written by Walpole himself and addressed to Creswell, and yet others addressed to the rector of the college at Valladolid, to Robert Persons, Henry Garnet, or even the Earl of Huntingdon, who was responsible for Walpole’s capture and imprisonment at York. How Creswell had access to some of this material is left unexplained. This is not to say that Creswell was inventing everything: indeed, when a collation can be made between one of his transcriptions and an existing manuscript of the original letter we see that in some passages he was rendering a mostly faithful text.48 But his attitude to his material was (unsurprisingly) far from objective. One of the recurring tropes that carries the narrative is Walpole’s constant desire to become a martyr. He had been present at the trial and execution of Thomas Campion and, 47 48 Ibidem 266. It is possible to compare an original letter from 13 November transcribed in Pollen Unpublished documents 224–225 and Creswell’s rendering of the same letter in Historia de la vida 10–11. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 93 according to Creswell, witnessing Campion’s martyrdom was instrumental in his conversion to Catholicism: Hallandose Henrique Valpolo en las disputas que el padre Campiano tuvo con los herejes, y en su muerte, y aviendo escrito la historia de todo lo que en aquel glorioso martyrio passo, aprendio otro camino y espiritu de pelear con herejes, no con armas de hierro ni valentia corporal, sino con la fuerça y eficacia de la palabra de Dios: y assi se determinò de dexar a Inglaterra, y entrar en la misma religion del padre Campiano.49 [Being Henry Walpole present in the disputes father Campion had with the heretics, and in his death, and having written the history of everything that happened in such glorious martyrdom, he learnt a different path and spirit of fighting against heretics, not with iron arms or bodily courage, but with the strength and efficacy of the word of God: and so he determined to leave England and profess the same religion as father Campion.] And just before embarking for England he expresses his hope of not dying at sea ‘sino en tierra colgado de una horca de Inglaterra, por amor y servicio de IesuChristo’ [but on land, hanging from the gallows in England for the love and service of Jesus Christ].50 This illustrates how the example from previous martyrs could bring new resolutions of sacrifice. But even more than Walpole’s attitude towards self-sacrifice what could make the book most useful as a conduct guide for future martyrs is the part devoted to his response to questioning under torture. In a letter included in Creswell’s account Walpole recounts his torture and interrogation in York prison reproducing the ‘bloody question’ and his answer to it (or perhaps Creswell’s embellished version) which, according to convention, is expressed in hypothetical terms.51 49 50 51 Creswell, Historia de la vida 4. My translation, here and elsewhere. From the history of Campion’s martyrdom written by Henry Walpole only fragments have survived. Cf. Pollen J.H., Acts of English Martyrs Hitherto Unpublished (London: 1891) 41–48. Creswell, Historia de la vida 9. The so-called ‘bloody question’ or ‘bloody questions’ were originally put to Edmund Campion in his trial. He seems to have been the first to call it so and, in their formulation, a hypothetical scenario of conflictive political allegiance was proposed to the defendant. See McGrath P., “The Bloody Questions Reconsidered”, Recusant History 20, 3 (1991) 305–319. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Cano-Echevarría 94 Preguntaronme entre otras preguntas, si porventura el Papa se resolviesse de hazer la guerra a Inglaterra, que cosa haría yo? Respondi, que las circunstancias que entonces occurriessen, me darian mas luz, y que en tal caso recorreria a Dios nuestro Señor, y le pediria consejo, y que pensaria bien en el negocio, antes que me metiesse en cosas de guerra.52 [They asked me, among other things, if by chance the Pope decided to start a war against England, what would I do? I answered that the circumstances then occurring would illuminate me and that I would turn to God our Lord and ask for advice, and I would think it over before I intervened in things of war.] The questions put to Walpole as presented in this text are condensed into seven, with their corresponding answers, and in no case does he provide any particular information about the people who helped him, or those he was supposed to meet or were in any way connected with his mission. He never answers with lies, and he refuses to report anything that could endanger Catholics in England. This catalogue of questions and answers that precedes the final denouement of the trial and execution in York is the climax of the book and must have been the most important section for the students of the colleges: both to learn what they could expect if they were captured, and how they should behave. None of the answers given by Walpole exhibits equivocation; he might refuse to give full details, but his information is always truthful. But if there is one equivocator in this story it is Joseph Creswell himself, who surely knew better about his colleague’s predicament at the Tower of London and his final confession under torture. If Robert Persons ever weighed up the risks of losing such an important Jesuit as Father Walpole – plus the danger of his revealing all his valuable contacts and knowledge – against the gains the propaganda of his martyrdom could render the Catholic mission, he might have come to the conclusion that there was a lot to lose but that still the gamble had to be taken. At any rate the impact of the account was considerable. Even though there is no extant version in English the book circulated widely both among the exile population of English Catholics and among Spanish readers who became fascinated by this and similar stories of modern heroes of the faith.53 Such was its impact that Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza decided to abandon Spain and seek out the perils of preaching the Catholic faith in England after 52 53 Creswell, Historia de la vida 22. Jessop, One Generation 169–170. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 95 reading Creswell’s version of the exemplary life and tragic death of Henry Walpole. The book finishes with a short conclusion that adds four other martyrs who had lost their lives in England at around the same time as Walpole.54 This would provide Spanish readers with an impression of a country that, despite the protestant heresy and the brutal persecution of Catholics, was full of adherents to the old faith willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the true religion and never to waver in their resolve. It would only be a matter of time before news about the reconversion of the island could be delivered. 3 Romancing the Peace News about English affairs were more in demand when the long period of war between both countries was envisaged as coming to an end after the deaths of Philip II (1598) and Elizabeth I (1603). The embassy of Juan de Tassis, commissioned to congratulate James VI of Scotland as the new King of England, had the more ambitious purpose of promoting a negotiated peace between Spain and England. The report of this mission, which concluded in 1604 with the Treaty of London, was published in Seville in two separate but consecutive pamphlets in which the good will of the new king towards the Spanish ambassador is made explicit.55 To conclude the peace treaty, which was negotiated for almost a year, a more prominent courtier was sent to London, Juan Fernández de Velasco, the Constable of Castile, to supervise the final negotiations and the signing of the peace treaty. Another pamphlet reported Castile’s embassy with details about the journey, reception, the peace-signing ceremony itself and the celebration with which all was concluded.56 However, these publications were primarily concerned with the ceremonial aspect of the reception and did not inform readers of what was at stake in the negotiations. Contrary to what happened in England, where the agreed document was made public 54 55 56 Alexander Rawlins, Robert Southwell, William Mason and John Cornelius. Anon., Relacion muy verdadera del recebimiento y fiestas que se le hizieron en Inglaterra a don Iuan de Tassis, Conde de Villamediana, Embaxador […] del Rey Don Felipe tercero […] para el nueuo Rey Iacobo de Inglaterra: dase cuenta de la embaxada, y otras cosas muy notables y dignas de saberse. (Sevilla, Bartolome Gomez: 1603) and Anon., La segunda parte de la embaxada de Don Iuan de Tassis, Conde de Villamediana, y Embaxador […] del Rey Don Felipe tercero […] para el nueuo Rey Iacobo de Inglaterra: dase cuenta de lo que su Magestad le respondio, y los grandes comedimientos que se le hizieron (Sevilla, Bartolome Gomez: 1604). Anon., Relacion de la iornada del […] Condestable de Castilla, a las pazes entre España, y Inglaterra, que se concluyeron y iuraron en Londres por el mes de agosto (Valladolid, Iuan Yniguez: 1604). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 96 Cano-Echevarría and translated from Latin with its thirty-four articles itemized to demonstrate that there was nothing to hide, the Spanish authorities were careful not to publicize the actual terms of the agreement.57 Instead, in Spain a popular means was used to spread more widely the news of the peace in the form of a chapbook or cordel sheet. The cordel sheet was not uncommon in Spain as a way of releasing news of all kinds, from political and state events to religious festivities and natural catastrophes or remarkable events. This form reached a wide audience because in most cases the news (usually delivered in verse) were not intended for private reading but for public recitation in the squares of the towns or villages, usually by professional minstrels whose presence would attract audiences eager to learn the latest news. The verse Relacion de las pazes, attributed on the title page to one Juan de Lelesma [sic], is a romance, a poetic composition connected with the chivalric oral tradition of narrative verse.58 In its four hundred and fifty verses it recounts the peace mission of the Constable of Castille in four sections: an untitled introductory stanza, followed by ‘Romance de las capitulaciones’ [Romance of the terms of the treaty], ‘Pregón de la Paz’ [Proclamation of the Peace], and ‘Romance de como el Rey visitó al Condestable’ [Romance of the King’s visit to the Constable].59 Surprisingly, this Relacion de las pazes differs from the more formal Relacion de la jornada in that it provides some specific information about the political, economic and religious achievements of the peace that the prose work omits. The levy of the duties imposed on commerce is given relevance, as well as England’s agreement to cease its collaboration with the enemies of the Spanish crown; this may have been of interest to the merchant community, who were the foremost beneficiaries of the peace treaty. The author proves to have first-hand knowledge of the embassy, including a number of aspects about the journey, the ceremonies and the reception that are in accordance with the other printed and manuscript sources. In most probability, the text 57 58 59 Anon., Articles of Peace, Entercourse, and Commerce, concluded in the names of […] James […] King of Great Britain […] and Philip the third, King of Spaine, &c. And Albertus and Isabelia Clara Eugenia, Archdukes of Austrice […] In a Treatie at London the 18. day of August […] 1604. Translated out of Latine into English (London, Barker: 1605). Sánchez Pérez M., “Panorámica sobre las Relaciones de sucesos en pliegos sueltos poéticos (siglo XVI)”, eHumanista 21 (2012) 336–368. Lelesma Juan de, Relacion de las pazes que se han confirmado en la ciudad de Londres, por el mes de Agosto, del año de 1064 [sic] entre España e Inglaterra, con las Capitulaciones hechas entre los Serenissimos Reyes de España e Inglaterra, y Serenissimos Principes y Archiduques de Austria, cuyo poder y comision lleuo y efectuo el Condestable de Castilla, Iuan Fernandes deVelasco […] compuesta en verso por Iuan de Lelesma [sic] (Málaga n.p.: 1605). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 97 was commissioned by the Constable of Castile himself to one of the members of his entourage, given its encomiastic nature and the constant references to his persona; indeed, the constable can be recognized as the hero of the romance. Perhaps given the fantastic nature of the genre, the author has no compunction about inventing a number of untruths to satisfy his audience and convince of the successful outcome of the Spanish side in the negotiations. The constable, for example, never entertained the king, it was the other way round, but this gave due prominence to the constable. However, the most remarkable instance of these falsehoods, which also opens the poem, is that the English people have finally returned to Catholicism, abandoning their heretical practices: Alegrese todo el mundo aya paz, cesse la guerra, reciba España consuelo, pues ya vuelve Ingalaterra a ser amiga del cielo. La fee santa celestial recibe ya sin desden aquel Reyno principal, que quiere estimar el bien por dar fin a todo mal.60 [Let everyone be happy Let peace come and war stop All Spain should be content Because England is at last A friend of heaven again. Heavenly saintly faith Is welcome without disdain In that principal kingdom That wants to reward good And put an end to all evil.] A number of details adorns this, such as the laws that the author claims James I has passed to ensure the fulfilment of the new devotion, or how, accordingly, the English were ostentatiously displaying all the Catholic ritual previously outlawed: Despues de todo acabado, manda publicar el Rey alrededor del Senado la divina y santa Ley de Christo crucificado. Tambien mando publicar con istancia y santo zelo, buelvan a reedificar los templos que por el suelo mandaron un tiempo echar. 60 [Once everything finished, The king ordered the publication All around the Senate Of the divine and saintly law Of the Crucified Christ. He also ordered in an edict To reuild immediately And with saintly zeal All the temples that were Destroyed some time ago. Lelesma, Relacion de las pazes 1. My translation, here and elsewhere. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Cano-Echevarría 98 Y con gran veneracion Christiana y solenemente, los santos de devocion con mucha copia de gente, los lleven en procision. Y con luzes encendidas lamparas, hachas y velas, se les ofrezcan las vidas,61 And that with great veneration And Christian solemnity The saints of devotion Should be carried multitudinously In a procession. And that with lights, Torches and candles lit. Lives should be offered to them.] This poetic relacion is exceptional in showing the important investment that the Spanish authorities (at least those involved in the peace signing) put on presenting the treaty as a victorious outcome. By promoting a particular image of England and the English that is consistent with the idea of a Catholic country at heart, only temporarily lost to the Error of Protestantism, the pamphlet reassures its audience about the benefits of the new peace. The fact that this text was addressed to a popular audience but was probably promoted by the Constable of Castile and those close to the government may be taken to demonstrate that the ‘white’ image of the English people (as opposed to the Spanish Black Legend) was not something that happened by chance or neglect. It suited the foreign policy of the Spanish to perpetuate an amicable perception of their supposed enemies – a perception that would help in the future to stomach the wedding between an English Prince and a Spanish Infanta, and resuscitate the dream of an Anglo-Spanish alliance that had only really lasted for six years, when Philip II was married to Mary Tudor. If, as has been suggested here, Miguel de Cervantes wrote ‘The Spanish English Lady’ as a commission to promote the peace treaty of 1604–1605, he was indeed using his fictional characters in a symbolic and ‘exemplary’ way.62 Ricaredo, the Englishman, has been raised as a Catholic but needs to appeal to the Pope to prove himself true, while Isabela suffers humiliation and disfigurement in her English adventure (recalling the Armada disgrace) but expresses no rancour and remains constant to her youthful love until they can be reunited again in Seville. It can be argued that this work of fiction is no more distant from reality than the purported authentic news and reports from England that the Spaniards had access to; at any rate, with the fallout from the Gunpowder Plot in late 1605 the 61 62 Ibidem 4. Cervantes was in Sevilla at the time of the sack of Cadiz and in Valladolid during the visit of the English embassy, so he had first-hand knowledge of the contemporary events that he was fictionalizing. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access CONSTRUCTION & DECONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICISM IN SPAIN 99 aspirations for a peaceful alliance remained in the field of wishful thinking. In the famous group portrait representing Spanish, Dutch and English delegates sitting around a table in the Somerset House, a window opens to a garden with a budding branch. The symbolism hidden in this pictorial representation of the peace treaty commissioned by the Spanish glimpses towards the recurrent combination of illusion and delusion that the Spanish texts about England provided at the time. Bibliography Primary Sources A. – N.N., Carta de un Cavallero de Inglaterra, escrita a su hijo Mayorazgo, que esta en uno de los Seminarios, y avia blandeado en su proposito de ser Sacerdote (n.p.: 1602). Anon., Carta embiada De Londres de vn Religioso Catholico, a otro de España, delos ocho de Nouiembre De 1611. Recebida a 25. de Enero de 1612 en que da noticia de lo que passa a cerca de la persecucion de Los Catholicos en dicho Reyno (Barcelona, Sebastian de Cormellas: 1612). Anon., Relacion de la iornada del […] Condestable de Castilla, a las pazes entre España, y Inglaterra, que se concluyeron y iuraron en Londres por el mes de agosto (Valladolid, Iuan Yniguez: 1604). Anon., Articles of Peace, Entercourse, and Commerce, concluded in the names of […] James […] King of Great Britain […] and Philip the third, King of Spaine, &c. and Albertus and Isabelia Clara Eugenia, Archdukes of Austrice […] In a Treatie at London the 18. day of August […] 1604. 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Peralta Francisco de, Copia de una carta que el padre Francisco de Peralta de la Compañia de Jesus, rector del colegio de los Ingleses de Sevilla, escrivio al padre Rodrigo de Cabredo […] en que da cuenta de la dichosa muerte que tuvo en Londres la santa señora doña Luysa de Carvajal (s.l.: 1614). Sander Elizabeth, Traslado de una carta de cierta monia inglesa llamada Isabel Sandera […] escrita en Ruan ciudad de Francia a Francisco Englefild, Cavallero Ingles residente en Madrid, en que le da cuenta de las persecuciones, y trabajos, que a pasado por nuestra Santa Fe en Inglaterra (Sevilla, Clemente Hidalgo: n.d.). Secondary Sources Álvarez-Recio L., Fighting the Anti-Christ: A History of Anti-Catholicism in Tudor England (Brighton: 2011). Borreguero Beltrànin C., “Philip of Spain: The Spider’s Web of News and Information”, in Dooley B. (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: 2010) 23–50. 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Chartier R. – Espejo C., Comunicación y propaganda en el Barroco. La aparición del periodismo en Europa (Madrid: 2012). Cruickshank D.W., “Lisping and Wearing Strange Suits: English Characters on the Spanish Stage and Spanish Characters on the English Stage, 1580–1680”, in Fothergill-Payne L. and P. (eds.), Parallel Lives: Spanish and English National Drama 1580–1680 (London – Toronto: 1991) 195–210. Da Costa Fontes M., “Love as an Equalizer in La Española Inglesa”, Romance Notes 16, 3 (1975) 742–748. Díaz Noci J., “The Iberian Position in European News Networks: A Methodological Approach”, in Raymond J. – Moxham N. (eds.), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: 2016) 193–215. Donne J. – Sypher, F.J. Pseudo-Martyr […] A Facsimile Reproduction with an Introduction by Francis Jacques Sypher (New York: 1974). Espejo C., “El primer periódico de la Península Ibérica: la Gazeta de Valencia (1619)”, Obra Periodística 2 (2012). Ettinghausen H., “International Relations: Spanish, Italian, French, English and German Printed Single Event Newsletters Prior to Renaudot’s Gazette”, in Raymond J. – Moxham N. (eds.), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden – Boston: 2016) 261–279. Fuchs B., The Poetics of Piracy: Emulating Spain in English Literature (Philadelphia: 2013). Hadfield A., Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance (Oxford: 2017). Jessopp A., One Generation of a Norfolk House: A Contribution to Elizabethan History (London: 1879). Johnson C.B., “La Española Inglesa and the Practice of Literary Production”, Viator 19 (1988) 377–416. Keen B., “The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke’s ‘Modest Proposal’”, The Hispanic American Historical Review 51, 2 (1971) 336–355. Lake P. – Questier, M., The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (London – New York: 2011). Loomie A.J., The Spanish Elizabethans (New York: 1963). Loomie A.J., “Francis Fowler II, English Secretary of the Spanish Embassy, 1609–1619”, Recusant History 12, 1 (1973) 70–78. Luttikhuizen F., “Cervantes and International Affairs: A Historical Interpretation of Two Episodes in the ‘Novelas ejemplares’”, Mediterranean Studies 15 (2006) 62–78. Malloch A., “Father Henry Garnet’s Treatise of Equivocation”, Recusant History 15, 3 (1980) 387–395. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 102 Cano-Echevarría Marín Cepeda P. (ed.), Relación de lo sucedido en la ciudad de Valladolid desde el punto del felicísimo nacimiento del príncipe Don Felipe (Burgos: 2005). McGrath P., “The Bloody Questions Reconsidered”, Recusant History 20, 3 (1991) 305–319. Oyarbide E., “Collecting ‘Toute l’Angleterre’: English Books, Soft Power and Spanish Diplomacy at the Casa del Sol (1613–1622)”, in Helmers H. – Cumby J. (eds.), Print and Power in Early Modern Europe (forthcoming). Peers A.E., “Cervantes in England”, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 24 (1947) 226–238. Pollen J.H., Acts of English Martyrs Hitherto Unpublished (London: 1891). Pollen J.H., Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs, 2 vols. (London: 1908–1919). Ricapito J.V., Cervantes’ Novelas Ejemplares: Between History and Creativity (West Lafayette: 1996). Rico F., “Sobre la cronología de las novelas de Cervantes”, in Pellistrandi B. – Couderc C. (coords.), ‘Por discreto y por amigo’: mélanges offerts à Jean Canavaggio (Madrid: 2005) 159–165. Roca Barea E., Imperiofobia y leyenda negra. Roma. Rusia, Estados Unidos y el Imperio Español (Madrid: 2016). Sánchez Pérez M., “Panorámica sobre las Relaciones de sucesos en pliegos sueltos poéticos (siglo XVI)” eHumanista 21 (2012) 336–368. Santoyo J.C., “Bibliografía tentativa de traducciones inglés-español, 1577–1800”, Bells 1 (1990) 161–187. Sowerby T., “Elizabethan Diplomatic Networks and the Spread of News”, in Raymond J. – Moxham N. (eds.), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: 2016) 305–327. Villacañas J.L., Imperiofilia y el populismo nacional-católico (Madrid: 2019). Warren Anderson R., “Inquisitions and Scholarship”, Social Science History 39, 4 (2015) 667–702. Williams M.E., St Alban’s College Valladolid: Four Centuries of English Catholic Presence in Spain (London – New York: 1986). Zagorin P., “The Historical Significance of Lying and Dissimulation”, Social Research 63, 3 (1996) 863–912. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access chapter 5 Memoirs for ‘a Sunlit Doorstep’: Selfhood and Cultural Difference in Tomé Pinheiro da Veiga’s Fastigínia Rui Carvalho Homem 1 Object, Contexts, Concepts: a Starting Point This is a study of cultural perplexities and images of national identity in Tomé Pinheiro da Veiga’s Fastigínia – an extensive, often rambling account by a Portuguese visitor to Valladolid at the time (1605) of the celebrations of the birth of the future Philip IV of Spain (and third of Portugal), and of the arrival and sojourn of an English embassy mandated to confirm the Anglo-Spanish peace.* The Fastigínia is seldom discussed, and even less so outside Iberian scholarly contexts. Drawing primarily on insights from imagology (the study of national representations), this essay argues the singularity of Pinheiro da Veiga’s text within Early Modern writing by stressing its cultivated uncertainties. These uncertainties bear on genre; on the relation between public and private profiles in the construction of an authorial persona; and prominently on the authority (informative, judicative) claimed or renounced by the firstperson speaker throughout the text, within the various social environments in which he moves. My engagement with Pinheiro da Veiga’s account acknowledges – and sometimes departs from – a few recent contributions to the field. These include, first and foremost, the critical edition, framed by a massive scholarly apparatus, that in 2011 created the conditions for the text to obtain a substantially renewed attention. The editor, Ernesto Rodrigues, claims that the Fastigínia, ‘our first epistolary novel’ (which he dates from as late as the 1620s), should be read as a key factor in creating a ‘renewed vision of the Portuguese narrative tradition’.1 He further argues that the Fastigínia also ‘decisively questions * A version of this study was presented in the form of a keynote lecture at the 3rd Anglo-Iberian Relations Conference: from the Medieval to the Modern (Oviedo, November 2019). 1 Rodrigues E. (ed.), Fastigínia, de Tomé Pinheiro da Veiga (Lisboa: 2011) XIII. My translation, as with any English versions of passages from the Fastigínia cited in the course of this essay. All citations will refer to Rodrigues’s edition. © RUI CARVALHO HOMEM, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_007 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 104 Carvalho Homem national identity’ by offering a glimpse into what it meant ‘to be Portuguese’ against a historical background of ‘Iberian and European fractures’.2 These arguments for the text’s singularity are accommodated but also extended below, as the basis for my broader claim that Pinheiro da Veiga’s text affords a set of insights into the relational mechanisms that shape perceived identities in the larger Early Modern context. Other contributions to which this essay is indebted include the recent study of the 1605 events in Valladolid by Berta Cano-Echevarría and Mark Hutchings, especially as regards their emphasis on ‘the semiotics of protocol’, ‘the theatricality of diplomatic ceremonial’ – as also their constructivist claim that ‘rituals of performance’ are not ornaments, but rather of the ‘essence’ of diplomacy.3 However, my focus on Pinheiro da Veiga’s pointedly Portuguese perspective on the events in Valladolid – which in 1601 had become the seat of the Spanish court and government, and hence ‘the cultural center of Spain’4 – amounts to adding a tertium, a third and unbalancing element to Cano-Echevarría and Hutchings’s characterisation of the Anglo-Spanish ceremonies, in their ‘symmetry and reciprocity’, as a ‘two-legged affair’.5 Additionally and in broader terms, the manner in which this study accommodates but also departs from several recent studies of Early Modern diplomacy cited below (Hampton, Adams and Cox, de Carles) will reflect my choice of object, which is not so much the events represented in the Fastigínia as Pinheiro da Veiga’s text itself – a hybrid (literary, political) artefact, and one that provides a solid argument for the constitutive mutuality of text and event. A few preliminary, informative notes on a little-known text: the Fastigínia is made of three main parts, centred respectively on the events that surrounded the prince’s birth (Part I), the author’s impressions of the city after the (temporary) departure of the king (Part II), and a ‘description, and natural and moral history of Valladolid’ (Part III, my translation). These are preceded by a few ostensible paratexts – a ‘proemium’, a ‘dedication’, an ‘author’s protestation’, a ‘prelude’ – serving a set of informative and rhetorical purposes. Such purposes include establishing an authorial persona, ‘Turpin’, named after the early medieval archbishop of Reims who featured as one of Charlemagne’s 2 Rodrigues, Fastigínia XIII. 3 Cano-Echevarría B. – Hutchings M., “Valladolid 1605: A theatre for the Peace”, in Mulryne J.R. – De Jonge K. – Morris R. (eds.), Occasions of State: Early Modern European Festivals and the Negotiation of Power (London: 2019) 93–108, here 93. 4 Ungerer G., “Juan Pantoja de la Cruz and the Circulation of Gifts between the English and Spanish Courts in 1604/5”, Shakespeare Studies 26 (1998) 145–186, here 146. 5 Cano-Echevarría – Hutchings, “Valladolid 1605” 94. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 105 knights in the Chanson de Roland (and a character also invoked in an oft-cited passage of Don Quixote).6 For most of this essay I will be focusing on Part I, the ‘Filipestreia’, which combines a description of the festive moments that followed the royal birth with vignettes of a rich social and political scenario that included visits by foreign dignitaries. The most prominent of these was the already-mentioned English embassy, a seven-hundred-strong party led by the Lord High Admiral of England and Earl of Nottingham, Charles Howard, the main purpose of which was to confirm the Anglo-Spanish peace that had been signed the previous year (1604) with the Treaty of London (following the so-called Somerset House conference). Pinheiro da Veiga’s descriptions of how visitors and hosts interacted are couched in the voice of his jocular and extravagant ‘Turpin’ persona, which, through recognizable references to personal experience, retains a strong authorial implication. His narrative clearly reflects his substantial experience as a Crown official,7 and reads like a garrulous and irreverent version of a detailed account of an administrative or political mission, or indeed of a diplomatic report. Pinheiro da Veiga’s motley rhetoric reminds us that the Fastigínia emerges from a time in European political and institutional history that saw the rise of diplomacy as a distinctive career, ‘an art and practice of representation’ (in the various senses of the word),8 and one that increasingly hinged on the ability to narrativise the relations between states, construed in the guise of interpersonal relations.9 Additionally, the text’s hybridity in genre and register contributes to making it a self-mocking confirmation of those ‘rhetorical and textual skills’ that were increasingly required of Early Modern officials in (para-)diplomatic functions, expected as they were to submit reports that were 6 On Turpin as a ‘formidable figure’, who proves ‘a paragon of chivalry […] while remaining an archbishop’, but also (from his historical outset) ‘a fictional character’, see Gerrard D.M., The Church at War: The Military Activities of Bishops, Abbots and Other Clergy in England, c.900–1200 (Abingdon: 2017). Archbishop Turpin’s role as a chronicler of the achievements of Charlemagne’s paladins makes him an obvious object for Pinheiro da Veiga’s satirical appropriation of his name for the ostensible author of an extensive report on his and his Portuguese associates’ sojourn in Valladolid. Further, for such an appropriation, he could have found a tempting precedent, and one very close to him in time, in Don Quixote’s address to a curate as ‘Archbishop Turpin’ in chapter VII of Cervantes’s novel. 7 Rodrigues, Fastigínia LXX–XCVI. 8 Craigwood J., “Sidney, Gentili, and the Poetics of Embassy”, in Adams R. – Cox R. (eds.), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Houndmills – New York: 2011) 82–100, here 82. 9 Hampton T., Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: 2009) 2–3, 7, 23. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 106 Carvalho Homem sometimes focused, solemn and reserved, sometimes outspoken or verbose and ‘more bluntly worded’.10 Among other things, the Fastigínia is a verbal iconoclasm that disguises its author’s concern for accuracy – and the reliability of his narrative – under the self-disparaging rhetoric of someone whose declared intent is merely to leave a memoir for his grandchildren to read at leisure, one day, on some ‘sunlit doorstep’.11 Even while it reveals its author’s alertness to voices and viewpoints from the street, the text’s dominant tone is learned rather than popular, as shown by the wealth and variety of its citations, with a strong input from Classical and Italian Renaissance sources – as ‘Turpin’ plays the role of a ‘literary picaro’ who has privileged access to the most exclusive circles.12 Its proneness to pinpointing the risible downside to solemn circumstances suggests a strong affinity with iconoclastic writings from the humanist tradition of a century earlier (cited sources include Thomas More).13 The breadth of its references enriches the author’s ability to explore his main focus on how the Spanish and the Portuguese viewed and represented themselves mutually, while this duality is sometimes challenged and problematized by the narrative’s regular consideration of third partners, other foreigners encountered or observed in Valladolid. These prominently include the English visitors, who provide both a gauge of the uncertainties and perplexities that envelop the persona’s outspoken views, and a tertium comparationis that lends density and complexity to his otherwise polarized remarks. Such general conditions also suggest that reading the Fastigínia from perspectives informed by imagology (or ‘image studies’) may prove especially productive – and this for both historical and structural reasons.14 Historically, Pinheiro da Veiga’s account hails from precisely that moment in European history that saw a delineation and consolidation of perceived identities, or rather of set notions arising from the variety of European cultures and communities. As argued by Joep Leerssen in one of his studies of these processes, 10 11 12 13 14 Stewart A., “Francis Bacon’s Bi-literal Cipher and the Materiality of Early Modern Diplomatic Writing”, in Adams R. – Cox R. (eds.), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Houndmills – New York: 2011) 120–137, here 120, 122. Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigínia 6. Rodrigues, Fastigínia CXCVII. Rodrigues highlights Pinheiro da Veiga’s ‘rare humanistic culture’ (2011: LXXIV and passim) and discusses the elements of ‘carnivalesque nonsense’ in the Fastigínia (CXCII–III); and his introductory chapters and notes on the text identify a very broad range of sources (a list is provided on CCXXV–VI), including a fair share of satirical writing, accommodated in textual practices that ‘often operate parodically’ (CXCIV). Beller M. – Leerssen J. (eds.), Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters – A Critical Survey (Amsterdam – New York: 2007). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 107 In the course of the late sixteenth century and the seventeenth century, a systematization took shape in European attitudes toward nationality, whereby character traits and psychological dispositions were distributed in a fixed division among various ‘nations’.15 Indeed, with a concurrent impulse from the rise of vernaculars and a sharper awareness of territories and borders, Europe was organizing itself into statehood, at the same time as ‘cultural thought on the diversity of the world was beginning to systematize’.16 This entailed that a discursive and argumentative habit of ‘arrang[ing] moral praise and blame into patterns’ acquired particular favour in the period, and, gradually, ‘the notion of [national] character [became] the primary way of sorting out human and cultural differences’.17 A historicised awareness of such tendencies in Early Modern discourses on national identity has converged, conceptually, with the awareness within image studies of the heuristic value of ‘[extrapolating] structural or at least invariant factors […] from the changeable mechanism of character attribution’.18 National representations are thus seen to show homologies and recurrent traits that allow for a delineation of patterns to become intellectually convincing to present-day readers, and I will be arguing that this perception is substantiated by any reading of the Fastigínia that proves alert to the comparative tropes energizing the narrative. Most of what follows will reflect two further assumptions, again arising from notions that have been current in the humanities and social sciences since the final quarter of the twentieth century, while proving their operativity in readings of Early Modern discourses on identity: (i) an understanding that the images in question are discursively constituted rather than ‘found’, i.e. ‘that national identities are constructs’; and (ii) a concomitant perception that the representations in question derive their cogency from operating in a relational – and often, indeed, antithetical – manner, from ‘the interplay between an auto-image and a hetero-image’, ‘the latent presence of its possible opposite’, ‘a polarity between self and Other’.19 15 16 17 18 19 Leerssen J., “The Rhetoric of National Character: A Programmatic Survey”, Poetics Today 21, 2 (Summer 2000) 267–292, here 272. Leerssen J., National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam: 2006) 55. Ibidem 57, 62. Leerssen, “The Rhetoric of National Character” 275. Ibidem 275, 279–80, 271. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 108 2 Carvalho Homem Exhilaration, Trauma: a Note on Portugal and Its Defining Elsewheres Not by coincidence, but rather as a reflection of a shared intellectual environment, the relational nexus underpinning discourses of identity is explicitly invoked in recent discussions of Portuguese culture, especially when read against the defining elsewheres it has encountered through history. Eduardo Lourenço, possibly the country’s best-known ‘public intellectual’ of the past half century,20 is explicit in this regard, when he states in the opening paragraphs of an essay entitled ‘Portugal as Destiny’ that ‘just as is the case for individuals, identity is defined only in relation to the other’.21 And Lourenço proceeds to remind his readers of the particular historical contents of that relationality by pointing out that medieval Portugal was ‘obliged to define itself in opposition simultaneously to the neighbouring kingdom of Castile and Leon and to the Moslem presence occupying space that would become Portuguese space’.22 The country’s pride in this agonistically defined separateness and discrete identity generated its own discursive history, buttressed by a few key narratives: how independence was wrested from Castile-León still in the first half of the twelfth century; how Portugal’s territory gained its (nearly) definitive contours as early as the thirteenth century; and how the country rose to the challenge to its independence posed by the dynastic crisis of 1383–1385, towards the end of which the Castilian bid for the Portuguese crown was defeated in the battle of Aljubarrota – another watershed moment in Iberian history.23 For a historical memory grounded in a sense of defining relations, and for the purposes of this particular essay, the late fourteenth-century crisis and its outcomes carry a particular significance on two counts: (i) they obtained a fundamental textualization in the chronicles of Fernão Lopes (vivid recorder and indeed narrativizer of a critical historical moment, construed by himself and generations of readers as decisive for the process of national definition);24 20 21 22 23 24 For a recent discussion of the resonance obtained by the phrase ‘(public) intellectual’ respectively in Anglophone and continental European cultures, see Rawson C., “The last intellectual: Claude Rawson on the fertile mind of Lionel Trilling”, Times Literary Supplement (December 14 2018) np; digital edition. Lourenço E., This Little Lusitanian House: Essays on Portuguese Culture, ed. and trans. R.W. Sousa (Providence, RI: 2003) 27–28. Ibidem 29, my emphasis. Mattoso J. – Sousa A., A Monarquia Feudal (1096–1480), in José Mattoso (gen. ed.), História de Portugal, vol. 2. (n.p.: 1993) passim. For reasons that include the perceived relevance of the historical material but also the narrative zest of the chronicler, Lopes’s chronicles have consistently been among the Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 109 and (ii) the relational nexus involved a third party that played a consistent role in establishing the content and direction of intra-Iberian relations. This third party was England, since (reflecting particular ambitions) English forces aided the Portuguese side in the Luso-Castilian struggle of 1383–1385 and especially in the decisive battle. This convergence was to be confirmed and sealed by dynastic union (Philippa of Lancaster became Queen of Portugal on her marriage to the victorious King John I) and political partnership – through the Treaty of Windsor of 1386, that bound the two states in the longest-lived (still extant) alliance.25 Any reading of the Fastigínia has to take into account those developments of two centuries earlier, but also – and fundamentally – the consequences of the union of the crowns from 1580, when (following the much-mythologized disappearance of the Portuguese King Sebastian on a North African battlefield in 1578) another dynastic crisis eventuated in Philip II of Spain becoming also King of Portugal (as Philip I). Again, the contours and consequences of this crisis acquired Anglo-Iberian implications, since in the first few years following the 1580 crisis the English crown (under Elizabeth) supported a rival Portuguese pretender to the throne, Dom António. This substantiated the perception that, with regard to Peninsular matters, Elizabeth’s much vaunted ‘balance of power’ policy included continuing support for Portugal, in the name of a by then two-century-old alliance, balanced against the increasing drive of Spain as a major power of the age. The shifts introduced by James I after the 1603 accession famously involved an alternative positioning as regards major continental powers, prominently including an approximation to Spain – the ultimately failed strategy that years later was to find its best-known episode in a projected dynastic marriage, ‘the Spanish match’ (1614–1623).26 By 1605, a full quarter of a century had passed on the union of the Iberian crowns, but merely two years since James’s English accession and one year on the Somerset House conference. Such contextual implications (arising both from the more distant and the more recent developments) could hardly be 25 26 earliest primary records in Portuguese historiography presented as mandatory reading in schools. The texts are digitally available in historical editions from the Portuguese National Library at http://purl.pt/index/Geral/aut/PT/39569.html. Mattoso – Sousa, A Monarquia Feudal passim. The overview of key historical events and developments in the paragraphs above, with a particular bearing on late medieval to early modern Portugal, is common knowledge, and too broad to be sustained by detailed referencing; useful general references include Mattoso and Sousa 1993 and Magalhães 1993. For a recent study of the Iberian and global implications of the Spanish match, see Caldari V., The End of the Anglo-Spanish Match in Global Context,1617–1624 (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade do Porto: 2015). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 110 Carvalho Homem missed by a Portuguese witness to the events in Valladolid, all the more so when the observer and impromptu chronicler was as close to the royal administration and the realities of early modern statecraft as Pinheiro da Veiga undoubtedly was.27 Such an observer would have come of age, as regards his immersion in Portuguese public life, in an environment largely shaped by the discourses of exceptionalism and providentialism fostered by the history of Luso-Castilian relations – but would also have fully absorbed the extent to which such discourses were challenged by the perceived watershed of 1580. A decisive consequence of this perception was (as again pointed out by Lourenço) that ‘the Portuguese read in a highly dramatic way the forced union with Spain and the political subjugation that that union represented’; and Portugal, in the decades that followed (and prior to the ‘Restoration’, in 1640, of a Portuguese dynasty on the Portuguese throne), gradually ‘flowed back into itself, changing from a glorious imperial island to a lost island on which it awaited the resurrection of its past’.28 The contrasts arising from such representations of the country’s historical plight indeed entailed that, as noted in a recent thesis, the period of dual monarchy ‘was considered by early modern Portuguese as comparable to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews’.29 In other words, the tendency to exalt that glorious past, and to endow it with exemplary value for the supposed virtues of the Portuguese nation, meant that the post1580 circumstances were inevitably perceived and represented in Portugal as an unmitigated disaster and disgrace, which fostered attitudes of national selfdenigration and self-commiseration.30 This sense of an epoch-making shift, and the ensuing political malaise, had to affect the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, when viewed from the westernmost tip of the Peninsula: if the English had been fundamental partners in securing the persistence of Portuguese independence in earlier contexts, they could now be seen entering agreements with the major power (Spain) against which they had previously set themselves. 3 Containment, Exuberance: the Allure of National Stereotypes The shadows of a dysphoric historical juncture can occasionally be glimpsed behind Pinheiro da Veiga’s loquaciousness (through his Turpin persona). More often than not he comes across as a weathered, largely sceptical observer who 27 28 29 30 Rodrigues, Fastigínia LXX–XCVI. Lourenço, This Little Lusitanian House 36. Caldari, The End of the Anglo-Spanish Match 134. Real M., Introdução à Cultura Portuguesa (Lisboa: 2010) 41. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 111 is certainly familiar with the pieties of Portuguese historical pessimism – though immersed enough in the realities of power under the dual monarchy to put them in perspective. For over two decades, after all, ‘members of the Portuguese elite had journeyed to the imperial court in quest of recognition and promotion’, bidding for favour, trying ‘their fortunes in the complex game of faction, patronage, and alliance that defined court politics’.31 The Fastigínia shows its persona incessantly demonstrating how adept he is at the various activities brought to him by life at court (occasionally on its periphery), and with varying degrees of immersion in the life of the town. The text’s many entries and episodes illustrate the opportunities afforded by access to exclusive circles, witnessing the actions of royal figures at close range;32 they record intriguing encounters with variously positioned players in public life,33 and regularly feature flirtatious exchanges with ladies, revealing an undisguised pride in Turpin’s repartee34 and his skills at the even more complex endeavour of penning a decent love sonnet.35 The range and flexibility of his activities also suggest a measure of freedom that an agent on a more definite mandate might not enjoy. Indeed, though in Valladolid on state business, Pinheiro da Veiga binds the physical and social itineraries of his authorial persona to a spontaneity that indicates he would hardly have to ‘follow [a] script to the letter’,36 as might be the case of representatives with a narrower remit; and for this element of relative independence, which is somehow replicated in the studied ramblings of his narrative, it would not be indifferent that he was travelling (as often happened in the period with diplomatic staff) ‘at his own cost, with considerable expense’.37 As suggested above, the verbal agility that Pinheiro da Veiga crafts for Turpin is consistently employed to reveal contrasts between the Portuguese and the Spanish. The overarching trope in this regard, easily identifiable as the structural centrepiece to the exploration of national images in the Fastigínia, is that which sets Castilian exuberance up against Portuguese containment. At its most general, it involves the material conditions that structure life in both 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 Studnicki-Gizbert D., A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640 (Oxford: 2007) 125. Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigínia 19, 78–79. Ibidem 22, 47–48, 122–124. Ibidem 31–32, 34–38, 72, 118–120, 131–133. Ibidem 48–49, 94–96. Cano-Echevarría – Hutchings, “Valladolid 1605” 95. Rodrigues, Fastigínia LXXII. For the financial hardships faced by Early Modern diplomatic staff, who often had to cover their expenses from personal fortune, see Mattingly G., Renaissance Diplomacy (1955) (New York: 1988) 201–203. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 112 Carvalho Homem countries, at the interface between nature and nurture; but the duality easily prompts moral judgements, and these certainly contribute to the favour enjoyed by notions of ‘character’, at this moment in history, when it comes to representing national profiles. Such is the case with a passage from the entry for 26 May, when, apropos the itinerary of the English embassy on entering Valladolid, the speaker remarks on the width and evenness of roads and paths in Castile: e, assim, são os mais dos caminhos de Castela, […] e isto em toda a Castela Nova e Velha, que diz bem com a fome dos nossos atalhos e silveiras, que é necessário andar de ilharga, e nem o Batista sei como poderia atinar a endireitar estes caminhos e carreiras, que até neles se vê a estreiteza de nossos corações.38 [and thus it is with most pathways in Castile, […] and indeed in all of New and Old Castile, which nicely matches the famine of our own shortcuts or rather thorny wildernesses, where you have to walk sideways, and not even the Baptist could straighten such paths and trails, in which one can see how narrow our hearts are.]39 This passage is exemplary in more than one sense: it epitomises Pinheiro da Veiga’s comparative strategy (through the voice of his persona) and proposes that the landscape matches national character in a revealing way, thus teaching by example as it shows the ground’s morally reflective shapes. This understanding that the land reveals the character of the people operates irrespective of whether it rests on a causal link – the effect of the people’s [in]action over the land – or rather on a ‘natural’ affinity – suggesting that every national group will get the land that it deserves. The latter possibility informs the bitter irony that pervades the passage (that sarcastic diagnosis of a nice ‘match’ between the two countries’ terrain) and a certain fatalism in this instance of early seventeenth-century Portuguese self-denigration: after all, the speaker, despite the ease with which he moves about in a Castilian environment, never allows his readers at this stage to doubt that his use of ‘we’ finds him acknowledging his Portuguese identity. 38 39 Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigínia 70. The biblical reference in this passage concerns Isaiah 40.3: ‘The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God’. Also Mark 1.3, Matthew 3.3, Luke 3.4, John 1.23. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 113 This acknowledgement is at its bitterest when the trope of exuberance vs containment (or modesty) is turned on its head to mock the pettiness and pretentiousness of the Portuguese nobility – almost as if the remit of the Turpin persona included offering a negative counterpart to that historical narrative of a Portuguese greatness at odds with the country’s territorial smallness. A rollcall of the top echelons of the Spanish nobility is thus followed, early in the text, by the remark: ‘our counts and marquesses claim that they are grandees, because they covered themselves when in front of kings, but they are not admitted to the presence’;40 and, right at the end of the Filipestreia, the entry dated 23 June includes a note on how ordinary Portuguese gentlemen were going about masked in Valladolid, as if they were great ones travelling incognito, whereas the grandees would be seen driving around under no disguise – which prompts the acknowledgement that ‘the Castilians are right in mocking our pride and vanity’.41 Combined with similar passages elsewhere in the text, this indicates the satirical treatment that Pinheiro da Veiga, the experienced official and representative, was ready to give to that ‘pointless squabbling’ over precedence and position which often emerges in descriptions of the pompous behaviour of both aristocrats and diplomatic staff in the period.42 It is also significant that the reflection above on the wide vistas of Castile, by contrast with the narrowness of Portugal, is prompted by the arrival of the English embassy, a third party that the Spanish hosts are intent on welcoming with comfort and stateliness – as if the Portuguese observer were suddenly embarrassed by a sense of how much more difficult it would have been to prepare an adequately dignified entrance (of none other than the ‘old Allies’) in his own environment. This particular triangulation will be approached in greater detail below, but other third parties are indeed cited at different points in the Fastigínia, confirming the Portuguese observer’s intense awareness of a broader world out there, sometimes involving exotic presences or allusions, imperial ambitions and rivalries. The entry for 4 May notes the arrival at the palace of ‘three or four very well-dressed and bejewelled Moorish women’,43 apparently a gift from an Italian privateer to the Duke of Lerma; and 15 May is marked by a sorry incident, the murder of the Persian ambassador, the contours of which include racial and sectarian hatred – an episode that obtains a rather shocked response from the Portuguese observer, who refuses to believe the apparent 40 41 42 43 Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigínia 20. Ibidem 201. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy 197, 218. Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigínia 60. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 114 Carvalho Homem slander that had been put about to justify the violent killing of the diplomat.44 But a much less sombre emergence of the exotic in this account, and one that resumes the trope of contrasts that bring out Castilian grandeur, occurs in the entry for 3 June. In it the persona describes the fine horses and tack (harnesses, bridles) to be seen on one of the many festive occasions of those days, and hails Castilian wealth by comparing it – in this case – to a fabled, exotic, and (in the recent geopolitics of Europe) adversarial power: De sorte que […] se podiam ver duas coisas juntas em uma hora, que pode ser que nem na corte do Grão-Turco se pudessem juntar em muitas semanas, que são trezentos cavalos e ginetes tão formosos e trezentos jaezes bordados, e muitos de aljôfar, no que se vê bem que a riqueza da Espanha é, hoje, a maior que há no mundo.45 [And it so happened that […] one could see two things together in one hour that maybe not even at the Court of the Grand Turk might come together in many weeks, which were three hundred so handsome horses and steeds showing three hundred embroidered trappings, and many edged with pearls, in which one can well see that Spain’s wealth is today the greatest in the world.] In an account that so often invokes a Portuguese foil, the intra-Iberian comparison here remains implicit, but is nonetheless active in the broader context of Pinheiro da Veiga’s text. There are passages, however, in which the Portuguese view of those grand events gains a critical distance, almost a censorious tone, like the downside to an otherwise admiring stance. This becomes manifest, in fact, from the first celebratory signs of the prince’s birth, when the bells rang through the night of Holy Friday: e logo se publicou a nova, tocando, tocando os sinos toda a noite: o que os portugueses estranhámos, porque nos pareceu fora de tempo esta alegria, na noite em que a Igreja celebra tão diferentes exéquias, e a tão diferente príncipe; mas os castelhanos, nestas matérias, não guardam o nosso respeito e modéstia.46 44 45 46 Ibidem 63–64. Ibidem 111. Ibidem 28. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 115 [and the news was promptly announced, with the bells ringing and ringing all night: which we, the Portuguese, found strange and untimely, on a night in which the Church observes such distinct rites, honouring such a different prince; but the Castilians, on these matters, do not keep the same respect and modesty.] Such reservations, however, are quickly revised, as the speaker seems to give in to an acceptance of the apparent emotional authenticity of the Spaniards in their celebrations: a alegria universal de grandes e pequenos, em que se deixava ver o excesso com que os espanhóis amam o seu príncipe, vendo chorar com alegria até as regateiras; e natural e exteriormente se via no rosto de todos a alegria com que se davam os parabens.47 [the universal jubilation of high and low, revealing the excess with which the Spaniards love their prince, since even the streetsellers could be seen weeping with joy; a joy that was naturally and outwardly expressed on the faces of all, as they greeted one another.] The ambivalence that transpires from these passages, coming as they do from consecutive paragraphs, includes an element of self-disparagement, the acknowledgement of an emotional containment that is implicitly balanced against that diagnosis of a Spanish alacrity or emotional ‘excess’ and at times found wanting. Later moments in the text suggest that such ambivalence indeed includes an endorsement of possibly the longest-lived trait in a Portuguese national stereotype – that of a supposed inclination towards an undefinable sadness or melancholy, otherwise known through the Portuguese word ‘saudade’. The first recorded set of remarks on this supposed national trait belongs within a treatise dating from nearly two centuries earlier, the Leal Conselheiro [Loyal Advisor] by King Duarte (the eldest son and heir of John I and Philippa of Lancaster), who in a much-cited passage first employed the word suydade, declaring it particular to Portuguese (he had not found its origin or equivalent in Latin or any other language) and theorising it as reflecting a tension between yearning and recollection.48 In a self-reflective passage of the 47 48 Ibidem 28. The passage in question can be found in chapter XXV of the Leal Conselheiro: Duarte, King of Portugal, Leal Conselheiro [1437–1438], ed. J. Dionísio (n.p.: 2012), available at http:// digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/IbrAmerTxt.LealConsel (last accessed 30 March 2020). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 116 Carvalho Homem Fastigínia, the ostensible candour of which suggests that the persona’s authorial implication may be at its strongest, the speaker admits he needed to curb a tendency to indulge in what a later age might describe as a culturally specific sadness: Como eu, neste tempo, andava receando a quaresma da melancolia de Portugal, que se me vinha chegando, folgava em dar um entrudo aos olhos;49 [As, in those days, I was in fear of that Lent of the melancholy of Portugal, which kept haunting me, I indulged myself by providing a Carnival for my eyes;] This solace takes the generic shape of noting in great detail all that surrounds him – which causally binds the production of his detailed account to the need to keep his ‘melancholy of Portugal’ at bay; but it quickly becomes more specific: e, assim, me chegava com curiosidade a notar tudo. E, chegando a uma roda de senhoras junto de um altar, vi que uma dizia às outras: – Hermanas, quieren que hagamos una locura? Vamos a ver comer el embajador y su inglesía?50 [and I would thus, with curiosity, take note of everything. And, as I approached a company of ladies close to an altar, I heard one say to the others: (in Spanish) ‘Hermanas, quieren que hagamos una locura? Vamos a ver comer el embajador y su inglesía?’ / Sisters, shall we do something wild? Shall we go and watch the Ambassador and his English crowd at their dinner?] As a much-needed distraction, ‘Turpin’ promptly follows them in their socially bold foray – which will also provide an opportunity to acquaint himself and his readers with ‘the manner in which they [the English] ate, and how they were served and accommodated, and how much that cost the king’,51 the details of which cover several pages. In summary: a Portuguese melancholy is redressed by following Spanish ladies as they venture into the palace where the huge 49 50 51 Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigínia 160. Ibidem. Ibidem 161. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 117 English party are lodged and take their meals. And, indeed, ‘noting’ the behaviour of women in Valladolid and the particularities of the English embassy are crucial components of the relational design that informs the Fastigínia. 4 Significant Others: of Women and Foreigners The entry for 13 June offers a close description of the ladies’ self-assured behaviour throughout their visit to the English party, who were halfway through their meal, and records their witty dialogue with the Lord High Admiral. The latter responds with chivalry to their arrival – showing a flattering but decorous interest in seeing their faces (they wear veils at first), insisting on standing once he notes their presence (in which he is followed by the other English gentlemen), offering them his cup (which they accept), and gallantly joining their repartee. As regards the Admiral’s reported demeanour and that of his group, this episode, centring as it does on interactions between Iberians and their English visitors, rather pointedly confirms the stereotypical expectations that the Turpin persona jokingly cites prior to the English embassy’s arrival, when he describes the crowd that gathered to watch them enter the city, a crowd that included a great number of ladies: começou a acudir tanta gente e tantos coches, […] com que se fazia uma vista formosíssima […], porque quase todos eram de damas, que o queriam parecer aos Galvões e Lançarotes, para que não tivessem saudades das suas Genebras, Iseus Labrundas, […] trazendo quantas jóias, cordões e anéis têm.52 [many people started gathering and so many carriages, […] which made for a most handsome sight, […] because almost all of them carried ladies keen on showing their beauties to the Gawains and Lancelots, so that they would not miss their Guineveres and Iseult la Blondes, […] loaded with all the jewels, chains and rings they have.] Through the gallant response of the English, the later episode seems to validate the expectation attributed by Turpin to the Spanish ladies that such visitors should be like Arthurian knights; while the daring initiative in visiting the embassy also reiterates the ladies’ keenness in showing themselves off to the 52 Ibidem 70. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 118 Carvalho Homem English, as if to test their own power to indeed emulate the Arthurian paragons of female beauty. Further, this Anglo-Spanish interaction also leads to reflections that explicitly concern the Portuguese perspective on themselves vis-à-vis the Spanish, prompting in fact the clearest and most outspoken occurrence of the text’s repeated remarks on what the observer sees as a huge contrast between socially sanctioned behaviour of women respectively in Spain and Portugal. After reporting on the ladies’ social graces, their show of wit, and their no less elegant exit, Turpin remarks: Isto se terá em Portugal por soltura e leviandade; mas, suposto ser em corte, e nesta ocasião, pergunto: estas senhoras em que ofenderam a Deus, ou ao próximo, ou à sua opinião? Elas folgam, fazem esta honra aos estrangeiros, que as estimaram muito; tornam-se a suas casas. Folgara em saber onde está o mal desta facilidade e lhaneza, tão contrária à hipocrisia e cativeiro de Portugal, que, como se as mulheres não foram nossas irmãs e filhas de nossos pais, nem foram cristãs e bichinhos que bolem e sabem falar, as queremos fazer animais irracionais e brutos feros, e que não vejam, nem falem, e metê-las, como leões, em cisternas.53 [In Portugal this will be seen as loose and light behaviour; but let us assume this is a court of law and I ask, on this occasion: in what have these ladies offended God, or one’s neighbour, or their reputation? They enjoy themselves, extend this honour to the foreigners, who have much appreciated it; and they return to their homes. I would much like to know where the evil resides in this ease and courtesy, so contrary to the hypocrisy and captivity of Portugal, where, as if women were not our sisters and the daughters of our parents, nor Christians and animated and speaking little beasts, we want to make them irrational, brutish, feral animals that will neither see nor speak, and enclose them, like lions, in cisterns.] This denunciation recurs throughout the Fastigínia, though with varying degrees of assertiveness and – characteristically in this text – with a measure of ambivalence in the normative assumptions and ethical judgement that envelop these gendered perceptions. In the passage above, even the mock-judicial strategy of defence in the face of an accusation indicates the author’s awareness that he is entering a well-trodden terrain – that of discussions on women’s nature and social roles, and on their presence in domestic and public spaces, which punctuated late medieval and early modern cultures in the form of 53 Ibidem 164. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 119 conduct books, treatises and pamphlets, with a regularity that reveals the topic’s perceived relevance and necessity.54 This is a tradition that the author of the Fastigínia consciously taps into, but his text, which cannibalises distinct genres and rhetorical strategies, and has been described as suggesting (from its title) ‘a kind of galimatias’,55 is not a treatise nor a series of pamphlets. Hence, Turpin’s exculpation of that group of ladies for their foray (which he portrays as characteristic of Spanish mores) and his indictment of Portuguese husbands and fathers for their perceived tyranny do not entail a wholesale celebration of gender relations and womanly virtues in Spain: after all, that early boutade on Spanish ladies yearning to play Guinevere or Iseult to the English visitors could not but remind readers that those legendary Arthurian women were not just paragons of beauty, but also sexually transgressive figures. And, indeed, just a few pages on from his vocal decrying of Portuguese gender attitudes, the persona is claiming the authority of a balanced view of polarised options, refusing to offer an unmitigated endorsement of Spanish liberality, and curiously troping the alternatives as distinct monastic rules for women: ‘I approve neither the fact that in Castile they are Beguines, nor that in Portugal they are Carthusians’.56 Turpin’s ambivalence, though, does not necessarily involve treading the middle ground (that urge to compromise that is proper to diplomacy as ‘an art of peace’ or ‘appeasement’57), but rather, in a number of cases, alternating between nationally defined sympathies. He has only contempt for what he 54 55 56 57 The textual record of such discussions has obtained significant attention in recent scholarship, with a particular focus on the so-called ‘querelle des femmes’ and its processing within humanistic culture. For a brief overview of the issues it raises, see the general introduction to the series ‘The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe’, a series that includes an English edition of the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives’s The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual, ed. and trans. C. Fantazzi (Chicago – London: 2000) ix–xxvii, especially xxiii–xxiv on ‘the problem of chastity’, xxv–xxvi on ‘the problem of speech’, and xxvi–xxvii on ‘the other voice’. For a general study of early modern perceptions of women, organised into ‘Body’, ‘Mind’ and ‘Spirit’, see Wiesner-Hanks M.E., Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: 2008) especially 174–205 (on ‘Women and the Creation of Culture’) and 276–301 (on ‘Gender and Power’). See also the various issues of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal – https://acmrs.org/publica tions/journals/emw/about (last accessed 01/01/2019) – and the sustained activity of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, http://ssemw.org/ (both sites last accessed 01/01/2019). I.e., ‘a. Confused language, meaningless talk, nonsense’, ‘b. […] A mixture, medley’ (Oxford English Dictionary online). Rodrigues, Fastigínia CXCVII. Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigínia 167. Carles N.R. (ed.), “The Poetics of Diplomatic Appeasement in the Early Modern Era”, Early Modern Diplomacy, Theatre and Soft Power: The Making of Peace (London: 2016) 1–23, here 3. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 120 Carvalho Homem acknowledges and describes as a Portuguese inclination to grope and harass women encountered in the public space, a practice that he notes as already a stereotypical trait of the Portuguese when viewed from Spain: E é nestas ocasiões [festivas] que se vê bem a largueza dos corações da gente castelhana e a cortesia de todos, pois, em tanto encontro, tanto aperto e tanta liberdade, não há uma peleja, nem um matante ou picão dos nossos, que, como dizia uma castelhana, faça um mimo de Portugal, que é dar um beliscão, que leva meio braço ou a barriga da perna a uma pecadora, que vai manquejando meia hora, e, como se deram lançada a mouro, se vão gabar disso.58 [And it is on such [festive] occasions that one can see how warm-hearted the Castilian people are, and the courtesy of all, since in the course of so many encounters, with such a free-moving throng, no one will fight, and there will be none of those brawlers of ours who will give (in the words of a Castilian wench) a Portuguese caress, i.e. a pinch that will maim any woman in arm or leg leaving her hobbling for a good half hour, and the brawlers boasting about it as if they had speared a Moor.] This is a stereotype from which the Turpin persona takes care to extricate himself, and indeed to appear as a chivalrous protector of women who move about in public spaces, vindicating their right to do so while somehow making amends for his countrymen. This is especially in evidence in an episode recorded in the entry for 29 May, when he again contrasts ‘the courtesy and nobility of Castilians’ and ‘the ill nature of Portugal’ in this regard, and recounts how on a particular occasion he intervened when another Portuguese, who was with him, ‘not to lose his habit, started playing with his hands’; at which point the lady who was thus harassed vocally challenged the groper, also prompting Turpin to ‘make the peace’ between them and declare himself ‘her bondsman’.59 Against this, there are passages in the Fastigínia that depart from this particular polarity and indictment and have the Portuguese, collectively, pose either as the chivalrous party, or as the source of moral authority for a hostile judgement on women’s actions. The latter case emerges fairly early in the text, in the ‘Prelude’ focusing on solemnities that preceded Holy Week, and takes the form of a colourful and unashamedly misogynous account of a sermon 58 59 Pinheiro da Veiga, Fastigínia 31. Ibidem 91. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 121 for ‘public women’ (i.e. prostitutes). The episode describes how such women would ‘grimace and quarrel’ in church, making the occasion a source of ‘scandal’ rather than moral ‘profit’. It also includes the remark that such a sermon could with advantage be made before the whole Court – a blanket indictment (of all women at court as courtesans) of the kind that later passages in the text so vocally rebut. This is compounded by the anecdotal report that when any such ‘public women’ repent or ‘convert’, some of the noble ladies will take them in to find them husbands or another occupation – on which the persona comments (with approving sarcasm and the corresponding denigration of Spanish ladies) that ‘we’ (i.e. the Portuguese) believed rather that the noble ladies would be employing the loose women as their conniving ushers.60 As for the former case, when the Portuguese appear as the gallant ones, it revealingly involves third parties, which again help break that recurrent dual mould of Luso-Castilian comparisons. In the entry for 28 May, we learn that, in a courtyard where many were concentrated, trying to see as much of a certain reception as possible, a group of ladies were overheard complaining that some Genoese and other Italians had discourteously stood in front of them, preventing the ladies from coming forward and thus watching the proceedings. This creates an opportunity for the Turpin figure and another Portuguese gentleman to enjoy a social triumph by honouring the presence of the ladies, engaging again in a witty dialogue (in Castilian) with them, and eventually embarrassing those improbably discourteous foreigners (Castiglione’s countrymen, after all), the Italians, who choose to leave after a reminder of their unchivalrous behaviour makes their faces turn ‘three hundred colours’.61 5 Of Eros and Christ: Religion, Sex and the City 28 May marks one of those key moments in the Fastigínia when the web of judgements that it offers on the actions of individuals and groups is richer and more complex, less limited to the intra-Iberian dualities that otherwise prevail. For this particular entry, such complexity is largely due to the English visitors, whose audience with the queen on that day was the reason why so many people at court and on its social periphery (including the frustrated ladies and ‘those few Genoese and other Italians’) were competing for a viewing point. The initial expectation of chivalry (when the entry for 26 May jokingly referred to the English, in general, as ‘Gawains and Lancelots’) is validated by the 60 61 Ibidem 20–21. Ibidem 79. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 122 Carvalho Homem finesse of their behaviour when received by the queen. This is epitomised in the highly deferential manner of the Lord High Admiral and confirmed by the deportment of his followers, apparently adept at the erotics of diplomacy and cultural exchange – as recorded in a passage in which the Turpin persona does not hesitate to comment on the personal attributes of the various personages: Alguns dos ingleses principais se chegaram a falar e ver as damas, que lhes faziam muito agasalhado, principalmente a senhora D. Catalina da la Cerda, que é tão formosa como as mais são feias.62 [Some of the most prominent among the English then came over to see and talk to the ladies, who very much warmed to them, especially Doña Catalina da la Cerda, who is as beautiful as the rest are ugly.] Later passages acknowledge the elegance of the visitors at a variety of courtly activities, such as when ‘the ladies [danced] with the English, who all danced very well, […] so that everyone conceded to the foreigners in the dexterity and ease of their capering, even though they dance with less gravity than ours’63 – a passage in which it becomes unclear whether the first-person plural in this closing comparison refers to the Portuguese, or (jointly) to Iberians, here challenged by the visitors’ panache. The social graces shown by the English, however, seem to be rather grudgingly acknowledged, as the text is in fact punctuated by suggestions that they are ultimately noted for an imbalance between their imposing appearance and the refinement of their manners – once these are more carefully noted: São altos de corpo, conhecidamente, mais que nós, brancos e loiros, e trazem os cabelos como nazarenos, os mais deles até aos ombros; não há nenhum que não tenha formosíssimas mãos e as tratam com cuidado; em efeito, são gentis-homens, ainda que frios, desleixados e sombrios.64 [They are tall in body, recognisably taller than us, white and blonde, and they wear their hair like Nazarenes, most of them down to their shoulders; none of them will fail to have most handsome hands, that they carefully groom; indeed they are gentlemanly, albeit cold, negligent and sombre.] 62 63 64 Ibidem. Ibidem 181. Ibidem 168. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 123 The opportunity, mentioned above, to watch them as they had their meals also yields comments on the visitors’ appetite: ‘since they are (God bless them) tall and sturdy, more plates were constantly being brought’ .65 These observations, however, are more than just opportunities for the Portuguese observer to crack jokes at the expense of the visitors: they become his acknowledgement of a political choreography, with deep implications for how the balance of power is enacted and perceived by the main players and their audiences. A key dimension to the Anglo-Spanish rapport, as seen and annotated by this Portuguese spectator, is religion, inevitably considered against the broader context of a Europe divided by the Reformation. Indeed, the commentary that punctuates the extended description of the English visitors’ meal in the entry for 13 June hinges on a contrast between their otherwise gentlemanly behaviour and certain perceived lapses in their refinement. And this finds its revealing apex, indeed the raison d’être for the observer’s reservations regarding their social graces, in the absence of any religious observance from their table manners: Sentaram-se à mesa sem oração, nem lavar as mãos, nem comedimento algum, senão sentar e começar a comer. […] Acabada a comida, […] notei que nem benzem a mesa, nem dão graças a Deus.66 [They sat at the table with neither prayer, nor washing of hands, nor any form of restraint – they just sat down and started eating. […] When their meal was done, […] I noticed that they neither bless the table, nor give thanks to God.] Crucially for the relational design that organises national images throughout the Fastigínia (and crucially for my argument), it is this major area of difference that determines an emphatic shift in the persona’s use of first-person plural forms. Indeed, ‘we’ appears to be reserved for the Portuguese in those parts of the account that focus on Spanish mores, but it recognisably conjoins the Iberian Catholic identities whenever the object under discussion, contemplated with a sense of distance and wariness, is the (nominally Protestant) English embassy (‘they’). Their behaviour in all matters that are religious or may have a religious significance becomes the object of a scrutiny that appears to be energised by an intense curiosity, but also by wariness and mistrust. True, the persona’s prevalent 65 66 Ibidem 117. Ibidem 161–162. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 124 Carvalho Homem jocular tone is very clearly qualified by a sterner tone whenever religion is at stake, and not only towards the ‘heretic’ English. Curiosity about differences in religious attitude and practice marks the account from its very beginning, when the opening paragraph of the ‘Prelude’ vows to inform readers ‘of some of the particularities I have noted in the management and ceremony proper to the services this week, that differ from church custom in Portugal’.67 This leads to one of those segments of the text in which Portuguese containment, rather than being lambasted as tantamount to smallness and mediocrity, is in fact praised for proper Christian humility and temperance, set off by the stereotype of Spanish extroversion. Thus, preachers in Valladolid are described as ‘very discomposed on the pulpit, preaching like comedians’, ‘charlatans, loose in their words and even more so in their reasons’, contrasting with the ‘gravity, modesty’ of ‘good Portuguese preachers’;68 and the flagellations proper to Holy Week processions are decried as gratifying an un-Christian taste for gore: Seguiam-se logo outros quatrocentos disciplinantes […], e alguns deles com uma roseta (a que chamam abrojo), que lhes abre as costas. E afirmo que vi alguns levar postas de sangue coalhado de mais de arrátel, […] que me pareceu demasiada crueldade, e me escandalizou permitir-se tanto excesso.69 [There followed another four hundred penitents […], and some of them with a thorny point (that they call abrojo) cutting into their backs. And I can say that I have seen some with more than a pound […] of curdled blood, which seemed too much cruelty, and I found it a scandal that such excess should be permitted.] Whenever the English visitors are the object of attention, however, the attitude shifts from this consideration of Iberian differences to a wary observation of how the ‘heretics’ cope with the sustained presence of Catholic clerics, churches and their liturgies along their itineraries at court and around the city. The Portuguese observer’s pious credentials are stated from the outset when, in the entry for 26 May (which contains a description of the arrival of the embassy), he remarks: 67 68 69 Ibidem 15. Ibidem 21. Ibidem 17. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 125 São todos hereges sacramentários de diversas seitas rebeldes à Igreja romana; queira Deus não deixem alguma semente em Espanha os seus bons pregadores, de que me mostraram um bispo com o mesmo traje dos outros; depois, disseram que não era senão clérigo como os outros, que vêm principais, com a liberdade e dissolução da vida a que sempre se inclina a gente vadia, de que há tanta na corte. [they are all sacramental heretics of the various sects that have rebelled against the Roman Church; God forbid they leave any seed in Spain planted by their good preachers, of whom I was shown a bishop apparelled like the others; I was then told that he was just a clergyman like others in the embassy, some of whom of importance, practising that freedom and dissolution of life to which wayward people are always given, as so often seen at Court.] It is noticeable, however, that the expectation of an insurmountable (sectarian) otherness set by these initial remarks is gradually replaced by a tone of surprise, almost of glee at times, at how the English prove diplomatically adept at negotiating the potential politico-religious pitfalls throughout their visit, and indeed perform the gestures one would expect from ‘good Catholics’. In fact, the paragraph following the passage above includes the news that already in A Coruña (their port of entry in Spain) ‘countless of them had flocked to mass’, and the ambassador had been forced to send thirty of those back to the ship, as a warning to others; while, already in Valladolid, some were seen in church ‘uncovered’ (either out of devotion or ‘curiosity’), on which the author promises to report further.70 The Turpin persona reiterates his pleasure, in the entry for 29 May, at the sight of the most prominent among the English attending the procession and uncovering themselves on entering the church, while the ambassador (as befitted his diplomatic remit) ‘in all behaved prudently’;71 while the same entry includes the rumour that ‘many [among the English] went to the Holy Office to accuse themselves, and seek reconciliation with the Church’,72 with further news of conversions occurring in later entries (e.g. for the 15 June). The satisfaction he expresses in the face of such events is grounded in the perception that eternal damnation would be the penalty for their heresy, and ‘it was a pity to see such handsome people all go to hell’ (12 June; 157). However, his praise of the visitors’ religious stance is not all made of such 70 71 72 Ibidem 73. Ibidem 84. Ibidem 85. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 126 Carvalho Homem earnest, even sombre piety, since it also includes celebrating the ability shown by the English, as spectators to a stage play performed in their honour, to accommodate an incidental joke with a sectarian dimension – and this as further evidence of a diplomatic savoir-faire for which all of the nobility present (both English and Spanish) are commended. This gratulatory emphasis grows towards the end of the Filipestreia (its diary structure extends beyond the embassy only by five days) and culminates in a glowing assessment offered in the entry for 18 June. Turpin’s final appraisal stresses how pleasantly the visit unfolded, with no incidents, somewhat to his surprise, considering that it involved ‘seven hundred people, and English – who are the most presumptuous people in Europe – and heretics’.73 His assessment invokes, once again, national stereotypes, but in this case to signal how limited these can be in explaining human behaviour; and it privileges two areas – in line with main emphases of the whole Fastigínia: religion and sex. As regards the former, the English are again celebrated, despite their ‘heresies’, for having behaved throughout ‘as if they were Catholics’.74 As for the latter, Turpin notes that those seven hundred men spent twenty-two days in Valladolid and ‘it is said that in all that time they did not know any Castilian women, nor did the women give them occasion for that’75 – a record in abstinence that he notes with a sense of wonder. He credits the ambassador for this and much else: ‘Much is due to the admiral’s prudence’;76 above all, the author (through his persona) shows an understanding of how that restraint, involving both soul and body, was a triumph of diplomatic management and political competence that made the embassy, in his eyes, a major success. And this, as suggested above, against the odds – considering the potential for conflict posed by different identities multitudinously present in the space of the city in the course of those three weeks – and against the backdrop of a western Europe glimpsed in the process of rearranging its balance of power. 6 Epilogue – Les Uns et Les Autres Ultimately, the authorial identity that readers are left with after going through the Fastigínia is that of a meticulous observer and shrewd commentator. His garrulous and jocular manner provides a cover – sustained by the Turpin 73 74 75 76 Ibidem 187. Ibidem. Ibidem 187–188. Ibidem 187. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 127 persona and, indeed, by precedents in the humanist tradition – for discussing public matters in terms that could otherwise prove hazardous for a lifelong administrator and court official. As seen above, the text indeed balances its predominantly learned tenor (supported by regular citation of literary sources) against an outspoken, often brazen tone in its discussion of public and private actions of gentlemen and ladies about the court, including titled nobility. By fashioning it in this manner, Pinheiro da Veiga provides his readers with a privileged glimpse into the tastes, interests and concerns observed in the social circles (themselves diverse) that he claims to have entered during his stay in Valladolid. The pages above will hopefully have signalled the text’s power of fascination, grounded both in the author’s explicit and sustained appeal to ‘the superior attractiveness of gossip’77 – in other words, exploring the attractions of the incidental, unique and particular – and in his converse deployment of general notions about the national groups that he sees interacting during his stay, and revealing themselves in the process. The Fastigínia therefore becomes a key delineation of some of those national images (both auto- and hetero-) the inception of which, as regards European cultures, imagologists have dated from precisely the Early Modern period; and, in Pinheiro da Veiga’s account, such images manifest themselves relationally, as representations of the Portuguese, Spanish and English exhibit their mutually defining power. A central conclusion afforded by the reading above is precisely that the relational patterns into which Pinheiro da Veiga’s observations recognisably fall become the text’s major heuristic device, allowing issues of gender, religion and power (especially in its symbolic and performative dimensions) to emerge as intriguingly as they do. This is where the presence of the English embassy finds its impact, introducing complexities in the author’s evident pleasure (at times, one feels, a self-directed Schadenfreude) in pursuing the otherwise prevalent duality involving the two Iberian identities. These are, indeed, intermittently wrested out of an antithetical conformation as the author, challenged by the otherness of the English (northern and Protestant), wavers in his use of the first-person plural – allowing it to refer to a common Iberian (southern and Catholic) identity, rather than to his otherwise emphatic ‘Portugueseness’. This measure of uncertainty, this hint of an author forced to debate with himself when faced with a more complex set of relations than envisaged, can be read as reflecting the text’s origins in a transitional culture, both in the broader European context and in a specific Iberian framework. This seductive 77 A phrase famously employed by L.C. Knights in his discussion of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Knights L.C., Explorations (London: 1946) 40. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 128 Carvalho Homem notion, however, has to be qualified by the perception that a decisive prompter of those complexities is the issue of religion – where the author’s incisive sympathies lie with the pre-modern notion of a trans-national Christendom, spanning the various states. Against which, in turn, one has to note the vehemence with which the author declares his sympathy for an ostensibly unconventional gesture that departs from an atavistic Iberian culture – that which sees the Spanish ladies stun (and apparently also delight) the Portuguese observer by appearing as improbable and unannounced visitors to the English embassy. Even if their gesture is promptly answered by the male panache of gallantry, and hence accommodated by an intractably patriarchal culture, their assertive and self-assured foray puts itself at the centre of the narrative’s complex web of sympathies, and certainly becomes one of those lasting images of the Fastigínia that sustain the text’s claims to an unsuspected modernity. Bibliography Primary Sources Pinheiro da Veiga T., Fastigínia, de Tomé Pinheiro da Veiga, ed. E. Rodrigues (Lisboa: 2011). Secondary Sources Adams R. – Cox R. (eds.), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Houndmills – New York: 2011). Beller M. – Leerssen J. (eds.), Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters – A Critical Survey (Amsterdam – New York: 2007). Caldari V., The End of the Anglo-Spanish Match in Global Context, 1617–1624 (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade do Porto: 2015). Cano-Echevarría B. – Hutchings M., “Valladolid 1605: A theatre for the Peace”, in Mulryne J.R. – De Jonge K. – Morris R. (eds.), Occasions of State: Early Modern European Festivals and the Negotiation of Power (London: 2019) 93–108. Carles N.R. (ed.), Early Modern Diplomacy, Theatre and Soft Power: The Making of Peace (London: 2016). Craigwood J., “Sidney, Gentili, and the Poetics of Embassy”, in Adams R. – Cox R. (eds.), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Houndmills – New York: 2011) 82–100. Duarte, King of Portugal, Leal Conselheiro [1437–1438], ed. J. Dionísio (n.p.: 2012). Available at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/IbrAmerTxt.LealConsel (last accessed 30 March 2020). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access for ‘ a Sunlit Doorstep ’ : Pinheiro da Veiga ’ s Fastigínia 129 Gerrard D.M., The Church at War: The Military Activities of Bishops, Abbots and Other Clergy in England, c.900–1200 (Abingdon: 2017). Hampton T., Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: 2009). Knights L.C., Explorations (London: 1946). Leerssen J., National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam: 2006). Leerssen J., “The Rhetoric of National Character: A Programmatic Survey”, Poetics Today 21, 2 (Summer 2000) 267–292. Lourenço E., This Little Lusitanian House: Essays on Portuguese Culture, ed. and trans. R.W. Sousa (Providence, RI: 2003). Magalhães J.R. (ed.), No Alvorecer da Modernidade (1480–1620), J. Mattoso (gen. ed.), História de Portugal, vol. 3 (n.p.: 1993). Mattingly G., Renaissance Diplomacy (1955) (New York: 1988). Mattoso J. – Sousa A., A Monarquia Feudal (1096–1480), in José Mattoso (gen. ed.), História de Portugal, vol. 2 (n.p.: 1993). Rawson C., “The last intellectual: Claude Rawson on the fertile mind of Lionel Trilling”, Times Literary Supplement (December 14 2018) np; digital edition. Real M., Introdução à Cultura Portuguesa (Lisboa: 2010). Rodrigues E. “Introduction”, in Fastigínia, de Tomé Pinheiro da Veiga (Lisboa: 2011). Stewart A., “Francis Bacon’s Bi-literal Cipher and the Materiality of Early Modern Diplomatic Writing”, in Adams R. – Cox R. (eds.), Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Houndmills – New York: 2011) 120–137. Studnicki-Gizbert D., A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640 (Oxford: 2007). Ungerer G., “Juan Pantoja de la Cruz and the Circulation of Gifts between the English and Spanish Courts in 1604/5”, Shakespeare Studies 26 (1998) 145–186. Vives J.L., The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual, ed. and trans. C. Fantazzi (Chicago – London: 2000). Wiesner-Hanks M.E., Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: 2008). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access chapter 6 The Fall of Granada in Hall’s and Holinshed’s Chronicles: Genesis, Propaganda, and Reception Tamara Pérez-Fernández The fall of Granada was the culmination of the long process of Christianisation of Al-Andalus, the endpoint of a Reconquista whose very existence is barbed with ambiguities.1 The significance of the fall of the last Nasrid kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula went beyond a military victory to become a cornerstone of the Spanish national identity for centuries to come, and the linchpin of the Catholic Monarchs’ plans for a cultural and religious homogeneity that has in recent times been questioned and that had an impact on the idea of Spain that was postulated during Francisco Franco’s regime. In part, this transcendence was shaped and perpetuated by the discourse that was created at the Christian encampment of Santa Fe in the aftermath of the surrender of the city. In this chapter, I intend to explore the genesis of the discourse that rose from the conquest of Granada and its dissemination throughout Europe before embarking on a study of its reception in England through an analysis of the accounts of the events in Granada in two of the most important chronicles written in England in the sixteenth century: Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York and Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. These texts offer a fascinating example of the reception of news from Spain in the sixteenth century, a period when Anglo-Spanish relations fluctuated between cordiality and outright animosity. They are witnesses to the impact of news in English society at this time, and show how the processes of creation and dissemination of information 1 While the term Reconquista has been widely used in popular and academic contexts, many scholars have raised questions regarding the suitability of the term and the actuality of the Reconquista itself as a historical process. See Lomax D., The Reconquest of Spain (London: 1978); Barbero A. – Vigil M., Sobre los orígenes sociales de la Reconquista (Barcelona: 1988); Linehan P., History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford: 1993); Benito Ruano E., “La Reconquista: una categoría histórica e historiográfica”, Medievalismo 12 (2002) 91–98; O’Callaghan J.F., Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia: 2003); García Fitz F., “La Reconquista: un estado de la cuestión”, Clio & Crimen 6 (2009) 142–215; García Fitz F. – Novoa Portela F., Cruzados en la Reconquista (Madrid: 2014). © TAMARA PÉREZ-FERNÁNDEZ, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_008 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 131 ultimately created a myth that has defined the image of Spain – for better or worse – for the last five centuries. 1 The Narrative of the Granada War: Genesis and Dissemination During the whole of their campaign against the Nasrid kingdom, which took place in the decade between 1482 and 1492, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon had been cognizant of the importance of the rapid communication of their victories to obtain approval within their own territories and also international backing;2 the Granada War required a tremendous amount of resources that were, in a large part, funded by the alms collected from the papal bull that granted the conflict the status of crusade.3 The need for international support in this regard explains the emphasis to frame the conflict not as a regional dispute over territories, but rather as a holy war that transcended the boundaries of the European kingdoms and that would be determinant in the final success of the Christian side in its clash against Islam. This was apparent in the diplomatic correspondence between the Catholic Monarchs and the Pope in 1485, when Innocent VIII was reluctant to renew the papal bull; one of the arguments put forth by Isabella and Ferdinand in order to make their case before the Pope was that their efforts against Al-Andalus were not intended to enlarge their own territories but rather to expand the dominions of the Christian faith.4 2 There is abundant bibliography on the subject of the work of the Spanish diplomats during the Granada War, especially those in the Papal court. See Rincón González M.D., “La divulgación de la toma de Granada: objetivos, mecanismos y agentes”, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 40, 2 (2010) 603–661; Benavent J., “Las relaciones italianas sobre la Conquista de Granada en el siglo XV”, Studia aurea monográfica 6 (2015) 103–108; Fernández de Córdova Miralles A., “Imagen de los Reyes Católicos en la Roma pontificia”, En la España Medieval 28 (2005) 259–354; and Salicrú i Lluch R., “Ecos contrastados de la Guerra de Granada: difusión y seguimiento desigual en los contextos ibéricos y mediterráneo”, in Baloup D. – González Arévalo R. (eds.), La Guerra de Granada en su contexto internacional (Toulouse: 2017) 79–104. 3 See Goñi Gaztambide J., Historia de la Bula de la Cruzada en España (Vitoria: 1958); and Ladero Quesada M.A., Castilla y la conquista del Reino de Granada (Granada: 1987) 212. 4 Peinado Santaella R.G., “El final de la Reconquista: elegía de la derrota, exaltación del triunfo”, in García Fernández M. – González Sánchez C.A. (eds.), Andalucía y Granada en tiempos de los Reyes Católicos (Sevilla: 2006) 55–86, here 68. For a thorough discussion on the impact of the notion of the crusade in the Granada War, see Housley N., The Later Crusades: From Lyons to Alcazar (1274–1580) (New York – Oxford: 1992); Edwards J., “Reconquest and Crusade in Fifteenth-Century Spain”, in Housley N. (ed.), Crusading in the Fifteenth Century (London: 2004) 163–181; and Tinoco García J.F., “Aproximación a la cruzada en la baja edad Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 132 Pérez-Fernández In order to spread this idea, the Catholic Monarchs fostered a court that became a ‘centro difusor de una especial y enérgica corresponsalía publicitaria oficial’5 [hub for the dissemination of a special and energetic official news post]. It created a propagandistic discourse that was disseminated successfully throughout Europe in speeches, reports, and letters heavy with ideological weight.6 Rafael Peinado Santaella has analysed some of the ideas that permeated the discourse of the Catholic Monarchs and that were being used with propagandistic intentions in the years leading to 1492: a religious purpose of the war, providentialism and divine help, the need for mediating prayers and thanksgiving, a negative depiction of the Muslim enemy, and finally an undisguised praise for the monarchs, who were portrayed as merciful and virtuous champions of peace.7 These notions originated in the immediate circle of the Catholic Monarchs, and they were routinely used to exalt their victories against Al-Andalus. Thanks to the printing press and a clever diplomatic work, this propagandistic discourse soon spread throughout Europe and achieved the intended goal, at least partially. The bull of the crusade was eventually renewed, and their victories were acknowledged and celebrated in many European courts; in England, on 6 July 1488, Henry VII wrote a letter to the Catholic Monarchs congratulating them in glowing terms for a new victory against the Saracens, and emphasizing his desire to establish stronger blood links between the Houses of Tudor and Trastámara.8 It was not the first time that Henry VII had lauded the labour 5 6 7 8 media peninsular: reflexiones sobre la guerra de Granada”, Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar On-line 1, 1 (2012) 79–99. Tinoco Díaz J.F. La Cruzada en las fuentes cronísticas castellanas de la Guerra de Granada (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Extremadura: 2017) 684. This use of propaganda for political purposes was not limited to the Granada campaign. Isabella and Ferdinand exerted an iron control over the narratives of their reign and appointed royal chroniclers to prevent unsanctioned negative portrayals and to spread their own propagandistic ideas. For more information on the propaganda in the reigns of the Catholic Monarchs, see Carrasco Manchado A.I., “Propaganda política en los panegíricos poéticos de los Reyes Católicos. Una aproximación”, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 25 (1995) 517–545, and “Discurso Político y propaganda en la corte de los Reyes Católicos: resultados de una primera investigación”, En la España Medieval 25 (2002) 299–379; Nieto Soria J.M., “Propaganda and Legitimation in Castile”, in Ellenius A. (ed.), Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation (Oxford – New York: 1998) 105–119; and Ostenfeld-Suke K. von, “Writing Official History in Spain: History and Politics, c. 1474–1600”, in Rabasa J. – Sato M. – Tortarolo E. – Woolf D., The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 3: 1400–1800 (Oxford – New York: 2012) 428–448. Peinado Santaella, “El final de la Reconquista” 69–70. Archivo General de Simancas, PTR,LEG,52,DOC.187. It is unclear what victory was being referred to in this missive. Considering the date of Henry’s letter, it might have been the fall of Cullar or Vera, which took place in June 1488. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 133 of Isabella and Ferdinand; according to the contemporary Spanish writer and diplomat Diego de Valera, soon after he was anointed King of England Henry mandó pregonar paz general con toda la christiandad, espeçialmente con Francia y España; e mandó fazer proçessiones en todas las iglesias, catedrales e monesterios porque el rey don Fernando de España oviese victoria en esta sancta guerra que contra los moros tiene començada.9 [proclaimed peace with all Christendom, and especially with France and Spain; and he ordered a series of processions to be held in all the churches, cathedrals, and monasteries so that King Ferdinand of Spain could achieve victory in the holy war that he started against the Moors.] In the Italian peninsula, where the whole conflict was followed with an enthusiastic concern, important triumphs like the sieges of Málaga and Baza were feasted for months.10 But victories such as those won at Málaga, Baza, or Almería paled in comparison to the impact of the fall of Granada on the European population. From the start, this event was presented as a reversal of the fortunes of a Christendom that still reeled from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the growing threat of the Ottoman empire,11 and the publicity campaign that spread the news throughout Europe was instrumental to lift the morale of the population.12 Some of the earliest accounts of the end of the Granada War were private epistles by Spanish and foreign eyewitnesses, who described the events with varying degrees of accuracy and according to the role they had played in them.13 But for the purposes of this study, though, the most important narratives are those that were created by the diplomatic corps of the Catholic Monarchs. These documents range from personal missives from Ferdinand and Isabella to representatives of the Church and civil government throughout the Peninsula, 9 10 11 12 13 Valera Diego de, Crónica de los Reyes Católicos, ed. J. de Mata Carriazo (Madrid: 1927) 214– 215. Apparently, this information was given to him by some Spanish merchants that had been in England during the Battle of Bosworth Field, which de Valera describes in detail in his letters to the Catholic Monarchs. See Valera Diego de, Epístolas de Mosén Diego de Valera (Madrid: 1878) 91–94. Paolini D., “Los Reyes Católicos e Italia”, in Salvador Miguel N. – Moya García C. (eds.), La literatura en la época de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid – Frankfurt am Main: 2008) 189–205; and Benavent, “Las relaciones italianas”. Rincón González, “La divulgación de la toma de Granada” 604. Tinoco Díaz, “La Cruzada en las fuentes cronísticas” 685. Some of these letters, like a missive from Bernardo del Roi to the Venetian Signoria, have been gathered in Garrido Atienza M., Las capitulaciones para la entrega de Granada (Granada: 1910). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 134 Pérez-Fernández to dispatches intended for foreign courts. Some of the letters that have survived – which include those that Ferdinand wrote to the Pope,14 to the bishop of León,15 and to the cities of Córdoba and Barcelona16 – contain similar details on the conquest and the whole process of Reconquista: they start with a thanksgiving, a brief reference to the date of the surrender of the city, an allusion to the blood and suffering of the Christian armies throughout the campaign, a remark on the seven hundred and eighty years of Muslim presence in Spain, and the acknowledgement of the help of his subjects and the Catholic Church in this monumental enterprise. It is possible that these letters accompanied lengthier reports of the fall of Granada, because soon afterwards some texts appeared providing more specific details about the conquest of the city. Of special relevance are the relations that were written in Italy only a few months after the events:17 arguably the most remarkable of these texts is Carlo Verardi’s Historia Baetica, a dramatization of the fall of the city performed in the festivities that were organized in Rome by pro-Spain agents in the Papal court to commemorate the victory of the Catholic Monarchs.18 Two of the most prominent organisers were the bishops of Badajoz and Astorga, Bernardino López de Carvajal and Juan Ruiz de Medina, ambassadors of the Catholic Monarchs in the Papal court. M.D. Rincón González has identified several documents that place these two bishops and protonotaries at the centre of the propaganda machinery in Rome, and at the origin of the account of the fall of Granada that circulated throughout Europe in the following years:19 two of these documents are Latin summaries and one is a French text titled La très célébrable digne de mémoire et victorieuse prise de la cité de Grenade.20 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Torre A. de la, “Los Reyes Católicos y Granada: relaciones y convenios con Boabdil de 1483 a 1489”, Hispania: revista española de historia 16 (1944) 339–382, here 305. Garrido Atienza, Las capitulaciones 313. Durán y Lerchundi J., La toma de Granada y los caballeros que concurrieron en ella, 2 vols. (Madrid: 1893) here vol. 1, 136–167, and vol. 2, 657. For more information about these texts, see Benavent, “Las relaciones italianas”. See Cruziani F., Teatro nel Rinascimento. Roma 1450–1550 (Roma: 1983); and Rincón González M.D., Historia Baetica de Carlo Verardi (drama humanístico sobre la toma de Granada) (Granada: 1992). Rincón González, “La divulgación de la toma de Granada”. The Latin summaries are included in two manuscripts held at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich: BSB Clm 461 (fols. 273r–275v), and Clm 14053 (fols. 44r–45r). The date of Ms. Clm 461 is unknown, but Ms. Clm 14053 has been dated to 1497–1524. The French text has survived in at least three incunabula, two printed by Jehan Trepperel (Paris, Bibliothèque National de France, Rothschild 3382 (2431 a); and London, British Library IA. 40395); and one by Guillaume le Rouge (Paris, BnF, RES-Ye-1154 (7)). Both incunabula were printed in 1492. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 135 The Latin summaries are part of two miscellaneous manuscripts copied by Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514), a German humanist and physician who wrote the Nuremberg Chronicle.21 According to Rincón González, the two summaries were translated into Latin by different persons, but they share a common hypotext.22 They are relatively brief, but they give a detailed description of the fall of Granada. La très célébrable is a newsletter, or relation of events. This type of texts were short printed accounts of events that disseminated quickly throughout Europe on account of what Henry Ettinghausen calls ‘news networks’.23 They were a popular genre in the Europe of the late fifteenth century, and indispensable for the quick communication of news, including the campaign against Al-Andalus. The three documents contain very similar and thorough descriptions of the fall of Granada: first of all, they trace the source of the information back to the bishops of Astorga and Badajoz, Juan Ruiz de Medina and Bernardino López de Carvajal:24 in La très célébrable, the anonymous translator explains that the text was the rendition into French of a longer Latin summary that was originally derived from the bishops’ correspondence.25 21 22 23 24 25 See Rincón González, “La divulgación de la toma de Granada” 609. Rincón González, “La divulgación de la toma de Granada” 613. The one in Ms. Clm 14053 is a less detailed rendition of the account. Ettinghausen H., “Relaciones internacionales: las relaciones de sucesos, un fenómeno paneuropeo”, in García López J. – Boadas Cabarrocas S. (coord.), Las relaciones de sucesos en los cambios políticos y sociales de la Europa Moderna (Barcelona: 2015) 13–27. The introduction in La très célébrable gives a more comprehensive information about the genesis of the text and its transmission than the Latin summaries, both of which merely refer to the work of the oratores in the creation of the letters from which the summary derives. The actual role of the protonotaries in the creation of the account is ambiguous: the Latin summaries and La très célébrable place the composition of the letters at Granada on 10 January 1492. However, as ambassadors in Rome, it is unlikely that López de Carvajal and Ruiz de Medina were in Granada on that date: Juan Ruiz de Medina was one of the signatories of the Capitulations of Granada on 30 December 1491, but it appears that he was not there in person, and that he was informed by eyewitnesses of what was happening in the city. See Fernández de Córdova Miralles A., “Juan Ruiz de Medina, obispo, embajador, asistente de la Inquisición y presidente de la Chancillería de Valladolid”, in Diccionario Biográfico Español, vol. 44 (Madrid: 2013) 784–786, here 785. Perhaps the most notable of his informants was the historian Alfonso de Palencia, who wrote his Epistola ad Johannem Episcopum Astoricensem de bello Granatensi for Ruiz de Medina in order to update him on the last episodes of the Granada War up to 2 January 1492. See Palencia Alfonso de, Epístolas latinas, ed. and trans. R.B. Tate – R. Alemany Ferrer (Barcelona: 1982). Presumably, this Latin text is the hypotext of the summaries included in manuscripts BSB Clm 14053 and 461. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 136 Pérez-Fernández The three texts follow this introduction with a brief overview of the events immediately before the surrender of the city, and how the inhabitants of Granada were suffering because of Ferdinand’s siege, which had started in May 1491. Seeing that they would not receive outside help to break the siege, the king and the inhabitants agreed to surrender the city to the King of Spain, who met with an embassy from Granada to negotiate the terms. Both sides finally consented to the terms of surrender on 25 November 1491. King Boabdil – who is never mentioned by name in these documents – did not wait the sixty days that he had been given for the surrender of the city and the towers and fortresses of the Alpujarras, and on 1 January 1492 he sent a group of six hundred hostages to Santa Fe in a show of good will. Two days later Gutierre de Cárdenas, great Master of the Order of Saint James and governor of the city of Leon, departed to Granada accompanied by five hundred mounted men and three hundred footmen. According to these texts, they were received by brave captains of the Saracen army, who led them to the palace of Alixares and then to the Alhambra. There, Gutierre de Cárdenas took possession of the royal palace in the name of the king and received the keys to the Alhambra. The documents also recount the ceremonies that took place immediately after the entrance of the Spanish detachment in Granada: Gutierre de Cárdenas ordered the Cross and the pennon of the Order of Saint James to be lifted over the city, and then a Te deum was sung by three Spanish bishops. Afterwards, a herald pronounced a brief speech followed by the fire of cannons. Later, the texts narrate how seven hundred Christian slaves left Granada for Santa Fe, and how King Ferdinand provided for their clothing and food. The following day, 4 January 1492, the Count of Tendilla (Íñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones) received the keys to the Alhambra, and three days later, on Saturday 7 of January, the Catholic Monarchs and their host set foot in Granada for the first time. The Latin and French texts identify some of the bishops and noblemen that entered Granada with Ferdinand and Isabella, and they also specify that the monarchs were accompanied by ten thousand mounted soldiers and fifty thousand footmen. This was the information that circulated throughout Europe, helped by an intelligent and effective diplomatic work and the printing press.26 It was the 26 The information regarding the dissemination of the news from Granada and the celebrations – or lack thereof – in other European countries is surprisingly scarce given the importance of the event. Apart from the work by Rincón González, Benavent, Fernández de Córdova Miralles, or Salicrú about the reception of the news in Italy (cited in footnote 2), there is – to my knowledge – no other study delving into the reception of the news in other contemporary courts. However, the French pamphlet and Schedel’s Latin summaries suggest that at the very least there was an interest in France and in the Holy Roman Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 137 basis of Carlo Verardi’s Historia Baetica and other Italian summaries, and it surfaced in France and Germany in different forms, eventually reaching England. The narrative of the story in the English historiographical texts changed during the sixteenth century, from the terse descriptions in the Chronicles of London and the works by Robert Fabyan and John Stow, to the long and thought-provoking accounts in Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York and Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which draw from the version of the events included in La très célébrable. Hall’s and Holinshed’s texts, written decades after the events in Granada took place, show how the religious rift that grew between Spain and England during the sixteenth century tinged the reception of the news in England, and how the image of the Catholic Monarchs and their victory over Al-Andalus developed during this time of radical shift in the relations between England and Spain. 2 The Fall of Granada in the English Chronicles of the Sixteenth Century The impact of the news from Granada was felt throughout the Christendom. Celebrations accompanied the dissemination of the news throughout Europe and, even though they were not as extravagant as those in the Italian Peninsula,27 the ceremonies in England showed that the English people also participated in the general revelling. On 6 April 1492 there was in London a gathering of the secular and religious nobility and the civic representatives of the city at St. Paul’s Cross, where John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of England, pronounced an oration announcing the victory of the Catholic Monarchs over Al-Andalus, providing details about the development of the fall of Granada. The assembly sang a Te Deum and proceeded to celebrate a solemn procession. This event was chronicled, with varying degrees of detail, in several historiographical documents published in England in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. 27 Empire at the time, and it is very possible that there are other European chronicles that include references to the fall of Granada in similar terms. Further research is needed to provide a more extensive survey. Sigismondo di Conti, an eyewitness, described Rome at the moment of the celebration as literally aflame with joy. The festivities, which took place during the carnival, included bullfighting, ludi equestri, a masquerade, and a performance of Verardi’s Historia Baetica. See Cruziani, Teatro nel Rinascimento 233–234. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 138 Pérez-Fernández The first historiographical accounts to report the fall of Granada in England were the London chronicles,28 anonymous historiographical accounts that described the most important events in English history with an emphasis on the city of London and those events that shaped the civic life of its medieval inhabitants.29 One of the manuscripts of the Chronicles of London – London, British Library, Ms. Cotton Vitellius A XVI, dating from the early sixteenth century – includes a paragraph that mentions the speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he described ‘how the king of Spayn had conquered the Cyte and Contre of Grenade’.30 But the main focus of this brief entry is the ceremony that took place at St. Paul’s Cathedral, more specifically at St. Paul’s choir door. No details from the campaign in Granada transpire, probably because it was the fact that the fall of Granada was celebrated in London which prompted the inclusion of this entry in these early sixteenth-century chronicles.31 Another chronicle to include a mention to Granada is Robert Fabyan’s The New Chronicles of England and France (1516). There is an extremely succinct 28 29 30 31 Much like in the case of Europe, there is hardly any information regarding the reception and dissemination of these news in England at the time of the Catholic Monarchs and during Henry VIII’s reign, and, as I shall explain below, the historiographical references to these events are very succinct until Hall’s Chronicle. However, there are two brief notes that describe the fall of Granada and the London celebrations in two miscellaneous manuscripts copied in 1492–1493 by the Augustinian canon William Wymondham, of Kirby Bellars Priory: Cambridge, Trinity College 1144 (O.2.40), and Lincoln’s Inn Library Ms. Hale 73(68). See Britton D., “Manuscripts Associated with Kirby Bellars Priory”, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 6, 5 (1976) 267–284; and Mooney L. The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist XI: Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (Woodbridge – Rochester: 2007). Their early date of composition could make them the earliest extant English accounts of the events, but due to the idiosyncratic character of these two notes and their uncertain origin, they will be analysed in a future publication. See Kingsford C.L., English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: 1913; reprint New York: 1960), and Chronicles of London (Oxford: 1905); Gransden A., Historical Writing in England II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London – New York: 1996; reprint London: 2000); McLaren M.-R., The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in English Writing (Cambridge: 2002); and Herman P., “Henrician Historiography and the Voice of the People: The Cases of More and Hall”, Text Studies in Literature and Language 39, 3 (1997) 259–283. Kingsford, “Chronicles” 197. All quotations from the Early Modern chronicles retain the original spelling and punctuation, but all abbreviations have been silently expanded. Along the same lines, Steven Gunn argues that the battle of Lepanto was included in Holinshed’s Chronicle because of its tremendous impact and also because its celebration in London, akin to the one held in April 1492, ‘made it in a sense an event in English history’. Gunn S., “The International Context”, in Kewes P. – Archer I.W. – Heal F. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford: 2013) 459–474, here 467. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 139 allusion to the fall of the city in the second edition, printed by William Rastell in 1533, but, unlike the Chronicles of London, without any reference to the London celebration, perhaps because the scope of this work is broader.32 It was not until Edward Hall’s Chronicle that the episodes that led to the fall of Granada and subsequent London celebration are narrated in depth by English historiographers. Edward Hall (1497–1547) was a lawyer and civil servant, serving as common serjeant and under-sheriff of London, as well as a Member of Parliament on a number of occasions.33 His chronicle of the reigns of the kings of England from Henry IV to Henry VIII was published posthumously in 1548 by the printer Richard Grafton, who had received the unfinished manuscript from Hall himself. There were later reprints, with some additions and modifications by Grafton. Hall’s Chronicle was published and reprinted during the reign of Edward VI, who, together with the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland, proved to be much more scrupulous than his father had been in the total replacement of the traditional (Catholic) religious practice from the Church of England.34 Prompted by the ongoing political and religious climate, an important part of the publications printed at the time were of an anti-Catholic character,35 but while Hall’s Chronicle represents what Peter Berek calls an “assertive Protestantism and […] an emerging sense of English national identity”, it does not share the anti-Catholic stance present in other contemporary works.36 From this perspective, Hall’s account of the victory of the Catholic Monarchs over Al-Andalus and its celebration in London elicits intriguing readings. In his entry for the year 1492, Hall embarks on a long and detailed narration of the fall of Granada. The story as recounted by Hall has two clearly distinguished spatial and temporal frameworks: the first one is St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, on 6 April 1492; the second, Granada and the Christian encampment of Santa Fe on the first days of January of the same year. The lengthiest narrative concerns the events in Spain, but it is conceived as a story embedded within the London scene: Hall starts by describing how King Henry VII 32 33 34 35 36 ‘And in thys yere was the cyte of Garnad gotten by ye king of Spayn’. Fabyan Robert, The New Chronicles of England and France: In Two Parts, ed. H. Ellis (London: 1811) 684. Dillon J., Performance and Spectacle in Hall’s Chronicle (London: 2002) 2. See MacCulloch D., The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603 (New York: 1990); and Walsham A., Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: 2006). See King J.N., English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: 1982); and Davies C., A Religion of the Word: The Defence of the Reformation in the Reign of Edward VI (Manchester – New York: 2002). Berek P., “Tragedy and Title Pages: Nationalism, Protestantism, and Print”, Modern Philology 101, 1 (2008) 1–24, here 4. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 140 Pérez-Fernández had ‘commaunded all the nobilite of his realme, to assemble at the Cathedral church of saincte Paule in London’.37 A Te deum was sung, and then the Archbishop of Canterbury, acting as a sort of narrator, began his account of the downfall of the Kingdom of Granada, ‘which many yeres had bene possessed of the Moores or Mawritane nacion, being infidels and vnchristened people’.38 At this point Hall introduces the same narrative that is present in La très célébrable and in the two Latin summaries copied by Hartmann Schedel. It appears that Hall had access to the pamphlet directly, or at least that he used a text derived from it, because the account in his chronicle is closer to the French pamphlet than to the Latin summaries.39 While the text in Hall’s Chronicle is almost a word-for-word rendition of La très célébrable, there is a significant difference between the French pamphlet and the English chronicle: the English text lacks the introduction where the anonymous French translator describes the origin of the text. The absence of such a vital piece of information, one that gives credibility to the whole account by tracing it back to Granada and the immediate circle of the Catholic Monarchs, is indicative of the arduous process of textual dissemination of the news in the sixteenth century. It can be explained in two ways: either the introduction had been removed from Hall’s immediate source, or he himself decided against including it in his Chronicle. The fact that the source material was so close to the Catholic Monarchs is celebrated in the French pamphlet as a sign of its own accuracy and historiographical relevance. However, its absence in the English text could indicate that Hall – or Richard Grafton as the editor – had some reservations regarding the sources. On the one hand, the narrative in La très célébrable does present a one-sided perspective on the conflict that does not encompass the point of view of the vanquished side (even if it is mostly magnanimous towards it). On the other hand, in their condition as Spanish bishops, the sources were so clearly identified as Roman Catholic 37 38 39 Hall Edward, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York, ed. Sir Henry Ellis (London: 1809) 453; Hall’s work will be referred to as ‘Hall, Chronicle’. Hall, Chronicle 453. There are several textual characteristics that connect Hall’s text directly with La très célébrable: Hall erroneously transcribes the name of the place where the Christians celebrated the first Mass in Granada as ‘Melchira’, derived from the ‘Melchita’ of the French text, which is also a corruption of the word ‘mesquita’ that correctly denominates the Mosque in the Latin summaries. However, when later on La très célébrable introduces the appropriate term ‘Meschita’, Hall follows the French text and writes ‘Meschita’ as well. As for the name of one of the palaces in Granada, Hall’s version ‘Anaxares’ is closer to the ‘Anxares’ in the French text, whereas in Clm 461 the same is transcribed as ‘Alixares’. The summary in Ms. Clm 14053 does not make any reference to this palace, which fits with its general tendency to avoid some of the most specific details of the narrative. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 141 that they might not have been considered recommendable authorities in Edwardian England. Either Hall or Grafton could have been cognizant of the opinions this fact might have raised among their English public. Nevertheless, this approach would go against Hall’s stance regarding the source materials that he used in his work; his respect for his sources and his desire to identify them supports, according to Sandra Logan, ‘Hall’s legitimacy as an historian’. It is for this reason that the most plausible explanation for the lack of information pointing to the origin of the narrative is that his immediate source did not include it. Whether by design or not, the result of the loss of the introduction has an effect on the reader’s perception of his text: the way in which the narrative of Granada is inserted within the description of the celebrations in London implies that the origin of the information is the declaration of the Archbishop of Canterbury. If La très célébrable framed the account within the authority of its sources, Hall framed it within the authority of the person pronouncing the discourse and the significance of the place from which he spoke.40 Apart from the loss of the introductory material and the inclusion of the scene in London, there are some divergencies that reveal Hall’s own position regarding the interests of the people and the importance of civic representatives and royal counsellors. As discussed in Part I, in La très célébrable the narration begins in a besieged Granada where the inhabitants and the king discuss a possible surrender, and notes that the decision to surrender the city was a consensual one, taken by Boabdil and his people in apparently equal terms;41 however, the decision of the Spanish side lies only on Ferdinand. Hall introduces slight but important modifications regarding this in his own chronicle: firstly, he removes Boabdil from the negotiations in Granada, effectively giving the sole agency of the decision to the population.42 Secondly, he curtails some of Ferdinand’s own role in the agreement by stating that it was the king and his counsellors who considered the terms, and that Ferdinand finally 40 41 42 Although it was mostly used for religious sermons, St. Paul’s Cross was also a public space to celebrate or make important announcements, usually of news that had a significant repercussion on the English population. On the importance of St. Paul’s Cross in the religious controversies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Shagan E., Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: 2003), and Morrissey M., Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford – New York: 2011). ‘[L]es ditz roy et habitans de la dicte cite parlementerent et consulterent entre eulx ce quels auoient a faire’. BNF RES-Ye-1154 (7), fol. A i v. This idea goes against historical evidence of the events, which suggest that Boabdil kept his dealings with the Catholic Monarchs in secret so as not to incite a popular revolt. See Pescador del Hoyo M.C., “Cómo fue de verdad la toma de Granada, a la luz de un documento inédito”, Al-Andalus 20, 2 (1955) 283–344. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 142 Pérez-Fernández consented to the surrender ‘by the aduyse of his counsayll’.43 This expression substitutes the original ‘par diuine clemence’ and readjusts the power balance between God and the political sphere shown in the French text, perhaps in an attempt to take it closer to the English context. Although Hall omits some of the details about the military clashes that continued taking place during the negotiations, he keeps the reasons that led Ferdinand to accept the terms of surrender, namely a desire to alleviate the suffering of his host after a terrible winter and to prevent a bloodbath, and the innumerable riches inside the city. This paints Ferdinand as a reasonable king, both for considering the well-being of his soldiers and for observing his counsellors’ advice. The few divergences between Hall’s Chronicle and La très célébrable are usually small omissions in the English text, but on occasion Hall expands on the original material: perhaps the most relevant is the introduction of a brief reference to the existence of Englishmen among the Spanish noblemen who entered Granada with the Catholic Monarchs listed in the French text: ‘The erle of Capre, the erle of Vinenna of Cifuentes, and many other Erles, Barones and nobles, whereof some were Englishmen, whose names I haue not’.44 This deviation from the source material seems to be an attempt to bring the subject matter closer to his English readers. Hall does not identify any of the English knights who had joined the war against the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in the name of the crusade, perhaps because their names are not recorded in any chronicle or document of the time.45 It is remarkable that Hall admits that he does not have information regarding the participation of his own countrymen, something that further underlines the foreign origin of his source of information. After his account of the events in Granada, Hall returns to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the celebration in London. According to Hall, Henry VII had summoned the nobility to celebrate the victory over the Muslims in Granada because it ‘was to the glory of God, and to the publique wealth of all Christianite’.46 The event finally ends with a general procession and with the 43 44 45 46 Hall, Chronicle 453. My emphasis. Hall, Chronicle 455. The most renowned English knight in the Granada War was sir Edward Woodville, brother-in-law to Edward IV. He distinguished himself in the field of battle, and his heroic deeds and relationship with Edward IV granted him a visit from Queen Isabella herself and the recognition in several Spanish chronicles. See Durán y Lerchundi J., La Toma de Granada 21–22; and Benito Ruano E., “Un cruzado inglés en la guerra de Granada”, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 9 (1974–1979) 585–594. Hall himself dedicates some lines to him when he describes how he went to France with a group of soldiers, contravening royal orders and risking the diplomatic relations between countries. Hall, Chronicle 439–440. Ibidem 455. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 143 ‘laudes and praysinges to almighty God’ that the King had exhorted them to perform. This colophon may explain Hall’s interest in the fall of Granada: unlike the London chronicles that were popular at the beginning of the sixteenth century and that influenced his own career as a historian, Hall not only focused on local affairs, but also drew his attention to foreign events. In his own introduction to the life of Henry IV, Hall decries the ‘intestine deuision […] ciuill discencion […] domestical discord & vnnaturall controuersy’ that had afflicted European regions such as Italy, France, Scotland, Germany, or Denmark. He attributes the rise of ‘the Turke’, a threat that loomed wide in the Europe of the sixteenth century, to the internal divisions in the Christendom.47 In such a fraught scenario, the victory exerted over the Muslim enemy by two kingdoms united by marriage and by an unshakeable Christian faith could very well serve as a waking call for other European princes. Thus, the introduction of a favourable narrative of their victory in Granada and the praise towards them, and especially towards Ferdinand, fulfils the double purpose that Logan attributes to Hall’s historical writing: ‘to immortalize the actions of the figures of the past, and to make them available as exempla for the present and future’.48 But not all English historians shared this view, and the positive image of the Catholic Monarchs and the events in Granada that is presented in Hall’s Chronicle was received in later times with the caution brought by the temporal distance, the religious differences, and the political conflicts that separated the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs from Elizabethan England. The growing hostilities between both countries can be seen in the reporting of the fall of Granada in the two editions of another cornerstone of the historiography of the time, Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland.49 Holinshed’s Chronicles were almost from the start a collective endeavour: they were in origin a project by Reyner Wolfe, but after his death, Raphael Holinshed continued his work with the help of Edmund Campion, Richard 47 48 49 Ibidem 1. Logan S., Text/Events 191. Also on this subject, see Gransden, Historical Writing 476. The literature on Holinshed’s Chronicle has tended to revolve around the influence that it exerted on Shakespeare’s plays. For some studies that focus on the characteristics of the Chronicle as a historiographical work, its editors, and its textual history, see Donno E.S., “Some Aspects of Shakespeare’s ‘Holinshed’”, Huntington Library Quarterly 50, 3 (1987) 229–248; Kelen S.A., “‘It is dangerous (gentle reader)’: Censorship, Holinshed’s Chronicle, and the Politics of Control”, Sixteenth Century Journal 27, 3 (1996) 705–720; Patterson A., Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles (Chicago – London: 1994); Zaller R., “King, Commons, and Commonwealth in Holinshed’s Chronicles”, Albion 34, 3 (2002) 371–390; Djorjevic I., Holinshed’s Nation. Ideals, Memory, and Practical Policy in the Chronicles (London: 2010); and Kewes P. – Archer I.W. – Heal F. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford: 2013). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 144 Pérez-Fernández Stanihurst, and William Harrison. The religious differences between the four men – Campion and Stanihurst were Roman Catholics, whereas Holinshed and Harrison were Protestants of varying degrees of fervour – did not preclude them from writing a work whose main aspiration was ‘unbiased truth’.50 The result was a text, printed in 1577, that managed to strike a balance between comprehensiveness and readability and whose editors showed ‘sufficient sense of order not to encumber [the] text with entirely extraneous trivia’.51 Perhaps in an attempt to maintain that balance – the events that took place in Granada in early 1492 were of crucial importance for the society of the time, but they were foreign to English readers in a very literal sense – the account of the fall of Granada was quite brief, and close to the London chronicles both in its neutral approach to the Catholic Monarchs and in the information provided: the 1577 text includes no details of the actual events in Spain and, interestingly, it misses some of the details of the London celebration, like the Archbishop of Canterbury and his sermon, or the solemn procession in London But this changes dramatically in the second edition of the chronicle: the text that was published in 1587 departed in many ways from the 1577 edition.52 It was more inclusive, containing materials from a higher number of sources, and the influence of the new editorial syndicate – formed by Abraham Fleming as general editor, John Hooker, John Stow, and Francis Thynne – gave it a prominent Protestant leaning.53 For this reason, the narrative of the fall of Granada sits at an uncomfortable position in Holinshed’s Chronicle yet again, this time between the desire to include episodes of international magnitude and the anti-Catholic sentiments of several of the members of the syndicate. It was not easy to reconcile both positions, and the account of the fall of Granada as edited by Abraham Fleming is a curious example of the enduring power of the propagandistic discourse that originated in Granada and its ambiguous reception in Protestant England. The narrative of the surrender of Granada in the 1587 text is a complete reworking of the 1577 edition; Fleming removes the original paragraph and substitutes it with a quotation from John Stow’s 1580 work The Chronicles of England. Stow’s text also provides a brief description of the ceremony at Saint Paul’s, but, unlike Holinshed’s first edition, it does mention John Morton; 50 51 52 53 Logan, Text/Events 201. Levy F.J., Tudor Historical Thought (San Marino, CA: 1967; reprint Toronto: 2004) 185. See Logan, Text/Events 199; and Woodcock M., “Narrative Voice and Influencing the Reader”, in Kewes P. – Archer I.W. – Heal F. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford: 2013) 337–353. See Marshall P., “Religious Ideology”, in Kewes P. – Archer I.W. – Heal F. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford: 2013) 411–426. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 145 however, he is no longer the Archbishop of Canterbury but only ‘Doctour Morton Chauncelour’.54 The removal of a symbol that could be linked to Roman Catholicism is understandable given the time when both texts were conceived, and Fleming’s own religious preferences could explain why he chose Stow’s version over any other: Fleming has been described as an ‘extreme Protestant’, and he openly expressed his wish to have all Papists rooted out and slain.55 But he was also a self-avowed champion of objectivity, and his desire to incorporate as many details as possible on the episodes in the chronicle regularly led him to use source materials that he did not totally endorse.56 This created tensions within the text, because in those cases where he saw himself in the obligation of using a suspicious source, he interjected short cautionary comments that work to modulate the narrative and that assert his own voice as a historian. This was his approach in the case of the Granada events: after introducing the material from Stow’s chronicle, Fleming turns to Hall for the description of the main Spanish episodes, possibly because it was the most complete narrative of the fall of Granada that was available to him. He quotes Hall’s entire account, including the celebration in London, but he makes sure that his readers understand his reasons: But bicause it is requisite and necessarie in this ample volume, to set downe the report of accidents as they are to be found at large in our owne English writers: you shall heare for the furtherance of your knowledge in this matter concerning Granado, what Ed. Hall hath left noted in his chronicle. Which although it conteine diuerse actions of superstition, and popish trumperie: yet should it not offend the reader, considering that a people estranged from the true knowledge of God and sincere religion put the same in practise, as supposing principall holinesse to consist in that blind deuotion.57 54 55 56 57 Stow John, The chronicles of England from Brute vnto this present yeare of Christ. 1580 (London, Ralph Neuberie at the assignment of Henrie Bynneman: 1580) 866. Dodson S.C., “Abraham Fleming, Writer and Editor”, The University of Texas Studies in English, 34 (1955) 51–66, here 54 and 55. See Woodcock, “Narrative Voice”; and Summerson H., “Sources: 1587”, in Kewes P. – Archer I.W. – Heal F. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford: 2013) 77–92. This quotation from the Holinshed’s Chronicles has been taken from the online editions prepared by The Holinshed Project team, at http://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/. The volume and page numbers are those provided in their edition. I have replaced all instances of long ‘s’ for round ‘s’. Holinshed, Chronicles, vol. 6 (1587) 772. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 146 Pérez-Fernández The ‘diuerse actions of superstition, and popish trumperie’ are not enough to discourage Fleming from including Hall’s account in its entirety, without any modifications that might have tempered the propagandistic discourse that still permeates the text. In fact, Fleming’s ultimate, if begrudging, endorsement of this particular narrative attests to the effectiveness of this propagandistic resource and its pervasiveness in the European culture of the time. His criticism is not addressed to the figures of Ferdinand and Isabella, the paragons of Roman Catholicism; it is the ceremonies that he deplores for being superstitious, not their victory. Furthermore, Fleming seems to excuse them and what he considers as falsehoods on account of their ultimate lack of knowledge of the (his) true religion.58 His relatively mild response to the Catholic ceremonies displayed in the narrative might be related to another propagandistic agenda, this time by the Elizabethan government: in early 1587, before the publication of the second edition, the Privy Council asked for the chronicle to be censored in order to make it less anti-Catholic. According to Cyndia Clegg, the changes the censors made in the text show that they were concerned less about the Chronicles’ effect on Elizabeth’s loyal subjects than on an international audience. Here censorship and propaganda seek to project an image of the English government designed to calm diplomatic waters and quiet international Catholic critics.59 58 59 Fleming seems to have checked his own religious bias regarding other important events involving Catholic armies. As an example, the narrative of the Battle of Lepanto, another landmark victory of Roman Catholicism against Islam included in both editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles, does not elicit a response from Abraham Fleming. Even though the description of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the Holy League follows a similar pattern to the account of the fall of Granada in the 1587 edition (including almost identical celebrations in London), Fleming does not include any interjections, perhaps because none of the festivities in Spain or in other countries are recounted. This further suggests that it was the ostentatious character of the celebrations in Granada that might have merited his disapproval. See Holinshed, Chronicles, vol. 4 (1577) 1860–1861; and vol. 6 (1587) 1226–1227. In the account of another resounding victory of the Spanish Empire included in both editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles – the Battle of Saint Quentin, with the participation of a large contingent of English soldiers – there is a direct criticism against Queen Mary I of England and her husband Philip II. However, it predates Fleming’s role as general editor, and it does not involve religious matters, instead focusing on the negative consequences that this battle had for England. See Holinshed, Chronicles, vol. 4 (1577) 1767–1769; and vol. 6 (1587) 1133–1134. Clegg C.S., “Censorship and Propaganda”, in Doran S. – Jones N. (eds.), The Elizabethan World (London – New York: 2014) 165–181, here 169. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 147 We do not know if the account of the fall of Granada was the result of the censorship of the Privy Council, but this positive account of one of the most important victories against Islam would probably work to appease Catholic critics better than the terse version included in the 1577 edition. At the same time, Fleming’s comments place the editorial team squarely on the Protestant side and himself as a conscientious historian. 3 Conclusion The impact that the fall of the last Muslim kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula had on the European public of the time relied on the fact that it was not considered as a local matter, but rather an enterprise that concerned the whole Christendom. The work of propaganda that was promoted under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs was extensive and multi-tiered: on the one hand, the diplomatic networks led by the Spanish ambassadors in Rome created an account of the episodes leading to and resulting in the taking of Granada that was favourable to Spanish interests. On the other hand, the multiple festivities that were organized by foreign courts throughout Europe – from the unassuming English ceremony to the raucous Roman one – also served to imprint the victory of the Catholic Monarchs in the memory of many European citizens. Both propagandistic strategies coalesce in Early Modern historiographical texts such as Hall’s and Holinshed’s. In his chronicle, Edward Hall provides a comprehensive narration of the taking of Granada that is presented without acknowledging its source, but which is ultimately based on Spanish propagandistic reports. His description of the celebration in London opens a window to view the relation between the crowns of England and Spain at the end of the fifteenth century. Conversely, the two editions of Holinshed’s Chronicle are an example of the shifting perspectives on the fall of Granada, whose narrative adapted to the mindsets of different times and places without ever detracting from the impact that it had even in sixteenth-century England. Bibliography Primary Sources Archivo General de Simancas PTR,LEG,52,DOC.187. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Pérez-Fernández 148 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich Clm 461 Clm 14053 Bibliothèque National de France RES-Ye-1154 (7) Rothschild 3382 (2431 a) British Library London IA. 40395 Ms. Cotton Vitellius A XVI Fabyan Robert, The New Chronicles of England and France: In Two Parts, ed. H. Ellis (London: 1811). 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The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist XI: Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (Woodbridge – Rochester: 2007). Morrissey M., Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford – New York: 2011). Nieto Soria J.M, “Propaganda and Legitimation in Castile”, in Ellenius A. (ed.), Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation (Oxford – New York: 1998) 105–119. O’Callaghan J.F., Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia: 2003). Ostenfeld-Suke K. von, “Writing Official History in Spain: History and Politics, c. 1474– 1600”, in Rabasa J. – Sato M. – Tortarolo E. – Woolf D. (eds.), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 3: 1400–1800 (Oxford – New York: 2012) 428–448. Paolini D., “Los Reyes Católicos e Italia”, in Salvador Miguel N. – Moya García C. (eds.), La literatura en la época de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid – Frankfurt am Main: 2008) 189–205. Patterson A., Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles (Chicago – London: 1994). Peinado Santaella R.G., “El final de la Reconquista: elegía de la derrota, exaltación del triunfo”, in García Fernández M. – González Sánchez C.A. (eds.), Andalucía y Granada en tiempos de los Reyes Católicos (Sevilla: 2006) 55–86. Pescador del Hoyo M.C., “Cómo fue de verdad la toma de Granada, a la luz de un documento inédito”, Al-Andalus 20, 2 (1955) 283–344. Rincón González M.D., Historia Baetica de Carlo Verardi (Drama humanístico sobre la toma de Granada) (Granada: 1992). Rincón González M.D., “La divulgación de la toma de Granada: objetivos, mecanismos y agentes”, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 40, 2 (2010) 603–661. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access The Fall of Granada in Hall ’ s and Holinshed ’ s Chronicles 151 Salicrú i Lluch R., “Ecos contrastados de la Guerra de Granada: difusión y seguimiento desigual en los contextos ibéricos y mediterráneo”, in Baloup D. – González Arévalo R. (eds.), La Guerra de Granada en su contexto internacional (Toulouse: 2017) 79–104. Shagan E., Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: 2003). Summerson H., “Sources: 1587”, in Kewes P. – Archer I.W. – Heal F. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford: 2013). Tinoco Díaz J.F., La Cruzada en las fuentes cronísticas castellanas de la Guerra de Granada (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Extremadura: 2017). Tinoco García J.F., “Aproximación a la cruzada en la baja edad media peninsular: reflexiones sobre la guerra de Granada”, Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar On-line 1, 1 (2012) 79–99. Torre A. de la, “Los Reyes Católicos y Granada: relaciones y convenios con Boabdil de 1483 a 1489”, Hispania: revista española de historia 16 (1944) 339–382. Walsham A., Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: 2006). Woodcock M., “Narrative Voice and Influencing the Reader”, in Kewes P. – Archer I.W. – Heal F. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford: 2013) 337–353. Zaller R., “King, Commons, and Commonwealth in Holinshed’s Chronicles”, Albion 34, 3 (2002) 371–390. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access part 3 Reading the Other ∵ Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access chapter 7 Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections: the Crux of Orthodoxy Ana Sáez-Hidalgo Firste reade, then marke, then practise that is good, For without vse, we drinke but Lethe flood. Geoffrey Whitney, Emblems, 1586 … Damnant quia oderunt; oderunt, quia ignorant. Bernardo de Sandoval, Index librorum prohibitorum, 1612 ⸪ 1 Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy Side-by-Side* The Spanish inquisitor Gaspar de Quiroga (1512–1594), in the second rule of his Index librorum prohibitorum, established that Prohibense los libros de los heresiarchas: assi los que del dicho año de mil y quinientos y quinze à esta parte han sido inuentores, o renouadores de las heregias, como las cabeças y capitanes de ellas […]. Pero no se prohiben los libros de Catholicos, aunque anden i esten insertos en ellos los tractados de los dichos Heresiarchas, contra quien escriuen.1 * I’m grateful to Victor Houliston, James E. Kelly, Christopher Warner, Maurice Whitehead and R.F. Yeager for their insightful readings of my essay. Special thanks are also due to José Luis del Valle Merino, director of the library of El Escorial, and to the rest of the staff, for their help during my research. 1 Quiroga Gaspar de, Index et catalogus librorum prohibitorum (Madrid: Alphonso Gómez, 1583) 1r–v; my translation from Spanish to English, here and elsewhere (unless otherwise stated). This rule is based on the Tridentine Index (1564). © ANA SÁEZ-HIDALGO, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_009 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 156 Sáez-Hidalgo [The books by heresiarchs, both those who have invented or renewed heresies in and after 1515, and their leaders and champions are forbidden […]. But books by Catholics, even if they include treatises by those heresiarchs against whom they write, are not forbidden.] Quiroga, as Grand Inquisitor, had papal-delegated authority to fight heterodoxy through an apparatus of institutional repression, a branch of which was dedicated to controlling and suppressing those books that fell in the category defined by the Church of Rome as ‘heretic’. This qualification to the prohibition of deviant texts was necessary so that Catholics alluding to their religious opponents would not find their own books cancelled. This was a special concern for all those who had to engage in religious polemics, because often the best way to counter-argue the ‘heretics’ was by reprinting their ideas, texts and arguments verbatim. English Catholics were particularly in need of this rule. They were among the first who, after the spread of Reformation, received a special dispensation from the pope to write controversy against specific Protestant arguments and concepts.2 While suffering the Elizabethan ban on the publication and trade of Catholic books, it was their situation of persecution and the need to refute their religious opponents that persuaded authorities like Claudio Acquaviva to direct that the printing press might be used by the English mission ‘for the defence of the faith and the edification of Catholics’.3 Such a directive boosted what had already begun to be a vigorous underground activity of production and dissemination of books in England. Seminaries in exile had a crucial role in this activity: not only were they producers and users of these materials for their training in controversy, but their staff and students were also part of the networks that facilitated the distribution – and often the smuggling – of many of these volumes, both in print and manuscript form.4 2 Walsham A., “The Spider and the Bee: The Perils of Printing for Refutation in Early Tudor England”, in King J.N. (ed.), Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge: 2010) 163–190, here 175. 3 McCoog T. M., “‘Guiding Souls to Goodness and Devotion’: Clandestine Publications and the English Jesuit Mission”, in Bela T. – Calma C. – Rzegocka J. (eds.), Publishing Subversive Texts in Elizabethan England and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Leiden: 2016) 91–109, here 108. 4 On the role of English colleges in Spain in the dissemination and production of texts related to their mission, see Sáez-Hidalgo A., “English Recusant Controversy in Spanish Print Culture: Dissemination, Popularization, Fictionalization”, in Chambers L. and O’Connor T. (eds.), Forming Catholic Communities: Irish, Scots and English College Networks in Europe, 1568–1918 (Leiden: 2018) 201–231. Chambers’ and O’Connor’s book provides a very complete view on colleges in exile in the early modern period. More specific on the connection of the English Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 157 This essay will study the co-existence of orthodox and heterodox material in a copy of The Second Part of Christian Exercise now at the Royal Library of El Escorial, in Spain. Annotations and markings left in it by various hands cast light on the reception of English books in Spain, as well as on the channels facilitating their dissemination. No less importantly, the marked volume offers clear and unique evidence of how Catholics in exile dealt with their difficult circumstances by repurposing such texts as came to hand, not only Catholic, but also Protestant texts. Although their engagement with texts of the ‘other’ might be expected to be overtly hostile and combative, this essay testifies to a wider range of practical-minded reading practices in response to the exigencies of the situation of exile and persecution when it came to books. The Royal library of El Escorial is a good instance of how the coexistence of the orthodox and heterodox travelled beyond the British Isles to the Iberian Peninsula. There is, among its holdings, a notable number of English works, both of Catholic and Protestant origin. Thanks to the networks of English Colleges on the Continent, these books ended up on the shelves of what Luis Gómez Canseco has described as a ‘reproducción en miniatura de la España teológica del XVI y de sus polémicas religiosas’5 [a miniature reproduction of sixteenth-century theological Spain and its religious polemics]. Though largely referring to the conflicting Spanish Counter-reformation groups, Gómez Canseco notes the existence of footprints of Erasmian humanism in the library of El Escorial, the monastery founded by Philip II as a major propagandistic device to proclaim Philip’s power, his political, military, and religious – i.e., Catholic – power.6 Yet, somewhat counterintuitively, despite his projected personal image as bulwark of Catholicism, Philip imagined a library replete with universal, and therefore inclusive, knowledge, opening the doors to all kinds of topics, ideologies and beliefs. Hence, a large variety of English titles appear in the collection: from histories like William Camden’s Britannia to medical treatises (Timothy Bright’s Therapeutica) or language handbooks (John Cheke’s De pronuntiatione graecae);7 from some of the central works of the Elizabethan mission and the Spanish context is McCoog T.M., The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland and England, 1589–1597. Building the Faith of St Peter upon the King of Spain’s Monarchy (Leiden: 2012). 5 Gómez Canseco L., El humanismo después de 1600: Pedro de Valencia (Sevilla: 1993) 36. 6 Ibidem 162ff. The main source of this Erasmian influence was the humanist Benito Arias Montano, who was one of the earliest librarians at El Escorial. See also Gonzalo SánchezMolero J.L., “La biblioteca de Arias Montano en El Escorial”, in Maestre Maestre J.M. et al. (eds.), Benito Arias Montano y los humanistas de su tiempo, vol. 1 (Mérida: 2006) 91–110. 7 Camden William, Britannia (Frankfurt, John Wechel: 1590); Bright Timothy, Therapeutica (Frankfurt, John Wechel: 1589); Cheke John, De pronuntiatione graecae (Basel: Nicholas Episcopius jr.: 1555). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 158 Sáez-Hidalgo Established Church, like Foxe’s Actes and monuments (popularly known as the Book of Martyrs) and the Booke of common prayer,8 to others at the heart of Catholic orthodoxy, among them books by the famous controversialists Thomas Stapleton and Nicholas Sander, or by the leaders of the English mission, William Allen and Robert Persons.9 Given that there was no restriction on the acquisition or inclusion of new titles into the Escorial library, it was part of the job of the prior of the monastery and the director of the library to examine this mixed variety of texts, and decide which to label as forbidden, so that they would not be accessible to unauthorized readers, by placing them in a separate room, rather than censoring and expunging them.10 In this regard, the royal library attests to how unstable the perception of the fine line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy could be. This can be clearly illustrated in the works by English authors like Persons, one of the main controversialists in defence of the Catholic faith in England, and actively involved in the establishment of a network of English Catholic Seminaries on the Continent, including Spain.11 While some of his books were incorporated into the collection without any impediment (the so-called ‘Philopater’, as well as a number of texts connected to the English mission),12 others were listed as prohibited, including what is considered to be his main devotional and most widely successful work, The Christian Directory.13 Surprisingly, the main motive for this 8 9 10 11 12 13 Foxe John, Actes and monuments (London, Iohn Day: 1563). The Booke of common prayer (London, Christopher Barker: 1578). A brief overview of early modern English books at the Escorial library is provided by Ana Sáez-Hidalgo in “‘Extravagant’ English Books at the Library of El Escorial and the Jesuit Agency”, in Kelly J.E. – Thomas H.J. (eds.), Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe, c.1580–1789. ‘The World is our House’? (Leiden: 2019) 155–185, here 156–159. Lezcano Tosca H., “Lecturas espirituales prohibidas en la Real Biblioteca de El Escorial (siglo XVI)”, Libros de la Corte.es 6 (2013) 76–120, here 88–90. Many of the books with censored passages had been expunged prior to their incorporation to the library. Persons founded the Colleges of St Alban’s in Valladolid (1589), and St Gregory in Seville (1592). On Persons’s role for the English mission and his works, see Houliston V., Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Persons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580–1610 (Aldershot: 2007), and Carrafiello M.L., Robert Parsons and English Catholicism, 1580–1610 (Selinsgrove: 1998). These are works edited, compiled or translated by Persons: Relacion que embiaron las religiosas del Monesterio de Sion de Inglaterra (Madrid, biuda de P. Madrigal: 1594), and Relacion de un sacerdote ingles, escrita a Flandes, a un cavallero de su tierra, desterrado por ser catolico (Madrid, Pedro Madrigal: 1592). The copy at the Royal library is from the third edition: A christian directorie guiding men to their salvation devided into three boores [i.e. bookes] (Louan, Laurence Kellam: 1598). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 159 prohibition has to do, not so much with the kind of devotion encouraged by Persons, but rather with other books that were concurrently acquired for the royal library and listed as forbidden at El Escorial. One such is The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise, appertayning to Resolution or a Christian directory, guiding all men vnto theyr saluation.14 Though in appearance a continuation of Persons’s Christian Directory, it is however a Protestant reformulation, designed to turn to Protestant advantage the popularity of Persons’s original text. It was unlikely to be missed by the censor, whose zeal for orthodoxy would however put both texts into the same category. This coexistence of orthodox and heterodox texts is the background against which this essay intends to study the Escorial copy of the spurious Christian Directory – The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise, a volume of particular interest because it has been heavily annotated. The marks and annotations in the book will help us explore the manner in which readers dealt with religious otherness. 2 Robert Persons, Turned Heterodox Before proceeding to the analysis of the volume, however, it is helpful to review the convoluted story of Persons’s Christian Directory. Having written the introduction to the English translation of Gaspar Loarte’s Essercitio della vita cristiana,15 the English Jesuit decided to expand it into a complete work in order ‘to persuade a Christian by name, to become a trewe Christian in deed, at the least, in resolution of mynde’.16 The resulting book was published anonymously in 1582 with the title First booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to resolution. VVherein are layed downe the causes & reasons that should moue a man to resolue hym selfe to the seruice of God, popularly known as ‘Resolution’.17 Brad G. Gregory has adroitly summarized what came next: 14 15 16 17 The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise, appertayning to Resolution or a Christian directory, guiding all men vnto theyr saluation (London, Iohn Charlewood: 1592). Loarte Gaspar, The Exercise of a Christian Life, trans. Stephen Brinkley (London, W. Carter: 1579). I use Victor Houliston’s edition here and elsewhere, unless some specific aspects of the Escorial copy need to be referred to: Robert Persons S.J.: the Christian directory (1582): The first booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to resolution (Leiden; Boston: 1998). On Persons’s initial plan for the Directory, see his letter to Claudio Acquaviva on 12 February 1585 (Persons Robert, The Correspondence and Unpublished Papers of Robert Persons, SJ. 1, 1574–1588, ed. V. Houliston [Toronto: 2017], 564–570). Published in Rouen in Persons’s Press. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 160 Sáez-Hidalgo [Persons’s Resolution] was so much appreciated by a Puritan minister and preacher, Edmund Bunny, that the latter issued his own, amended version of the work in 1584. It is a treatise of more than 400 pages which attempts to persuade its readers to live diligent Christian lives. Perhaps the most popular devotional treatise in late sixteenth-century England, there is at least anecdotal evidence that it had considerable impact. Its publication record is impressive: previous to 1600, Parsons’s [sic] version had been published four times, the full text of Bunny’s version twenty-four times, and a partial edition of Bunny’s another six, a total of thirty-four editions in eighteen years.18 Bunny’s Booke of Christian exercise was an appropriation – or, as he put it, ‘perusal’ – of the Resolution, though not as radical as one might expect in the context of the harsh polemics and controversies between Catholics and Protestants.19 Rather than implementing major changes by replacing certain words and phrases, or putting them in parenthesis, Bunny’s method worked at a microlevel to redirect the reading of the text.20 As has been variously studied, this type of alteration, while showing some basic doctrinal disparities between the two churches,21 is revealing of both Persons’s and Bunny’s common interest in ensuring that readers/believers were rigorous in their practice of religion.22 18 19 20 21 22 Gregory B.S., “The ‘True and Zealouse Service of God’: Robert Parsons, Edmund Bunny, and the First Booke of the Christian Exercise”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994) 238–268, here 239. V. Houliston has studied Persons’s process of composition of the Christian Directory in Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England 23–45. Booke of Christian exercise, appertaining to resolution […] by R.P. Perused, and accompanied now with a treatise tending to pacification: by Edm. Bunny (London, N. Newton: 1584). As Houliston has pointed out, Bunny ‘welcomed an apparent suspension of controversialist hostility, and assumed a common goal of sincerity in religion’ (“Why Robert Persons Would not Be Pacified. Edmund Bunny’s Theft of The Book of Resolution”, in McCoog T.M. (ed.), The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits (Woodbridge: 1996) 159–177, here 169); Sullivan C., “Cannibalizing Persons’s Christian directorie, 1582”, Notes & Queries 41 (1994) 445–446; Houliston V., “Persons Cannibalized Again”, Notes & Queries 44 (1997) 32–33; Corthell R., “Writing Back: Robert Persons and the Early Modern English Catholic Subject”, Philological Quarterly 87, 3–4 (2008) 277–297. It’s generally agreed that these differences are relatively mild. Houliston boils them down to different notions of exercise (“Why Robert Persons would not be pacified” 173). For a detailed list of Bunny’s changes to the text, see R. McNulty’s collation of Persons and Bunny (Robert Parsons’s The First Booke of the Christian Exercise (1582). An Edition and a study, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University: 1955), and more recently, Houliston’s critical edition, which includes all of Bunny’s modifications. Gregory, “The ‘True and Zealouse Service of God’” 252ff. Houliston “Why Robert Persons Would not Be Pacified” 169ff. R. McNulty has argued that actually Persons intended to Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 161 Bunny’s publication, which caught Persons preparing a revised, expanded edition for print, enraged the English Jesuit because, in his own words, it made him ‘speake like a good minister of England’.23 Persons’s reaction to such a manipulation can be read in the preface to his own second edition, whose title was changed into A Christian directorie guiding men to their saluation.24 Clearly offended, Persons denounced the ‘foule and false dealing of M. Edm[und] Buny Minister’, in a rebuttal of Bunny’s changes which occupies some of the margins of the Christian Directory. This episode added a new tone to Persons’s revised version; as Victor Houliston has pointed out, ‘rhetorically speaking, The Book of Resolution is deliberative: it exhorts the reader to decision and action. A Christian Directory, with two lengthy chapters inserted early in the text, veers towards the forensic: it deals with proof rather than motive’,25 using what could be considered a more polemical mode. The volume at El Escorial is not Bunny’s Booke of Christian exercise, but a later, anonymous Protestant appropriation of Persons’s 1585 The Christian Directory, under the title The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise. This new appropriation of Persons has received scant critical attention despite its contemporary popularity: it was printed more than twelve times in less than fifty years.26 The Escorial copy is a 1592 edition of The Second part, which was first published in 1590 as an update to Bunny after Persons revised and enlarged his own work into the Christian Directory, as is stated in the preface to the reader: Gentle Reader, not manie yeeres since, a booke was published of Christian exercise, appertaining to Resolution: written by a Iesuit beyonde the Seas, yet an English-man, named Ma. Robert Parsons, which Booke, Ma. Edm. Bunney hauing dilligently perused, committed to the publique viewe of all indifferent iudgements: as glad that so good matter proceeded from such infected people, and that good might arise thereby to the benefite 23 24 25 26 persuade not only Catholics, but also Protestant, to ‘the good life of God’s way’ (“The Protestant Version of Robert Parsons’ The First Booke of the Christian Exercise”, Huntington Library Quarterly 22 (1959) 271–300, here 272). I cite from the original 1585 edition, page 11r (see following footnote for bibliographical details). Houliston suggests that some rumour of Bunny’s hacking must have reached Persons while still revising his text, rather than at the moment of printing, as he claims in the preface of the 1585 Christian Directory (Houliston, ed. xxix). [Rouen, Persons’s press]: 1585. Houliston “Why Robert Persons Would not Be Pacified” 174. See also his “Re-Considering ‘Consideration’ with Robert Persons”, Reformation 24, 1 (2019) 24–42. I’m grateful to Prof. Houliston for letting me see a pre-print copy of this article. For a list of all the reprints of the work, see Houliston The Christian Directory lvi–lvii. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 162 Sáez-Hidalgo of others. Since the manifestation of that booke, the first Author thereof, named Ma. Parsons, hath enlarged the same Booke, with a second part and new additions […]. And considering howe diuers were desirous to haue thys latter part, because they had thorowlie read the other: after passage the perusing of sundrie learned men, who haue thought it as worthy to be seene as the first, it is (gentle Reader) presented to thy viewe, reade it indifferentlie, and iudge therof as thou findest occasion.27 Experts agree that Bunny was not involved in this new version, and it remains unclear who the ‘sundrie learned men’ might have been.28 In any case, this new Protestantization differs in method from Bunny’s. Firstly, as John P. Driscoll has observed, The Second part peruses selectively, that is to say, it includes only some of the sections of Persons’s revised text, leaving out more than half of the work. Driscoll speculates that the volume was intended to supplement Bunny’s – actually, several extant copies are bound with it – and therefore only the new material needed to be ‘perused’.29 Secondly, a sizeable passage has been added in the chapter on ‘Howe a man may iudge or discerne of himselfe, whether he be a true Christian or not. With a declaration of the two parts belonging to that profession: which are, beleefe and life’30 This substantial intervention, of more than thirty pages, had three main aims, in Driscoll’s view: the obliteration of the Catholic notion that instruction through churchmen was relevant for the faith; the centrality of the Scriptures for the faith; and the clarification of the connection between faith and good works. Finally, the rest of the modifications to Persons’s text range from those typically Protestant alterations, similar to Bunny’s (e.g., erasing words like ‘Pope’31 or diminishing 27 28 29 30 31 I’m citing from the first edition: The Seconde parte of the Booke of Christian exercise, appertayning to Resolvtion. Or a Christian directorie, guiding all men to their saluation (London, Iohn Charlwoode and Simon Waterson: 1590) n.p. Driscoll J.P., “The Seconde Parte: Another Protestant Version of Robert Persons’s Christian Directorie”, Huntington Library Quarterly 25 (1962) 139–146. Houliston, Christian directory lv–lviii. Driscoll, “The Seconde Parte” 140–142.This argument is questionable, however: after stating that the rationale for selection is doctoring Persons’s new material, Driscoll admits that some chapters that were not entirely new are included in this book. The Seconde parte of the Booke of Christian exercise (1590) 343–376; for the edition examined in this essay, published in a smaller format, The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise (1592) 427–462. Henceforth, references to this edition will be abbreviated as The Second part (1592) in footnotes to distinguish it from other editions, which will also be cited with their date for clarity. Surprisingly, however, the term ‘Catholic’ is not entirely eliminated, as Driscoll has noted, which he attributes to the new editors’ acquaintance with the notion that the term Catholic applied both to the Anglican and the Roman Church (143). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 163 the importance of good works to gain heaven), to a high number of what can be considered lexical minutiae, conceivably of smaller doctrinal consequence than those taken up by Bunny: often grammatical choices like the substitution of the article ‘an’ for ‘the’, or ‘that’ for ‘the’,32 changes in prepositions (depart out of > depart from), the addition of the conjunction ‘and’ instead of a comma, or verbal tenses (‘asked’ instead of ‘asketh’).33 At other times the changes seem to reflect lexical preferences: choosing ‘words’ over ‘speeches’, ‘following’ instead of ‘ensuynge’,34 or in expressions like ‘God shal take flesh in a womans wombe’ where Persons had used ‘God shall take flesh in a womans bellie’.35 Although Driscoll has analysed the main features of The Second part, a more exhaustive study is still needed to assess this combination of doctrinally driven changes and those apparently focused on grammatical and stylistic aspects. While a thorough examination of the detail of these modifications is beyond the scope of this essay, their broader features will be of significant relevance for clarifying the annotations in the El Escorial copy of The Second part, examined in detail below. 3 Fluid Orthodoxy in Anglo-Spanish Book Collections The 1592 edition of The Second part – the one at El Escorial – was printed in a very small format, duodecimo, making the book a commodity that could be easily carried around, whether for habitual private usage or for smuggling. The inexpensive parchment binding of the Escorial copy suggests use as a budget pocketbook, which was doubtlessly facilitated by the fact that it is bound by itself, not together with Bunny, as was frequently the case. Also, although the book is quite well preserved, probably it endured frequent reading.36 A sticker on the spine, ‘viij.Proh.32’, indicates that it was allocated to the ‘high chamber’ of the Escorial library, where the forbidden books were kept. Yet despite the fact that the contents of the volume justify its prohibition, surprisingly The Second part was not and would never be included in any of the indexes of forbidden books issued by the Catholic Church in Spain or Rome. In contrast to any work by Bunny (an ‘auctor damnatus’, all of whose works were automatically 32 33 34 35 36 The Second part (1592) 400–401. Ibidem 66. Ibidem 28, 82. Both terms were used at the time for what we nowadays refer to as female womb in pregnancies. See LEME (Lexicons of Early Modern English), available at https://leme.library .utoronto.ca/search/quick (last accessed 1 May 2020). This is shown by the fact that cords holding the binding are now lost. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 164 Sáez-Hidalgo banned), no official document condemned The Second part.37 Moreover, the Escorial library was a special case, given the vast number and variety of titles in it. As a result, the inquisitors often had to rely on their own sense of what was permissible or not, because the indexes fell short for its holdings: not every book in it had been subject to the inspection of the authorities in charge of making the list of forbidden books. The relegation of the Escorial copy of The Second part to the ‘high chamber’ of forbidden books would seem inextricably connected to how the volume became part of the royal library. Although the exact date of its incorporation into El Escorial is unknown, it is part of a small collection of books, most of them English, which were added to the royal collection between the 1610s and 1635, and which were labelled on their title-pages as ‘extravagant’.38 Such labelling must have led to their inclusion in a 1635 list of forbidden books in the Library of El Escorial. All of these titles were (and remain) grouped together, but outside the usual inquisitional categories39 as works ‘comprehendidos en alguna de las reglas generales del índice de los prohibidos’40 [comprised in some of the general rules of the index of forbidden books], meaning that even if they were not specifically listed in the indexes, the general rules of the inquisition could apply to them. In the case of The Second part, its Anglican nature makes it clearly eligible for this list. But this small group is in fact a heterogeneous collection which not only includes works by ‘heretical’ authors like Richard Bancroft, John Norden and Richard Turnbull,41 but also Catholic books like the Douay edition of The miroure of the blessed life of our Lorde and Sauioure Iesus Christe (ca. 1606), translated by Nicholas Love, and two works by Persons, the abovementioned Christian Directory and A briefe apologie, or Defence of the Catholike Ecclesiastical Hierarchie (1601).42 Probably their orthodoxy went unnoticed by inquisitors, who, observing that they were written in English, 37 38 39 40 41 42 Cf. Martínez de Bujanda J., El índice de libros prohibidos y expurgados por la Inquisición española (1551–1819) (Madrid: 2016); Martínez de Bujanda J. et al. Thesaurus de la littérature interdite au XVIe siècle: auteurs, ouvrages, éditions avec addenda et corrigenda (Paris: 1996). For a complete analysis of this collection, see Sáez-Hidalgo, “‘Extravagant’ English Books at the Library of El Escorial” 155–185. These categories are: 1) all the works by an ‘auctor damnatus’ [banned author], 2) specific works by a banned author, and 3) specific writings by specific authors. “Memoria de los libros prohibidos guardados en la biblioteca de El Escorial”, fol. 12v. Bancroft Richard, A suruay of the pretended holy discipline (London, Iohn Wolfe: 1593). Norden John, A pensiue mans practise, verie profitable for all persons (London, Robert Robinson: 1597). Turnbull Richard, An exposition vpon the canonicall epistle of Saint Iames (London, John Windet: 1591). [Antwerp, Arnout Conincx: 1601]. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 165 the language of ‘heretics’ (and one that inquisitors in Spain typically couldn’t read), unhesitatingly put them in the same category as the rest, effectively banning them. All the books in this small collection belonged originally to various Englishmen who were in Seville at the turn of the century, three of whom have been identified: Thomas Pitt, James Wadsworth and John Price.43 These men – respectively a merchant, a convert, and a recusant – not coincidentally come from three of the dominant networks of material and cultural exchange between the British Isles and Spain.44 Their activities also encompassed the circulation of English books into and within Spain. More specifically: Wadsworth worked for the Spanish Inquisition after his conversion, and was involved in the inspection of the books that were confiscated in the searches of English boats. The staff of St Gregory’s English College – men such as Price – were also involved.45 Both Wadsworth and Price had a role in the inquisitorial scrutiny of some of the Anglican books in the collection that ended up in El Escorial, and at least one of the volumes – if not more – belonged to Pitts, a merchant of the Spanish Company.46 Apparently, for whatever reason, these Anglican books subject to inspection were never returned to the Inquisition, but instead remained in the hands of Wadsworth and Price, who must then have merged them with the Catholic titles in their own collections.47 This is clearly how these heterogeneous works were brought together. Abnormal though this may seem, the fact that books considered orthodox and heterodox coexisted in private Catholic collections was not uncommon in the period. As we have already seen, Catholics had permission to refute heretics, and that required them to have the original texts. This was especially the case in English Colleges in exile like the one in Seville, where prospective seminary priests were trained in polemical theology. For instance, records show that the purveyor Richard 43 44 45 46 47 Murphy G.M., “Wadsworth, James (c. 1572–1623)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 15 Jan 2020. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-28389. On Price, see McCoog T.M., English and Welsh Jesuits: 1555–1650 ([London]: 1994) s.n. Price. On English merchants in Spain see Alloza Á., “Comercio y rivalidad entre España e Inglaterra. Corso, ataques navales y represalias en los siglos XVI y XVII”, XVII Coloquio de Historia Canario-americana (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: 2006) 1642–1688; Croft P., “Trading with the Enemy, 1585–1604”, Historical Journal 32, 2 (1989) 281–302. See Croft P., “Englishmen and the Spanish Inquisition”, The English historical Review 87, 343 (1972) 249–268. On the collaboration of the English College with the Inquisition, Murphy M., St Gregory’s College, Seville, 1592–1767 (London: 1992) 10–12, 124–125. On Thomas Pitt, see Sáez-Hidalgo, “‘Extravagant’ English Books at the Library of El Escorial” 166–168. Ibidem 165–166. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 166 Sáez-Hidalgo Verstegan distributed copies of Bunny’s works to St Gregory’s College in Seville.48 Other Catholic libraries had copies of Protestant books, from prison libraries to nuns’ collections.49 Ownership of Catholic books by Protestants was relatively common as well, as Alexandra Walsham and Earle Havens have surveyed.50 It is therefore in this atmosphere of fluidity in the dissemination and usage of Catholic and Protestant texts (noted by John Yamamoto-Wilson51) that the El Escorial copy of The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise and its annotations should be contextualized. Though its arrival in the Peninsula is not documented, it could have been one of the books sent by agents like Verstegan to the English Colleges for their exercises in controversy; alternatively, the book might have reached Spain by means of one of the many English Protestant merchants whose properties were searched, and on being discovered, subsequently handed over to an English collaborator of the Inquisition like Wadsworth or Price. Be as it may, the annotations that pervade the volume are a rare instance of the reading and the usage that this English book had in Spain at the turn of the century.52 48 49 50 51 52 Stonyhurst College, Ms. Coll. B.137; CRS 52:187–189. The volume has been identified as Bunny’s A briefe answer, vnto those idle and friuolous quarrels of R[obert] P[ersons] against the late edition of the Resolution (London, Iohn Charlewood: 1589). On Verstegan as distributor of Catholic texts between England and the Continent, see Arblaster P., Antwerp & the World. Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation (Leuven: 2004) 47–66. Some instances include Stephen Vallenger’s library, which owned copies of Bunny’s Protestantized version of Robert Persons’s Booke of the christian exercise (1584), and William Fulke’s exhaustive refutation of the Rheims New Testament (1589) (Walsham A. – Havens E., “Catholic Libraries: An Introduction”, in Fehrenbach R.J. et al (eds.), Private Libraries in Renaissance England: A Collection and Catalogue of Tudor and Early Stuart Book-Lists, vol. 8 (Tempe: 2014) 129–261, here 145. See also Bowden C., “Building Libraries in Exile: The English Convents and their Book Collections in the Seventeenth Century”, British Catholic History 32, 3 (2015) 343–382, here 362–363. ‘The perusal of “popish” books by learned readers for scholarly purposes was regarded as permissible, for instance, and Protestant divines such as William Crashaw, Richard Bancroft, and Tobie Matthew regularly acquired copies for their libraries’ (Walsham – Havens, “Catholic Libraries”, 133). Yamamoto-Wilson J.R., “The Protestant Reception of Catholic Devotional Literature in England to 1700”, British Catholic History 32, 1 (2014) 67–90. See also his “Robert Persons’s Resolution (1582) and the Issue of Textual Piracy in Protestant Editions of Catholic Devotional Literature”, Reformation and Renaissance Review 15, 2 (2013) 177–198. No other copy of The Second part has, to my knowledge, such a large number of annotations throughout the volume, nor even if some of them have some marginalia and reading marks. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 4 167 Use and Reuse of the Heterodox from Spain Clues to the reading and usage of the volume are offered by several annotating hands. The first two appear on the verso of the flyleaf, translating the title of the work: ‘la 2a parte de un libro / inglese llamado / la Resolution / [2nd hand]] o cristiano directorio que guia / los ho[mbr]es a su saluacion’, a rendering that was probably used to make the abovementioned list of El Escorial forbidden books, put together in 1635. Other notes have a similarly pragmatic purpose. In several places the volume is mis-paginated, and one of the readers has noticed that it is not a printer’s typo: the quire starting after page 312 must have been wrongly folded, so a note warns ‘see 4 leafes after’, and at the end of the quire, before page 321, we read again ‘see 4 leaves before’.53 Whether these notes are a reminder for the reader’s own guidance or for other possible readers is difficult to tell, but in any case, they show an attentive and thorough usage of the book. An equivalent thoroughness is perceptible in the rest of the annotations in the book. Underlinings and crossing-outs of individual words or phrases, insertions and corrections of one or several words, sometimes between the lines and sometimes in the margins, transposition of elements and some other readers’ marks, all of which show attentive reading of The Second part. Unfortunately, nowhere in the text can any indication be found of the purpose of such an extensive apparatus of hundreds of annotations, written in a hand perceptibly different from the one translating the title in the flyleaf. A number of factors suggest that the annotations very likely were made before the volume was incorporated into the Escorial library. Clearly, they were not part of an inquisitional expunging. As we have seen, The Second part was never included in any of the Holy Office indexes, and therefore no official guidelines existed for its censorship. It is certainly true that it is possible to find other instances of purged books that had never been on the index librorum prohibitorum. The most famous probably being the so-called ‘Inquisition Folio’ of Shakespeare’s works, now at the Folger Library. This is a censored copy of a second folio that at one time belonged to the library of the Royal English College of St Alban, in Valladolid, Spain. According to a manuscript note on the title-page,54 the book was expunged by William Sankey, who took the initiative 53 54 The pages appear in the following sequence: 317, 318, 319, 320, 313, 314, 315, 316, therefore the first two leaves of the quire had been folded onto the back of it. The same happens with the quire after page 328. ‘Opus auctoritate Sancti officij permissum et expurgatum eadem auctoritate per Guilielmum Sanchaeum e Soc<ieta>te Jesu’. Mr. VVilliam Shakespeares comedies, histories, and tragedies (London: Thomas Cotes, 1632). See the catalogue of the Folger library: http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/h749j2. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 168 Sáez-Hidalgo figure 7.1 The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise (London, Iohn Charlwood for Simon Waterson: 1592) title-page. Royal Library of the Monastery of El Escorial ©Patrimonio Nacional following his own interpretation of the Holy Office guidelines as to what is orthodox or heterodox.55 That statement on the title-page renders it an officially acknowledged inquisitorial intervention. The Escorial copy of The Second part has no such statement, however, nor the traditional ‘visus’ note indicating its examination by the authorities and the date, either [Fig. 7.1]. Moreover, the method used to cross out passages in the Escorial Second part is very different 55 Cummings B., “Shakespeare and the Inquisition”, in Holland P. (ed.), Shakespeare Survey 65 (2012) 306–322. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 169 from the Inquisition’s: The Holy Office required that the expunged text be completely obliterated. Censors resorted to crossing out the lines in such a way as to render the text impossible to read it at all and even to excise passages.56 By contrast, the crossed-out (and underlined) elements in the Escorial copy of The Second part are struck through with a single, thin horizontal line that does not prevent the original to be read. Indeed, a replacement in the margin often accompanies such strike-throughs – a practice altogether inconsistent with the methods traditionally used by the Inquisition. These marks and annotations are thus a key to the kind of reading that the Escorial copy of The Second part received. Far from censoring the text, such markings show a reader or readers reacting and responding to the text thoughtfully, and in several ways. Conceivably, given that the book belonged to English Catholics in exile before it reached the shelves of El Escorial, these marks and annotations might evince an exercise in refutation,57 a practice common in print and in manuscript, which usually entailed presenting the original text and the response to it side by side.58 Certainly, in the Escorial copy of The Second part more than one deletion and its corresponding annotation would be compatible with this possibility. In the section discussing ‘the ende and cause’ of man’s creation, for example, the text reads: why, and wherefore, and to what end, [man] was created & sent hether into this world? What to do? […] And then shall he finde, that for no other cause, matter, or end, but onely to serue God in thys lyfe, and by that seruice to enioy heauen, and euerlasting saluation in the lyfe, to come.59 The anonymous hand has underlined ‘enioy’, writing ‘gaine’ in the margin as a substitute for it. This recurs three pages later, once with identical lexical pairs (gain/enjoy), and once to correct ‘possess’, with ‘gaine’ written in the 56 57 58 59 This may be the most habitual method, although more radical measures were sometimes carried out, from gluing pieces of paper to cutting out the pages, as in the Folger Inquisition folio, where Mesure for Measure is entirely cut off. On the practice of disputation at English Colleges, see McCoog T.M., “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission”, in McCoog, The Reckoned Expense 119–140. Walsham “The Spider and the Bee” 163–190. This format somehow reminds the notion of book usage described by Stephen B. Dobranski, that is, books that were specially prepared to be completed by readers: Readers and Authorship in Early Modern England (Cambridge – New York: 2005). The Second part (1592) 157. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 170 Sáez-Hidalgo margin, in the phrase ‘when of possessing Gods eternall kingdom’.60 These corrections seem intended to contest a more Protestant view of salvation and provide instead the Catholic notion that heaven can only be won as a result of one’s actions. Similarly, this same notion seems to be behind one of the longest passages cancelled and then replaced by a different text in the margin. In the section intended to help the reader discern ‘whether [a man] be a true Christian or not’, the first point urges belief in the Bible and the mysteries of Jesus, his disciples and the Church, and to perswade & assure himselfe, of the forgiueness of all hys sinnes, and of the fatherly loue and fauour of GOD towardes hym in Christ Jesus, whereby he is adopted to be the sonne of God, and heire of euerlasting life.61 This passage is entirely crossed out, and the anonymous hand has written in the margin a new version: […] performe in sincerity the rules and precepts of life, prescribed vnto Christians for direction of their actions.62 Again, this modification emphasizes the necessity of good actions as a requisite for salvation defended by Catholics, versus the Protestant notion found in the Second part, that God’s ‘fatherly love and favour’ can be enough – if not, indeed, all. Other marginalia convey a similar Catholic response to the text of The Second part. For instance, the terms ‘repentance’ and ‘repent’ are frequently eliminated and replaced by ‘penance’ and ‘do penance’,63 thus encapsulating in a verbal difference a major doctrinal disagreement between the two creeds. Also, a reference to the Papal Curia makes its appearance in the margin, where ‘The sea Apostolicke’ replaces ‘that rule’: 60 61 62 63 Ibidem 160. Ibidem 423. Ibidem. See, for instance, on Jesus’ divinity: ‘Let vs now compare the Proclamation of Iesus, whose enterance [sic] and Praeface was: Paenitentia[m] agite, Repent yee’ (354), where ‘Repent’ is replaced in the margin by ‘doe ye pena[n]ce’. Also, The Second part says on the Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: ‘he talketh of nothing els [sic] but of vertuous lyfe, pouertie, meekenes, iustice, purity, sorrow for sinne, patience in suffering, contempt of ryches, forgiuing of iniuries, fasting, prayer, repentance […]’ (448–449); the last word is cancelled and the margin reads: ‘penaunce’. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 171 figure 7.2 The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise (London, Iohn Charlwood for Simon Waterson: 1592) 446. Royal Library of the Monastery of El Escorial ©Patrimonio Nacional Of the second fountaine are deriued other qualities conformable to that humor, as are the denying of iurisdiction & authority in our Superiours, the contempt of Prelates, the exaggeration of the faults & defects of our Gouernours, the impugnation of al byshoplike dignities or Ecclesiasticall eminencie, and especially of that rule wherunto appertaineth the correction of such like offenders […].64 [Fig. 7.2.] Importantly, this passage discusses the origin of heresy. The intervention occurs at precisely the point at which the denial of church officials is designated a source of heresy. However, the fact that this and other passages in the Escorial copy of this Protestant appropriation of Persons’s text only receive such verbally restrained reactions – if any – when they are particularly loaded with 64 The Second part (1592) 446; my emphasis. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 172 Sáez-Hidalgo doctrinal significance, is uncharacteristic of refutation. The argumentative tone and polemical approach commonly found in refutational annotations is absent, nor is there any statement indicating a controversialist purpose. The difference can be seen readily by comparing Persons’s disputatious reaction to what he considered as Bunny’s mangling of the Book of Resolution in the preface to his Christian Directory: And this shameles shift of corrupting other mens bookes, is an old occupation of heretiques from the beginning, as may appeare by the often complaintes of most ancient fathers, whos workes they were not ashamed to infect and corrupt whiles they were yet liuing.65 Or: in a section dedicated to resisting sin, Persons disputes Bunny’s view in the apostille, giving a documented response: Bunney doubteth vvhether S. Anthonie had sufficient groundvvorke of his doinge; but Athanasius doubted not.66 Persons reacts similarly to Bunny’s alterations of certain terms to make them more acceptable for Protestants: wher I talke of Catholique preestes that heare confessions; he maketh me saie, men that be skilful to giue Counsail, &c. […] In like maner page 368. When I saie, penance & satisfaction. He maketh me saie, toile of amendment […] turning euery wher the wordes penance and satisfaction into repentance.67 Persons’s irate reactions to Bunny’s appropriations illustrate the character of disputation practice as it had become established after the ‘Great Controversy’ between the Bishop John Jewel and Thomas Harding, and perpetuated for 65 66 67 Persons, A Christian directorie (1585) Preface 9v. Persons’s preface is a rebuttal of Bunny’s book developed through an extensive and detailed analysis of Bunny’s techniques, from the deletions to the usage of parenthesis, among other alterations. Ibidem 329. The comment is placed next to the following text: ‘in this combat of resisting sinne, diuers other did afterward take in hand that strait course of life, wherof we read with admiration in auncie[n]t writers, as S. Anthonie, whos life is recorded by holy Athanasius’. Persons, A Christian directorie (1585) Preface 11r. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 173 decades in both oral and written dialectics.68 Clearly then, the annotations in the Escorial copy of The Second part aspire to a very different character and tone. Besides the substitution of terms, phrases, or, occasionally, brief passages, the anonymous hands have marked the text in several other ways, with insertions, transposition of elements, underlinings, as noted. These nonverbal interventions can hardly be considered a refutation of the text. Taken together, the verbal and non-verbal interventions with their generally understated doctrinal content in the Escorial copy of The Second part offer a broader scope of readerly responses than does standard controversy.69 Nevertheless, the annotations are more than mere reading notes, inasmuch as they modify (even if they do not directly rebut) the text of The Second part. In that regard, these readerly markings can be considered evidence of the kind of readers’ engagement that William H. Sherman has shown was common practice in the period, what he terms ‘active reading’: to ‘mak[e] books their own by making marks in and around them and by using them for getting on in the world’, thus ‘transform[ing] one printed book into another’.70 In precisely this way the readers and annotators of the Escorial Second part ‘customized’ this Protestant book with a wide display of marks, investing it with an unquestionable Catholic essence that undoubtedly suited their own worldview. Beyond the above-mentioned emendations, a very important part of the customization of the Escorial The Second part relies on, on the one hand, nonverbal interventions like underlinings, crossing-outs with no suggested emendation, or transposition marks; and, on the other, on smaller elements, from individual words to morphemes. Among the former – the non-verbal marks – the symbols indicating transposition of words are outstanding inasmuch as they strongly call to mind proofreading activities. Actually, some of the pages in the volume visually resemble those to be found in what Anthony Grafton calls ‘the kingdoms of error’, printing houses where teams of correctors had a prominent role in emending typographical errors.71 68 69 70 71 Joshua R., Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558–1626 (Surrey; Burlington: 2014) esp. ch. 1; Questier M., Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: 1996); Milward P., Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age: A Survey of Printed Sources (Lincoln: 1977). This is particularly so when it comes to underlinings and transpositions, where the doctrinal weight can hardly be appreciated. Sherman W.H., Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: 2010) 3, 7. Grafton A., The Culture of Correction in Renaissance Europe (London: 2011, ch. 2. (78ff)). It is interesting to note the similarities with some of the images of proofs of shops like Plantin’s or Moretus’ with those in the Escorial Second part. For a more literary approach to typographical errors, both as part of the process of book production and as platform Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 174 Sáez-Hidalgo A look at the one of the pages of the volume can illustrate not only the visual similarity of the corrected page but also the detail and variety of the corrections: the figure [Fig. 7.3a] shows the deletion of pronouns (‘S. Paul himself’), of indefinite articles (‘in an open audience’), transposition of words (inversion of the phrase ‘before noted’), substitution of individual words (‘forged’ for ‘feygned’; ‘those’ for ‘theyr’), and the correction of verbal forms (‘protested’ instead of ‘protesteth’).72 While the meticulousness and punctiliousness in these corrections seems to point at the ‘minute scrutiny of the texts’ typical of the ‘sharp-eyed critics’, as Grafton calls the proof-readers,73 it is obvious that the marks and annotations on these pages are not done in preparation for printing, as the work has already been printed, distributed, and a copy of the book has even travelled beyond the British Isles into the Iberian Peninsula. Therefore, it is the use of that printed book what we witness through the marks and annotations – here I am following Sherman’s terminology for annotations as traces of ‘use’ of the book.74 The question is obviously what kind of use leaves traces of such a thorough correction and to what purpose. Grafton points at the systems of gifts and exchange as driving the zeal for correction in printing houses. Neither writers nor patrons were willing to have a book widely disseminated with a text that was inaccurate or distorted by the number of errors. In this case, it is not the producer, but the user who would not tolerate the errors. And although in appearance this situation might be similar to that of readers responding to lists of mistakes and appeals to correct them described by Adam Smyth,75 here errors have a new dimension. Errors in a religious work, and in the context of the battle of religious books, are particularly momentous. The wrong word could lead to the wrong belief, a concern with the exactitude of the letter that goes back centuries in time, in particular among Christians.76 That is actually what the usage of this book is about: the correction of what is not exact, of what is wrong, and therefore heterodox. The hands that annotate it, in their zeal for correction, apply the thoroughness of the collating techniques devised by the 72 73 74 75 76 for the literary authors’ creativity, see Smyth A., Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge: 2018) 75–136. The Second part (1592) 358. Grafton, The Culture of Correction 214. Sherman, Used Books xiii. Smyth, Material Texts 92–98. The fear of misinterpretation lead to an anxiety for the “sensus literalis” of the Bible which was central to the controversies on the translation of the Bible. See the classic study on the topic Schwarz W., Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation: Some Reformation Controversies and their Background (Cambridge: 1955). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections figure 7.3a 175 The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise (London, Iohn Charlwood for Simon Waterson: 1592) 358. Royal Library of the Monastery of El Escorial ©Patrimonio Nacional Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 176 Sáez-Hidalgo philological work of the humanists.77 Here, instead of a critical comparison of a number of manuscripts in an attempt to reach the best textual testimony/ reading, the correctors already have a sense of the original and the distortions it has gone through. Thus, the concern with the textuality78 and the literalness of the original is central to the English Catholic annotators79 who corrected the Escorial copy of the Protestant Second part, aware as they did so of the fact that the original to collate it with was Persons’s Christian Directory. A comparison of the page 358 seen above, with a transcription of the corresponding text in Persons makes it evident: figure 7.3b 77 78 79 80 […] way when he went to persecute. Of which miracle, S. Paul protested in euery place afterward, and once especiallie, in open audience and iudgement before Agrippa the king, and Festus Gouernour of Iurie. Thes miracles and manie moe are recorded by S. Luke; wherof some part were sene by him self, and the rest most euident to all the worlde, as done in publique before infinite witnesses. Neither is it possible they could be forged, for that (as in the like I haue noted before,) it had bene most easye to haue refelled them, and therby to haue discredited the whole proceedings of Christian religion, in thos first beginnings. As for example; if the miracle of Peters deliuery forth of the […].80 Italian humanists, from Leonardo Bruni to Angelo Poliziano made the word the center of knowledge, as Ernesto Grassi has argued (Einführung in philosophische Probleme des Humanismus. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Darmstadt: 1986) 46). See also Rico F., El sueño del humanismo: de Erasmo a Petrarca (Madrid: 2002) 85ff. Richards J. – Schurink F., “The Textuality and Materiality of Reading in Early Modern England”, Huntington Library Quarterly 73, 3 (2010) 345–361. The meticulousness in the transmission and dissemination of texts was a common currency among English Catholics. See for instance Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS Obsborn a42. Persons, A Christian directorie (1585) 253–254. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 177 As can be observed, the annotators in the Escorial copy of The Second part, fully conscious of the manner in which the work distorts Persons’s Christian Directory, have methodically contrasted the two of them in an aspiration to revert the anonymous Protestant appropriation, and hence to reconstruct the Catholic text to its original verbal choices, its morphology, even its word order, in an almost philological endeavour that only spares variant spelling and punctuation. The resulting text, once the annotator has meticulously restored it to its original ‘orthodoxy’,81 would then be something that could be safely used – without any tinge of ‘heresy’ – when no other copy of the Christian Directory was available.82 This result, in a way, was comparable to what was achieved by the Inquisition’s expunging of books.83 This ‘use’ of the Escorial copy of The Second part, though technically not polemical, is however deeply related to recusant book culture in exile. As is well known, the dissemination of Catholic culture in England, and from England towards the Continent, not only relied on printed books – which could not be produced in England – but also, to a large extent, on manuscripts.84 And, while the continuity of manuscript culture in certain areas of textual production coexisted with the widespread printed texts in the English letters in general,85 the coexistence of one and the other was somewhat more interconnected in 81 82 83 84 85 Such is the zeal of the correctors that some actual typographical errors of the original edition which had been corrected in the 1592 Protestant version – errors completely devoid of any religious consequence – are restored to their mistaken form, just because that is the way they appear in the 1585 edition. That is the case of the name ‘Baltasar’ (The Second part 178), which corrects Persons’s erroneous ‘Balsasar’ – an error that is recovered in the margin by the anonymous annotator. I have also contemplated other hypotheses, like the possibility that the book was being marked-up for another Catholic reprinting of the Christian Directory, but this seems highly unlikely because the next edition to be published (1598) was identical to the first one, and the following one (1607) has much more significant changes none of which are marked in the annotations of the Escorial copy of The Second part. Peña Díaz M., Escribir y prohibir: Inquisición y censura en los Siglos de Oro (Madrid: 2015) 23, 36, 48. See, among others, Havens E., “Notes from a Literary Underground: Recusant Catholics, Jesuit Priests, and Scribal Publication in Elizabethan England”, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 99, 4 (2005) 505–538. Nany Pollard Brown has studied how Catholic families collected ‘manuscript and printed books for their libraries in country houses’ (“Paperchase: the dissemination of Catholic texts in Elizabethan England”, English Manuscript Studies 1 (1989) 120–143, here 122). See, for instance, the usage of manuscripts for poetry as studied by Marotti A., Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance (Ithaca: 1995), and Woudhuysen H.R., Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts: 1558–1640 (Oxford – New York: 2003). For the seventeenth century, see Love H., Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford – New York: 2001). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 178 Sáez-Hidalgo the context of English Catholics in particular, both in England and in exile. In Luis de Granada’s words, books had become ‘domme preachers’ for Catholics in England.86 The networks of English Colleges on the Continent made extensive use of both manuscripts and printed texts for the dissemination of all kinds of information, from the news on the persecution and martyrdom,87 to multiple copies of devotional, controversial and even political for wide distribution among the members of a persecuted community. Certainly, the two supplemented each other: while the printing press ensured the distribution of a high number of copies, the scribal production could sometimes be more suitable for faster or clandestine dissemination. But at the same time, print and manuscript were not in competition nor were they mutually exclusive. There was a fluid relationship between printed and manuscript text, which not only coexisted but also combined, not infrequently in a seamless unison. As Walsham has variously argued, these forms of hybridity significantly contributed to the proselytizing purpose of training in colleges on the Continent.88 The Escorial copy of The Second part is an extraordinary survival illustrating how the printed and the scribal cultures were instrumental for English Catholics outside England, more specifically in their exile in Spain. The use that can be traced through the marks and annotations in it had in all likelihood a utilitarian character which suited the needs of those persecuted Catholics who, while in England, had to circumvent the prohibition of publishing books, and in exile, had to depend on agents like Verstegan and their networks of dissemination in order to have access to books in their own language both for devotion and training for priesthood. In this context of difficult access to written resources on the one hand, and need for them for professional purposes on the other, the culture of recycling and repurposing became one more survival strategy. It is well known that many documents that were no longer of interest, or were considered old, useless or dated, ended up reused as binding material.89 Similarly, the books and texts themselves were repurposed for new uses in a variety of manners. From that perspective, Bunny’s ‘perusal’ of 86 87 88 89 Alexandra Walsham has studied the significant role that books had for Catholics in England, especially in the absence of books: “‘Domme Preachers’? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the Culture of Print”, Past & Present 168 (2000) 72–123. Dillon A., The construction of martyrdom in the English Catholic community, 1535–1603 (Aldershot: 2002); McCoog T.M., “Construing Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1582–1602”, in Shagan E. (ed.), Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation’: Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England (Manchester: 2005) 95–127; and Monta S., Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge: 2005). Walsham, “The Spider and the Bee” 189. The instances of reuse of material are numerous. For the recusant context, see for instance the so-called Desiderius, in the Beinecke library, which has a fragment of a Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 179 Persons’s Book of Christian Exercise can be considered one of the most noteworthy instances inasmuch as it modifies the original text into a new one for a different purpose. Similar instances would be a not insignificant number of Protestant translations and adaptations of Spanish Catholic texts into English, as well as Catholic devotional manuscripts used by Protestants for their own devotion, with but a few additional notes and comments.90 It is against this background of the practice of recycling that the marks and annotations in the Escorial copy of The Second part should be understood. The book that is now in the royal library was among the Protestant books that English Catholic exiles like Wadsworth or Price were asked to examine for the Inquisition and was then incorporated to one of their personal libraries. In a culture of economy of resources, when books such as Persons’s original Book of Christian Exercise were in demand for Catholic exiles, the idea of recycling the seized copy of The Second part by way of correcting the Protestant appropriations and reverting it to Persons’s own text through a process of collation and scribal reconstruction thus constitutes a utilitarian (re)use of the book.91 Seen in this light, the repurposing carried out in the markings and annotations in the book responds to specific ends, interests and needs that are comparable to the ones described by Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton. In their analysis of early modern annotations, they reveal how many of they were goal-directed by professional readers by like Gabriel Harvey, who approached the book ‘to give rise to something else’.92 In the case of the Escorial Second part, obviously the annotations are not intended for political, social or military promotion, nor even as tools for controversial purposes, or for religious persecution (in the manner of Richard Topcliffe).93 Rather, they constitute a carefully planned job of meticulous corrections which are unquestionably specialized for religious use. This plan was put together by readers 90 91 92 93 liturgical manuscript used as binding guard (ms Osborn a32). For an analysis of the new life of these recycled ‘waste’ into new books, see Smyth, Material Texts 143–153. For an overview, see Yamamoto-Wilson “The Protestant Reception of Catholic Devotional Literature”. Some specific reuses of devotional texts have been studied by McQuade P., Catechisms and Women’s Writing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: 2017) esp. part 2. In a way, not unlike the instances of scribal copying of printed texts intended for dissemination: see Havens, on the copies commissioned by Arundel (“Notes from a Literary Underground”). On the utilitarian use of books, see Richards – Schurink “The Textuality and Materiality of Reading”. Jardine L. – Grafton A., “‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy”, Past & Present 129 (1990) 30–78, here 30. Rankin M., “Richard Topcliffe and the Book Culture of the Elizabethan Catholic Underground”, Renaissance Quarterly 72, 2 (2019) 492–536. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 180 Sáez-Hidalgo familiarized with the techniques used by the Spanish Inquisition in order to check any possible trace of heterodoxy in the texts they examined, and to act following the indications of the index of forbidden books, and, in the absence of those indications, to ensure the books were heresy-proof. The result, in the Escorial copy of The Second part, exceeds by far the inquisitorial zeal: not only is the text completely free from heretical terms and ideas, but it aspires to restore Persons’s exact words, resulting in a text hardly distinguishable from the original.94 Once completed, the repurposed book could be used again by those English Catholics who find it difficult to get copies of The Christian Directory in Spain. One of the most remarkable effects of this recycling, interestingly enough, is that it puts an end to the consecutive layers of instability that accumulated, first with Persons’s version of the Resolution, then with Bunny’s appropriation, followed by Persons’s revision and rebuttal of Bunny in The Christian Directory, and finally, with the anonymous Protestantisation. The process might be compared to a set of Russian dolls that the annotators of the Escorial copy of The Second part intended to stabilize with their recovery of the original authority of the text. This is the same authority that, according to Ronald Corthell, Persons was intent on establishing in his writings, in the belief that minimizing reading instability would be crucial for the missionary activity.95 It becomes clear that this concern of Persons’s was recognized and adopted by Catholics in exile, and those who were trained for the mission. The zeal in the restoration of Persons’s text in the Escorial copy of The Second part is an utmost exercise of recovery of the textual authority so that the original work could be read in Spain. Bibliography Primary Sources Bancroft Richard, A suruay of the pretended holy discipline […] (London, Iohn Wolfe: 1593). The Booke of common prayer (London, Christopher Barker: 1578). Bright Timothy, Therapeutica (Frankfurt, John Wechel:1589). Bunny Edmund, A booke of Christian exercise, appertaining to resolution […] by R.P. Perused, and accompanied now with a treatise tending to pacification: by Edm. Bunny (London, N. Newton: 1584). 94 95 This is so in those sections that have been maintained from Persons’s text. See above (pp. 162–163) for the structural differences between the Christian Directory and The Second part. Corthell R., “Politics and Devotion. The Case of Robert Persons vs. Edmund Bunny, Author of A Book of Christian Exercise”, Journal of Jesuit Studies 1 (2014) 558–571, here 561. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 181 Bunny Edmund, A briefe answer, vnto those idle and friuolous quarrels of R[obert] P[ersons] against the late edition of the Resolution (London, Iohn Charlewood: 1589). Camden William, Britannia (Frankfurt, John Wechel: 1590). Cheke John, De pronuntiatione graecae (Basel, Nicholas Episcopius, Jr.: 1555). Foxe John, Actes and monuments (London, Iohn Day: 1563). Loarte Gaspar, The Exercise of a Christian Life, trans. Stephen Brinkley (London, W. Carter: 1579). Norden John, A pensiue mans practise, verie profitable for all persons […] (London, Robert Robinson: 1597). Persons Robert, First booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to resolution. Vvherein are layed downe the causes & reasons that should moue a man to resolue hym selfe to the seruice of God (Rouen, Persons’s press: 1582). Persons Robert, A christian directorie guiding men to their salvation. Deuided into three Bookes ([Rouen, Persons’s press]: 1585). Persons Robert, A christian directorie guiding men to their salvation devided into three boores [i.e. bookes] (Louan, Laurence Kellam: 1598). Persons Robert, Relacion que embiaron las religiosas del Monesterio de Sion de Inglaterra (Madrid: biuda de P. Madrigal, 1594). Persons Robert, Relacion de un sacerdote ingles, escrita a Flandes, a un cavallero de su tierra, desterrado por ser católico (Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1592). Persons Robert A briefe apologie, or Defence of the Catholike Ecclesiastical Hierarchie […] ([Antwerp, Arnout Conincx]: [1601]). Persons Robert, The Correspondence and Unpublished Papers of Robert Persons, SJ. 1, 1574–1588, ed. V. Houliston (Toronto: 2017). Persons Robert, The Christian directory (1582): The first booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to resolution, ed. V. Houliston (Leiden – Boston: 1998). Quiroga Gaspar de, Index et catalogus Librorum prohibitorum (Madrid: Alphonso Gómez, 1583). The Second part of the Booke of Christian exercise, appertayning to Resolution or a Christian directory, guiding all men vnto theyr saluation 2nd ed. (London: John Charlewood, 1592). The Seconde parte of the Booke of Christian exercise, appertayning to Resolvtion. Or a Christian directorie, guiding all men to their saluation (London, Iohn Charlwoode and Simon Waterson: 1590). Turnbull Richard, An exposition vpon the canonicall epistle of Saint Iames (London, John Windet: 1591). Secondary Sources Alloza Á., “Comercio y rivalidad entre España e Inglaterra. Corso, ataques navales y represalias en los siglos XVI y XVII”, XVII Coloquio de Historia Canario-americana (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: 2006) 1642–1688. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 182 Sáez-Hidalgo Arblaster P., Antwerp & the World. Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation (Leuven: 2004). Bowden C., “Building Libraries in Exile: The English Convents and their Book Collections in the Seventeenth Century”, British Catholic History 32, 3 (2015) 343–382. Corthell R., “Politics and Devotion. The Case of Robert Persons vs. Edmund Bunny, Author of A Book of Christian Exercise”, Journal of Jesuit Studies 1 (2014) 558–571. Corthell R., “Writing Back: Robert Persons and the Early Modern English Catholic Subject”, Philological Quarterly 87, 3–4 (2008) 277–297. Croft P., “Englishmen and the Spanish Inquisition”, The English Historical Review 87, 343 (1972) 249–268. Croft P., “Trading with the Enemy, 1585–1604”, Historical Journal 32, 2 (1989) 281–302. Cummings B., “Shakespeare and the Inquisition”, in Holland P. (ed.), Shakespeare Survey 65 (2012) 306–322. Dillon A., The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535–1603 (Aldershot: 2002). Dobranski S.B., Readers and Authorship in Early Modern England (Cambridge – New York: 2005). Driscoll J.P., “The Seconde Parte: Another Protestant Version of Robert Persons’s Christian Directorie”, Huntington Library Quarterly 25 (1962) 139–146. Gómez Canseco L., El humanismo después de 1600: Pedro de Valencia (Sevilla: 1993). Gonzalo Sánchez-Molero J.L., “La biblioteca de Arias Montano en El Escorial”, in Maestre Maestre J.M. et al. (eds.), Benito Arias Montano y los humanistas de su tiempo (Mérida: 2006), vol. 1, 91–110. Grafton A., The Culture of Correction in Renaissance Europe (London: 2011). Grassi E. Einführung in philosophische Probleme des Humanismus. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Darmstadt: 1986). Gregory B.S., “The ‘True and Zealouse Service of God’: Robert Parsons, Edmund Bunny, and the First Booke of the Christian Exercise”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994) 238–268. Havens E., “Notes from a Literary Underground: Recusant Catholics, Jesuit Priests, and Scribal Publication in Elizabethan England”, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 99, 4 (2005) 505–538. Houliston V., Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Persons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580–1610 (Aldershot: 2007). Houliston V., “Why Robert Persons would not be Pacified. Edmund Bunny’s Theft of The Book of Resolution”, in McCoog T.M. (ed.), The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits (Woodbridge: 1996) 159–177. Houliston V., “Re-Considering ‘Consideration’ with Robert Persons”, Reformation 24, 1 (2019) 24–42. Houliston V., “Persons Cannibalized Again”, Notes & Queries 44 (1997) 32–33. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Use and Reuse of English Books in Anglo-Spanish Collections 183 Jardine L. – Grafton A., “‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy”, Past & Present 129 (1990) 30–78. Joshua R., Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558–1626 (Surrey – Burlington: 2014). Lezcano Tosca H., “Lecturas espirituales prohibidas en la Real Biblioteca de El Escorial (siglo XVI)”, Libros de la Corte.es 6 (2013) 76–120. Love H., Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford – New York: 2001). Marotti A., Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance (Ithaca: 1995). Martínez de Bujanda J. et al., Thesaurus de la littérature interdite au XVIe siècle: auteurs, ouvrages, éditions avec addenda et corrigenda (Paris: 1996). Martínez de Bujanda J., El índice de libros prohibidos y expurgados por la Inquisición española (1551–1819) (Madrid: 2016). McCoog T.M., “‘Guiding Souls to Goodness and Devotion’: Clandestine Publications and the English Jesuit Mission”, in Bela T. – Calma C. – Rzegocka J. (eds.), Publishing Subversive Texts in Elizabethan England and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Leiden: 2016) 91–109. McCoog T.M., English and Welsh Jesuits: 1555–1650 ([London]: 1994). McCoog T.M., “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission”, in McCoog T.M. (ed.), The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits (Woodbridge: 1996) 119–140. McCoog T.M., “Construing Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1582–1602”, in E. Shagan (ed.), Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation’: Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England (Manchester: 2005) 95–127. McCoog T.M., The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland and England, 1589–1597. Building the Faith of St Peter upon the King of Spain’s Monarchy (Leiden: 2012). McNulty R., Robert Parsons’s The First Booke of the Christian Exercise (1582). An Edition and a study (Ph.D. dissertation Columbia University: 1955). McNulty R., “The Protestant Version of Robert Parsons’ The First Booke of the Christian Exercise”, Huntington Library Quarterly 22 (1959) 271–300. McQuade P., Catechisms and Women’s Writing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: 2017). Milward P., Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan age: A Survey of Printed Sources (Lincoln: 1977). Monta S., Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge: 2005). Murphy G.M., “Wadsworth, James (c. 1572–1623)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 15 Jan 2020. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ 10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-28389. Murphy M., St Gregory’s College, Seville, 1592–1767 (London: 1992). Peña Díaz M., Escribir y prohibir: Inquisición y censura en los Siglos de Oro (Madrid: 2015). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 184 Sáez-Hidalgo Pollard Brown N., “Paperchase: The Dissemination of Catholic Texts in Elizabethan England”, English Manuscript Studies 1 (1989) 120–143. Questier M., Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: 1996). Rankin M., “Richard Topcliffe and the Book Culture of the Elizabethan Catholic Underground”, Renaissance Quarterly 72, 2 (2019) 492–536. Richards J. – Schurink F., “The Textuality and Materiality of Reading in Early Modern England”, Huntington Library Quarterly 73, 3 (2010) 345–361. Rico F., El sueño del humanismo: de Erasmo a Petrarca (Madrid: 2002). Schwarz W., Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation: Some Reformation Controversies and their Background (Cambridge: 1955). Sáez-Hidalgo A., “‘Extravagant’ English Books at the Library of El Escorial and the Jesuit agency”, in Kelly J.E. – Thomas H.J. (eds.), Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe, c.1580–1789. ‘The World is our House’? (Leiden: 2019) 155–185. Sáez-Hidalgo A., “English Recusant Controversy in Spanish Print Culture: Dissemination, Popularization, Fictionalization”, in Chambers L. and O’Connor T. (eds.), Forming Catholic Communities: Irish, Scots and English College Networks in Europe, 1568–1918 (Leiden: 2018) 201–231. Sherman W.H., Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: 2010). Smyth A., Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge: 2018). Sullivan C., “Cannibalizing Persons’s Christian directorie, 1582”, Notes & Queries 41 (1994) 445–446. Walsham A. – Havens E., “Catholic Libraries: An Introduction”, in Fehrenbach R.J. et al. (eds.), Private Libraries in Renaissance England: A Collection and Catalogue of Tudor and Early Stuart Book-Lists, vol. 8 (Tempe: 2014) 129–261. Walsham A., “‘Domme Preachers’? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the Culture of Print”, Past & Present 168 (2000) 72–123. Walsham A., “The Spider and the Bee: The Perils of Printing for Refutation in Early Tudor England”, in King J.N. (ed.), Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge: 2010) 163–190. Woudhuysen H.R., Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts: 1558–1640 (Oxford – New York: 2003). Yamamoto-Wilson J.R., “Robert Persons’s Resolution (1582) and the Issue of Textual Piracy in Protestant Editions of Catholic Devotional Literature”, Reformation and Renaissance Review 15, 2 (2013) 177–198. Yamamoto-Wilson J.R., “The Protestant Reception of Catholic Devotional Literature in England to 1700”, British Catholic History 32, 1 (2014) 67–90. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access chapter 8 Tools for the English Mission: English Books at St Alban’s College Library, Valladolid Marta Revilla-Rivas The English College of St Alban’s in Valladolid, founded by Robert Persons in 1589, was part of a network of seminaries across Catholic Europe. These religious centres played a major role in the English Mission, an enterprise organised by some of the most notorious political and religious figures at that time. The main goal of this mission was to convert England and Wales back to Catholicism, and to achieve that, young English seminarians would undergo a period of training in these Catholic colleges on the Continent. The seminary priests studying at St Alban’s were fully aware of the hardships that they would have to endure upon their return to their homeland, and their training was of key importance to fulfil their mission. The books were a crucial tool for this training, and therefore knowing the library of St Alban’s opens a door to a better understanding of the dynamics of their training, as well as of the skills they exercised for. The interest of this library stems from different factors. Firstly, the library remains mostly intact to our days, having suffered no government confiscation and no major loss of books due to the Inquisition, as was common in other libraries. As Ana Sáez-Hidalgo has pointed out, although the Spanish inquisition forbade the importation of foreign books, especially those coming from Protestant countries, nonetheless, a special permit was granted so that Protestant controversy literature could be brought to St Alban’s.1 Secondly, the English College in Valladolid has a large number of English books, which was a rarity in Spanish libraries of this period, as English texts would not gain much attention from Spanish intellectuals until the late eighteenth century, and most Spaniards could not even read the language; obviously, the English Catholics coming to Valladolid did not have that problem. The purpose of this essay is to study the English books (i.e., those written in English) that existed in the early modern period of this library. Differently from previous studies of the library of the College, which were carried out examining just the holdings extant nowadays, the aim of this essay is to present a new approach, based on the 1 Sáez-Hidalgo A., “St Alban’s English College, Valladolid: Enclave or Doorway to the Reception of English Books in Spain?”, South Atlantic Review 79, 1–2 (2014) 105–123, here 114. © MARTA REVILLA-RIVAS, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_010 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 186 Revilla-Rivas documentary evidence provided by the early modern inventories of the library, more specifically the ones done upon the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. By analysing the library as presented by the 1767 index, new light can be thrown on what English texts reached Valladolid thanks to the Catholic network of books established by all the English colleges in the Continent. Another aspect relevant to the library has to do with the management of the College. When Persons envisioned the foundation of St Alban’s College, the Spanish monarch Philip II ordered that it were placed under Spanish Jesuit management as part of the requirements for its creation,2 with a view in its defence of orthodoxy, its thirst for knowledge and the special attention paid to balancing spiritual and intellectual training. Thus, the Society of Jesus was entrusted both with the management of the Seminary and with providing the adequate education to their English students, which was possible thanks to the strong presence of the Society of Jesus in Spain, and in Valladolid in particular.3 The Jesuit management of St Alban’s lasted until 1767, when the suppression of the Society of Jesus took place in Spain, under orders from King Charles III. On 27 February, the king issued a Pragmatic Sanction by which all Jesuits were to be expelled from the Spanish kingdom,4 and on 1 March, the Royal Commissioners were ordered to confiscate the properties of all the Jesuit centres. One of the measures enacted by the government was that full accounts of the properties of the Company were to be made. Inventories were elaborated at that time to provide a thorough description of all the possessions of the Jesuit houses and centres, including their libraries. For this essay I will use the inventory of the College library put together in 1767, as it is the only surviving list of what St Alban’s College library was in the early modern period. The study will only focus on the books held in what was known as the ‘common library’ at that time, that is, the library for the use of staff and students because, even if the 1767 inventory contains specific sections for the books held in the students’ and professors’ bedrooms, the imprecision in their description makes the identification impossible. Thanks to the 1767 inventory, it is now possible to start to address questions that have been unanswered for a long time regarding the contents of the library during the early modern period, the English books that the students had access to and whether they were 2 See Williams M.E., St Alban’s College Valladolid: Four Centuries of English Catholic Presence in Spain (London: 1986). 3 Burrieza Sánchez J., Valladolid, tierras y caminos de jesuitas. Presencia de la Compañía de Jesús en la provincia de Valladolid, 1545–1767 (Valladolid: 2007) 218. 4 Pragmática sanción de su Magestad en fuerza de ley para el estrañamiento de estos Reynos a los Regulares de la Compañía, ocupación de sus Temporalidades, y prohibición de su restablecimiento en tiempo alguno, con las demás precauciones que expresa (Madrid: 1767). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 187 actually tools for their training as Catholic priests, and, more specifically, for their mission – returning to England to convert the people to the Roman faith. 1 The Inventory of St Alban’s Library in 1767 The inventory of St Alban’s library – in its several copies5 – offers a list with a very concise description of the volumes kept in 1767. It documents a rough collection of data carried out in a span of three days immediately after the execution of the official order of the banishment. The books were not moved from their original places in the shelves and, thus, the list acts like a snapshot of the topographical contents of the library, with a division into sections, one for each bookshelf, and one for forbidden books. There is a total of 1266 titles, which amount to a total of over 1920 volumes. Most of these were written in Latin and Spanish, and a relatively small percentage in English. This study focuses only on those books written in English, either originally by English authors or which were translated from other languages. Interestingly enough, the unfamiliarity of the officers with foreign languages, throws some light into the process of inventorying itself. The transcription of all of these book titles in those unfamiliar languages present quandaries in their spelling that reveal the following procedure: two clerks must have been involved in the process, one of them would take the book from the shelves and read the title of the volume aloud and his companion would copy it down. In the case of foreign texts, the clerk reading the book title would do so following his intuition, and with a hispanized pronunciation, and the other commissioner would try to reflect on paper what he heard, using the spelling he found most appropriate. As a result, while titles of books in Spanish and Latin contain almost no errors, those written in other languages – mainly in English – are in many cases difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to identify.6 5 Three copies of the library inventory survive in the Archivo General Diocesano, in Valladolid, and in the Archivo Histórico Nacional, in Madrid. They were compiled very early in the expulsion process. One of them presents the first approach to the library holdings, and the other two are fairer copies of this initial version. They are very much alike in the scantiness of information on each book. 6 It is necessary to deconstruct and then reconstruct each of these titles in order to identify them. We must think as a non-English speaker and try to recognize a possible title. After that, the process continues by checking the available databases of printed books, such as the English Short Catalogue of the British Library, or the Universal Short Title Catalogue, in addition to the Library Catalogue to find a possible match. In many cases, however, providing a certain identification has proved to be impossible. That prevents us from giving a definitive number of the books in English listed on the catalogues. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 188 Revilla-Rivas What we can infer from this document is that the clerks involved in the process could neither read nor write English, and secondly, that none of the English students who remained in the College helped them in the compilation of the index, as they would have been able to assist with spellings.7 Although the steps to follow to inventorize the Jesuit houses and their libraries was officially established by the government and was, in general terms, similar in all the institutions that were seized,8 the English College in Valladolid had some peculiarities that made it a special case, particularly in the kind of holdings it had. What distinguished St Alban’s College library from other Jesuit collections was its nature and purpose. Not only were the students English seminarians training for the English Mission, and therefore with different needs to those in other Spanish colleges; this foreign institution was a node within the European network of colleges of English Catholic exiles, which participated in a wide web of book production and circulation.9 Valladolid received regularly Catholic English works printed in the Continent: the existence of these English books differentiated St Alban’s from other Jesuit institutions in Spain at that time. And it is that specific aspect of the College library that I will be studying in this essay. 2 English Books at St Alban’s College in 1767 When the inventory was compiled in 1767, 1266 books were held at the Library of the English College in Valladolid. Out of these, 58 have been identified as English works, and all their bibliographical details have been listed as an 7 This is true in the first inventory that was put together. It seems, however, that the English students did help with the fair copy of the inventory, because the titles of some books, namely the English books in the forbidden section of the library, were translated into Spanish in this copy. It is reasonable to think that the Spanish officers were wary of their heterodox nature due to the place where they were located in the library. 8 For a broad study of the library inventories during the process of banishment in Spain, see García Gómez M.D., Testigos de la Memoria: Los Inventarios de las Bibliotecas de la Compañía de Jesús en la Expulsión de 1767 (Alicante: 2010). Inmaculada Arias de Saavedra Alías has studied some specific instances: “La biblioteca de los jesuitas de Granada en el siglo XVIII, una aproximación”, Actas de la IV Reunión Científica de la Asociación Española de Historia Moderna Alicante, 27–30 de mayo de 1996 2 (1997) 609–626; “La biblioteca del jesuita José Ruiz, profesor de teología moral (1767)”, in López-Guadalupe Muñoz M.L. – Lara Ramos A. – Cortés Peña A.L. (eds.), Iglesia y sociedad en el reino de Granada (ss. XVI–XVIII) (Granada: 2003) 311–325. More recently, Játiva Miralles M.V., La biblioteca de los jesuitas del colegio de San Esteban de Murcia, Ph.D. dissertation (Universidad de Murcia: 2007). 9 Arblaster P. Antwerp & The World. Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation (Leuven: 2004) 50. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 189 appendix to this essay. Other 13 items in the inventory appear to have an English title but have not yet been identified as a result of the peculiar ‘Hispaniolized’ transcription provided by the Spanish officers. Altogether, these English works amount to about a 4.6% of the total of titles in St Alban’s library in 1767. This can only provide a snapshot of the library at the time of the inventory, but the collection might have held a varying number of English books throughout its Jesuit period, not only depending on the needs of the staff and students at different moments, but also due to the circulation of books among English Catholics. Be that as it may, most books in English were religious, a total of 45, while 13 other works in English dealt with non-religious topics. In the following pages I will study these religious and non-religious English books that were listed in St Alban’s inventory in 1767, in connection with specific profile of an English Jesuit College on the Continent, and with the circulation and reception of recusant books in Spain. 2.1 Religious English Books Many of the religious books in English that the students and professors used for the Mission were works of controversy. These texts of polemic theology were essential tools for the priests-to-be, and access to them was fundamental, and that is why a large number of the English books at the College were related to disputation. Also, the high number of these books in English responds to the fact that most of the controversy was expected to happen in the vernacular, the language preferred by Protestants. Books on Polemic theology in English were mostly located in the M.M.M.M. section of the library. There might have been more of them in the students’ or even rector’s chambers, but the descriptions of the books in the inventories of the College are too vague to be able to identify them. Beyond the original intention of the English Jesuit Mission, which was to provide the Catholics in England with comfort and religious sustain,10 the importance of polemic debates was defended by Edmund Campion and Persons since the beginning of their missionary work.11 They both felt that this enterprise would not succeed unless they were allowed to engage in debates with Protestants in order to prove their faith false. The task of the newly ordained priests when returning to England would be to face the Protestants’ arguments and, in order to succeed, they needed to be armed with the best tools possible. In the English Colleges in the Continent, the pupils were trained for this 10 11 Scully R.E., Into the Lion’s Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580– 1603 (St Louis: 2011) 66, 203–204. Scully, Into the Lion’s Den 78. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 190 Revilla-Rivas task. As Thomas M. McCoog has commented, ‘the seminarians were trained for disputations. […] Once a week there was a public disputation in which selected students would not only defend Catholic doctrine against Protestant assault but also sharpen their skills by maintaining Protestant views against their colleagues’.12 To practice on / exercise in the heated polemic debates between both parties, the seminarians in St Alban’s could resort to books on controversial theology. That, in addition to their comprehensive knowledge of the Scripture13 and a solid training scholastic debate would prepare them for their task.14 Most of the books used for their specific mission in England were works produced and circulated through the networks of colleges, which were also found on the shelves of St Alban’s. One of them, Lawrence Anderton’s The Protestants apologie for the Roman Chvrch (1608)15 intended to show incongruities or contradictions within the Protestant doctrine. This work presents a structure alike to a manual, including summaries of the essential points of to be used in disputes.16 Other controversy texts found in St Alban’s College, like Francis Walsingham’s A search made into matters of religion (1609) show the usage of Protestants’ conversion narratives for propaganda purposes. Walsingham, previously a deacon of the Church of England, narrates his experience joining the Catholic Church and the Society of Jesus inspired by Persons’ works.17 His personal experience in the two Churches gave him enough knowledge to be able to engage in disputation, which must have been particularly valued as an example to priests-in-training. The works of controversy in English in the library include other renowned authors like Lawrence Anderton’s Triple Cord (1634), John Fisher’s Answere vnto nine points of controuersy (1626), Richard Bristow’s Motives inducing to the Catholike Faith (1641), Gregory Martin’s Discouerie of the manifold coruptions of the Holy Scrpitures (1582)18 and Sylvester Norris Antidote in the 1615, 1619, and 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 McCoog T.M., “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission”, The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits (Woodbridge: 1966) 119–139, here 122. Ibidem 122. Rodda J., Public Disputation in England, 1558–1626 (Surrey: 2014) 16. I have included the name of the author, title and year of publication of each book on the essay. For a complete bibliographic reference of each text mentioned in this essay, please see the appendix. Questier M.C., Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: 1996) 15. Scully, Into the Lion’s Den 83. The visus notations on this volume indicate that it was inspected by the Inquisition in 1641 and 1709. Moreover, the inscription on the title page informs us of the name of its owner, John Richards. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 191 1622 editions, and most notably, some works by the founder of the College, Robert Persons: A discouerie of I. Nicols minister (1581), A revievv of ten publike disputations (1604) and Discussion of the answere of M. William Barlow (1612), a surprisingly short list of his polemical production. And although the College had permission to import Protestant books for disputation purposes, no religious works of controversy by Protestant authors are listed in the inventory. Surprising as this may seem, it is however possible that, instead of using these books, students exercising in polemics might have resorted to summaries of Protestant works distributed by the recusant networks on the Continent, and some others could have been channelled controversial debates through historiography. In many cases, the historical approach was used to defend that Catholicism, as being older than Protestantism, was the true religion. Such is the case of a work by Robert Persons that is listed in the 1767 inventory, A Treatise of Three Conversions of England (1603). This foundational text from the English Mission, is divided into three parts. The first two deal with the origins of the true church – identified with the Roman Catholic church – in one of the clearest expressions of the argument for antiquity;19 the third part is a response to Foxe’s accounts on the Protestant martyrs. For St Alban’s students, this book might have served as both education and inspiration in the different modes and usages of disputation. Among the religious works, sacred biographies, works of oratory, sermons, asceticism, and devotion have a not insignificant presence. However, not many of them are in English: the fact that the English College was placed in Spanish soil and was under the rectorship of Spanish Jesuits as rectors can explain a higher number of this kind of works in Latin or Spanish. In any case, despite the scarcity of Catholic books in English due to the aforementioned prohibition to publish Catholic books in England, a significant number of devotional texts, were produced by recusants, and used by them both in England and overseas, also in the colleges of the continental network, in their daily religious practices.20 The English seminarians in Valladolid could find what Ronald Corthell has labelled as ‘the devotional best seller of the late sixteenth and seventeenth century’,21 that is, a 1598 edition of Robert Persons’ A Christian Directory (1585). This book was originally published anonymously as the First booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to resolution in Rouen in 1582, enlarged 19 20 21 Heal F., “Appropriating History: Catholic and Protestant Polemics and the National Past”, in Kewes P. (ed.), The Uses of History in Early Modern England (California: 2006) 105–128, here 126. Scully, Lion’s Den 66–67. Corthell R., “Politics and Devotion: The Case of Robert Persons vs. Edmund Bunny, Author of A Book of Christian Exercise”, Journal of Jesuit Studies 1 (2004) 558–571, here 559. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 192 Revilla-Rivas in 1585 with a new title in order to differentiate it from a version adapted to Protestant beliefs issued by Edmund Bunny in 1584.22 Other books listed on the library inventory include Nicolas Caussin’s most popular work, not only in its English translation, The Holy Court (published in the recusant presses of Saint-Omer in 1626, but also in the Spanish version. Another translation found on the shelves of St Alban’s library is Luis de la Puente’s Meditations upon the Mysteries of our Holy Faith (1610), aimed to encourage the readers to a life of prayer and mental reflection. It is curious to see that, on the final page of the book, the owner wrote a paragraph in English and translated it into Spanish stating that this book was given to him by Rector of the English College in Madrid in 1717, so this must be a later addition to the Valladolid collection. In addition to this English edition, the Spanish edition of the text is also listed in the index. There are, in addition, other works in Latin and Spanish by de la Puente. Other religious works in English listed in the 1767 inventory of St Alban’s library include texts of Marian topics, like The history of our B. Lady of Loreto (1608), written originally in Latin by Orazio Torsellino and translated into English by Thomas Price. Religious poetry was also present in Richard Verstegan’s Odes in Imitation of the Seaven Penitential Psalmes (1601). And last, but not least, there was a copy of The Roman Martyrology (1627) by George Keynes. Authors like Keynes tried to inspire courage and defend that martyrdom – dying for God – was the utmost sacrifice, and the greatest honour that they could achieve. By reading these books, the students would find courage to carry out their arduous mission, which often ended in prison and execution. Most of the religious books found in St Alban’s were printed on the Continent. Thirty-five of the ones that have been identified were produced in continental Europe: twenty-six at Saint-Omer, at the English College Press, four at Douai, two in Paris and Antwerp, and one in Louvain. Due to the prohibition to publish Catholic books in England, most of the literature written by non-conformists was printed in the Continent and smuggled into the country for Catholic consumption.23 It is also interesting to see that eight Catholic 22 23 For a comprehensive study of the production of the bowdlerized copy and Persons’ response see Houliston V., “Why Robert Persons Would Not Be Pacified: Edmund Bunny’s Theft of the Book of Resolution”, in McCoog T.M. (ed.), The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits: Essays in Celebration of the First Centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford, 1896–1996 (Rome: 2007) 159–178. Pettegree A. – Hall M., “The Reformation and the Book: A Reconsideration”, The Historical Journal 47, 4 (2004) 785–808, here 795. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 193 English books from the library were printed in England: four in London, three in Oxford, and one at Stonor Park. These are examples of Catholic books which were published illegally by clandestine presses established in England. 2.2 Non-Religious English Books While the index of the library provides us with a snapshot of the type of the religious tools for training that the students received at the English College, its contents seem to prove that the institution was not only concerned with the religious aspect of their education as priests, but with other areas of knowledge that could be of use for their mission. Therefore, though the number of these books is significantly smaller than the religious works in English in 1767, it is nonetheless necessary to examine them in order to get a sense of the availability of English texts, whether Catholic or not. Non-religious books were scattered in various sections of the library, ranging from the shelves labelled M.M.M.M. – where the majority of the polemical literature was located – or O.O.N.N., to a separate area where the forbidden books were kept, known in Spanish as Infierno – Hell. History books in English, both secular and holy, have a notable presence in the library. Although history was not a part of the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum per se, most of these books were used as complementary guides in their training for the mission to evangelize Protestant England. As already mentioned, it was a usual practice in the polemic debates between Catholic and Protestant authors to use history as a means to legitimize their faith through the argument of antiquity. Each side of the debate adapted and shaped history to their own needs. While Catholic authors relied on the continuity of the Catholic Church as it was affirmed by the Fathers and the papacy,24 Protestants perceived that their faith was truly in agreement with the original church introduced during the first conversions of Britain.25 From the Catholic perspective, a very influential work found in the library is Persons’ aforementioned Treatise of Three Conversions (1603), which presents an overview of the origin and development of the church in England, in response of some of the notions presented by Foxe in his Book of Martyrs, and therefore its controversial tone might have been useful for St Alban’s students But beyond the Catholic treatises, some books from the opposing side of the religious divide could be consulted by the students or used by the professors in their lessons at Saint Alban’s College. 24 25 Heal, “Appropriating History” 112. Ibidem 108. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 194 Revilla-Rivas This may explain the presence in the 1767 inventory of Protestant works widely used at the time, like Sir William Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum (1693): though mostly an antiquarian work on ancient monasteries, cathedrals, abbeys and other religious places in England and Wales, it might have been used to provide evidence of the antiquity of Catholic buildings. More in the realm of political history, is the copy of John Speed’s The historie of Great Britaine vnder the conquests of the Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans (1632), an account of the lives and deeds of different English monarchs. This copy was inspected and expurgated following the indications of the Inquisition Index of Forbidden Books, which required the excision of the section devoted to Henry VIII.26 Similar expunging was carried out in other books of English history in Latin; that is the case of William Camden’s Annales Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha ad annum 1589, one of the most abhorred works among Catholics. However, the number of English works on history is relatively small, if compared to those in Latin and Spanish. Relatively connected are some political texts, like a copy of Articles of peace, entercourse, and commerce, concluded in the names of the most high and mighty kings, Charles by the grace of God King of Great Britaine (1630). This text contains a list of all the agreements reached between England and Spain after peace was signed in 1630.27 It might have been of interest to Catholics to know the changes in the political relations between the two countries, particularly for those priests who returned to evangelize. The dissemination of these texts through the recusant networks on the Continent had been common since the Elizabethan times, with the texts sometimes in their original or sometimes in translation, as is the case of the Vando y leyes del rey Jacobo de Inglaterra (1610), also in the library in 1767. This text, translated into Spanish by Joseph Creswell, contained the Proclamations issued against recusants upon the accession of James I to the throne, and was probably distributed to all the English Colleges in Spain.28 According to the 1767 catalogue, most of the non-religious works in English in the library of St Alban’s were literary texts. Though a small number, by 26 27 28 Williams M.E., “The Library of Saint Alban’s English College Valladolid: Censorship and Acquisitions”, Recusant History 26, 1 (2003) 132–142, here 135. For further information, see the Articles at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/rushworth -papers/vol3/pp90-99 Accessed on 1 May 2019. [Creswell J.], Vando y leyes del rey Jacobo de Inglaterra contra la fe católica con su respuesta y advertencias al letor para la averiguación e inteligencia deste caso, provechosas para el mismo rey y para todos con tabla de las materias (Madrid, s.n.:1610). USTC 5019034 A&R280.1. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 195 comparison with literary texts in other languages,29 the fact is that this is the library of a seminary and its books were not intended for leisurely reading. The main purpose that this library served was to instruct pupils and train them before they departed to evangelize in their home country. Despite the attention that the Jesuits paid to culture and personal development, literature – poetry, fiction and drama – might have been considered a distraction. Some of these literary works – by Sidney and Milton, among others – were located in the Infierno in 1767, meaning that the English students were not allowed to use them without permission. It is also curious to see that works by other Protestant authors were located out of the forbidden section. Since there is no correlation between Protestant and Catholic and the place they occupied in the library, we might wonder whether perhaps the Jesuit superiors considered these texts useful regardless of the religious beliefs of the author. The titles of these books correspond to very well-known English literary works, some of whose features might have served some educational purposes at the College. For example, there were two copies of John Lyly’s Euphues (1617), a romance from which a very particular rhetoric style emerged; the Jesuit professors may have believed it a good tool to practice writing and eloquence. However, the protagonist of this story is part of a love triangle, a topic which the Inquisition probably found quite immoral. Moreover, the author includes a dialogue about religion between Euphues and an atheist. It is not surprising, then, to encounter both copies in the Infierno of the library censored by the Inquisition, as testified by the visus notations on each title page. One of them was checked in 1633 and 1709, and the other copy on 1641 and 1707. Perhaps the best-known copy of an English literary text at St Alban’s College is what was listed in the 1767 inventory simply as ‘Historias, Comedias y Tragedias’, which was found in the M.M.M.M. section, near the works of controversy. It is, in fact, Mr. VVilliam Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1632), a copy of the Second Folio no longer at the English College, currently at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Also known as the Inquisition Folio, this book underwent severe censorship – some passages were crossed out, and Measure for Measure was entirely cut out of the book. This fascinating object has already been the focus of scholarly attention, not only from the point of view of the author’s possible religious leanings, but also from the point of view of the reading practices both of the Catholic seminarians in the College and the censor.30 29 30 Literary works in other languages in the 1767 inventory amount to around 4.5% of the total, including works by classical authors such as Ovid or Virgil, Italians like Tasso or Spaniards like Quevedo. Cummings B., “Shakespeare and the Inquisition”, Shakespeare survey 65 (2012) 306–322. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 196 Revilla-Rivas Unlike other books in Latin and Spanish from the library that were periodically inspected and expurgated by a local tribune of the Holy Office, this particular volume was expunged by an English member of the College staff. The censor, William Sankey, in the absence of specific indications for censorship from the Inquisition,31 applied his own understanding of what sections needed to be cancelled or excised. Not all plays were inspected and the criteria followed have been deemed inconsistent.32 Sankey, at times, seemed to be concerned with the view and opinion of the Catholic church that the readers of the plays would form.33 In other instances, he focuses on crossing out sexual references, oaths or generally heterodox vocabulary. It is interesting to note that William Sankey is not the only known English Jesuit to have expunged books with the permission of the Inquisition.34 Although we may never know the usage this book had at St Alban’s. One might wonder whether its reading could have been similar to the Shakespeare Folio which was recently found to have been part of the Saint-Omer’s library collection,35 where students may have performed certain scenes or plays, as it was the case in other Jesuit seminaries of the Mission.36 The records, however, inform us that this was not a very common practice in Valladolid, given the failed attempts at theatrical performances upon the visits of Spanish monarchs.37 In any case, these were not the only English theatrical texts that 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 Shakespeare was not included in any of the Holy Office lists of forbidden books. See Martínez de Bujanda J., El índice de libros prohibidos y expurgados por la Inquisición española (1551–1819) (Madrid: 2016). Cummings, “Shakespeare and the Inquisition” 313. Ibidem 314. Williams, “The Library of Saint Alban’s English College” 135. Jean-Christophe Meyer has thrown light on the stage directions annotated on the Folio paying especial attention to Henry IV and Henry V and how the plays were adapted to the context of the College. Meyer J.-C., “The Saint-Omer First Folio: Perspectives on a New Shakespearean Discovery”, Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies 87, 1 (2015) 7–20. Maurice Whitehead has highlighted the importance of drama for the Jesuit College of St Omer, with a ‘great theatre’ and a ‘little theatre’ as part of the building so that the students could perform. Whitehead M., English Jesuit Education: Expulsion, Suppression, Survival, Restoration, 1762–1803 (Farnham/Burlington, VT: 2013) 37, 30. In addition, Park J., “Not Just a University Theatre: The Significance of Jesuit School Drama in Continental Europe: 1540–1773”, in Wetmore K.J. Jr. (ed.), Catholic Theatre and Drama (Jefferson – North Carolina – London: 2010) 29–44. Cano Echevarría B. – Sáez-Hidalgo A. – Redworth G. – Hutchings M., “‘Comfort without Offence’? The Performance and Transmission of Exile Literature at the English College, Valladolid, 1592–1600”, Renaissance and Reformation, Renaissance et Réforme 31, 1 (2008) 31–67. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 197 the seminarians could read. A copy of Ben Jonson’s The Workes (1616) could be also found in the forbidden section of the library. Other literary works found in the Inferno are John Milton’s Paradise Regained – it is impossible to identify which edition, since this volume no longer remains in the College –, and a censored volume of Philip Sidney’s The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (1622). It is quite puzzling to find such a literary work in a religious library of this period, in spite of its popularity throughout the seventeenth century. There have been numerous debates regarding Sidney’s innermost beliefs, but I would argue that Katherine Duncan-Jones’s essay,38 in which she explores the possible influence of the English Jesuit Edmund Campion’s on Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, might be of especial relevance in trying to explain why this book was in the English College. According to Duncan-Jones, the circumstances under which Campion had to engage in a debate with Protestant authorities influenced the fifth and final section of the Arcadia. As Duncan-Jones points out, Sidney and Campion must have met in Oxford before the latter was forced to flee to the Continent. Sidney, then 11, and his father, Chancellor of Oxford University, attended a public speech given by Campion while he was studying at Oxford.39 According to her, Campion must have made a positive impression on Sidney and, later on, while the latter was on the Continent, he met Campion again.40 No records exist of both of them meeting after their return to England.41 The conditions of secrecy under which Campion had to labour would probably have hindered any more meetings. Moreover, the time that Campion spent in England trying to carry out his missionary work was not long. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1581.42 There, he was tortured and forced to debate, without previous notice 38 39 40 41 42 Duncan-Jones K., “Sir Philip Sydney’s Debt to Edmund Campion”, in McCoog T.M. (ed.), The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits: Essays in Celebration of the First Centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford, 1896–1996 (Rome: 2007) 85–102. Ibidem 87. There is written evidence that supports the claim that both met in Prague. Duncan-Jones quotes a letter by Campion addressed to a fellow Catholic, in which he expresses his hopes that Philip Sidney, being ‘a wavering soul’, might be converted to Catholicism. Duncan-Jones, “Sir Philip Sydney’s Debt” 85. Edmund Campion returned in 1580 as a missionary priest, as an envoy of the Jesuit English Mission. For a comprehensive account of Campion’s return to England, see Scully, Into the Lion’s Den 71–72. McCoog T.M., “‘The Flower of Oxford’: The Role of Edmund Campion in Early Recusant Polemics”, Sixteenth Century Journal 24 (1993) 899–913, here 900. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 198 Revilla-Rivas of the topic of the debate and with no possibility of access to printed texts to sustain his views, against Protestant divines.43 Duncan-Jones’s hypothesis is that Sidney’s writing of the final section of the Arcadia coincides with Campion’s trial and death. She argues that the final chapter, where both heroes of the story are charged with conspiracy to murder the monarch, reflects the frustration and outrage that Sidney might have felt after Campion’s imprisonment, unfair trial and execution. Both in real life and in the Sidney’s work, people were unjustly accused of trying to commit regicide and, as a result, were condemned following old pieces of legislation.44 There is no way of knowing how or when this 1622 edition of the Arcadia became part of St Alban’s library; there is no question that it was there at the beginning of the eighteenth century, given that it was inspected by the Inquisition in 1707. It was heavily censored, and some of its pages were also excised. We can only venture guesses as to the use it might have had for young seminarians training there. One possibility is, of course, pure entertainment. However, the similarities between the fate of the protagonists of the romance and that of their real Jesuit counterpart might have resonated with them. Despite Sidney’s Protestantism,45 this book might have been brought to the library with the intention of inspiring young missionary priests, both in how they should carry their work,46 and also as a way to infuse them with courage should they need to face trial and execution like of the first English Catholic martyrs. Campion was, after all, a key figure in the development of the English Mission and of polemic literature in England and, of course, one of his most influential works – Rationes Decem47 – was present in the library. Many of the authors of this section cannot be considered orthodox Catholics and the religious beliefs of some of them are still a source of debate nowadays. Knowing what exact purpose each of these works served is impossible and we can only venture guesses. We will never know whether the professors considered these books so exceptionally useful for their teachings that they 43 44 45 46 47 McCoog, “‘Playing the Champion’” 135. Campion was charged under Edward III’s 1351 Act of Treason. McCoog, “‘Playing the Champion’” 136. See the classic study Weiner A.D., Sir Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Protestantism: A Study of Contexts (Minneapolis: 1978); and more recently a reconsideration by Stillman R.E., “Philip Sidney and the Catholics: The Turn from Confessionalism in Early Modern Studies”, Modern Philology 112, 1 (2014) 97–129. In a similar manner to the protagonists of the Arcadia, the English missionary priests would have to adopt false identities and disguises upon their return to the motherland in order to accomplish their goals. Campion E., Rationes decem quibus fretus certamen adversariis obtulit in causa Fidei (Rome, Bartolomeo Bonfadino & Tito Diani: 1584). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 199 were prepared to overlook the religious beliefs of their creators. What we can observe is that, in some of these texts, a thorough inspection by an appointed inquisitor or a zealous member of staff ensured that much of the heterodox content was omitted from the text and, as a result, the version that the students used was clean from any possible ‘dangerous’ material. Other works, however, do not have any sign of inquisitional intervention, as is the case of Du Bartas’s Deuine weekes & workes (1605), one of the most popular works of the French poet, a favourite of James I’s and highly influential in Scotland and England. There are some other English works in the library of the English College that are worth mentioning, if only for a certain curiosity. One of them is John Camm’s The memory of the righteous revived being a brief collection of the books and written epistles of John Camm & John Audland (1689), a bibliographical account of the persecution and imprisonment of two actual Quaker preachers trying to spread their message in England. While it may be extraordinary to find a Quaker book in a Catholic seminary, one of the possible explanations is that seminarians might connected with the evangelizing mission in their homeland, since Quakers were also considered a dissident religious group in England. Nonetheless, this book is no longer at St Alban’s College and, thus, the identification might not be definitive. Apart from the literary, historical and biographical works in English listed in the 1767 inventory, it is worth mentioning another interesting book, in this case the popular treatise on geography by Patrick Gordon, Geography Anatomized (1733), the only volume of the ones studied here that was printed in the eighteenth century. The dwindling number of new students in the eighteenth could explain the lack of books in English published after 1700. This fact might be also help to explain the absence of English books on scientific and technical books. Catholics educated in continental colleges in the eighteenth century often received scientific training, and private collections as well as college libraries bear witness to this trend.48 However, the holdings of St Alban’s library, as represented in the 1767 inventory, hardly include scientific texts, and those few that existed were in either Latin or Spanish.49 48 49 Gooch L., “The Derwentwater Library, 1732”, Recusant History 30 (2010) 120–129. The inventory lists several books on mathematics, most of them in Latin, although a number of them are in an unspecified language. The only medicine book was a Spanish version of Marie Fouquet’s works: Obras medico-chirurgicas (Salamanca, Antonio Villargordo y Alcaraz: 1750). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 200 3 Revilla-Rivas Conclusion The analysis of the English books that were in St Alban’s College library in 1767, according to the inventory, provides an invaluable picture of the wealth and uniqueness of the book collection in this English seminar in Spanish soil. The English College was an institution under Jesuit administration, but also a seminary connected with the network of colleges founded by English recusants. Thus, if the complete collection of books generally responds to the needs of the Ratio Studiorum – the Jesuit curriculum –, the English books in it are more specific to those of the English Mission and the networks of exchange actively participating in the production and distribution of Catholic books all over Europe. This unique type of collection was not common for a private or institutional library in eighteenth-century Spain. The main difference with other book collections in the country is the significant number of books in English that it held throughout the early modern period. Among these were English Protestant books, which was unusual in Spain at that time. Most of these books in English were published between 1600 and 1650 (an 81% of the ones that have been identified), 8.6% were published before 1600, and another 8.6% between 1650 and 1700. Just one book was printed after 1700. It is impossible to know precisely how or when these books arrived at the College, but the fact that only one book in English was printed after 1700 probably responds to the decline in the number of funds received by the College and the decrease in the number of students in the eighteenth century.50 The majority of these volumes were religious works, mostly of Polemic Theology written in English, which was necessary for the recusants in the context of the incessant religious debates, usually carried in their own mother tongue, the language favoured by Protestants. By comparison, the nonreligious works in English are fewer, which is not surprising, as the academic language at the time for both secular and holy subjects was Latin. The subject of some of these books is historical, mainly related to the English state of affairs, these volumes might have been used for disputation, as well as to provide the pupils with an all-round education of the situation in their home country and its historical roots. As for the works of literature in English, it is difficult to draw clear conclusions, given the small number of texts that has been identified in the 1767 inventory of the common library. These titles correspond to some of the most popular literary works and authors in England in the seventeenth century. 50 Williams, St Alban’s College 57. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 201 Although it can be speculated with the possibility of their usage for educational purposes – like the teaching of eloquence – or for the typically Jesuit academic performance of plays, the absence of a significant corpus or some supplementary information leaves this possibility in the realm of the hypothesis. It might have also been the case that these books were seen as part of the education, especially from the early eighteenth century onwards. The religious situation had changed since the foundation of the College, as well as the needs of the young seminarians. Upon their return, English Catholics who had been educated in colleges abroad would find that being acquainted with the literary trends back at home could be useful in order to function with ease within British society. The few English literary titles in the library (inside and outside the forbidden section) might not even represent all the literary works used by the English recusants in Valladolid, because there might have been more volumes in the chambers of the inhabitants of the College. Therefore, not much can be said about their reading habits beyond the censorship of some of these volumes, a consequence of the fact that they were Protestant works. Regarding the provenance of these English books, it is evident that most were imported from Catholic presses in the Continent – around 71% of the books presented in this study. Out of these, 47% were published in the English College printing press at Saint-Omer, which highlights the intellectual connection between both seminaries. Over 29% of them were printed in England, both in legal and clandestine presses, depending on the confessional identity of the author and subject of the book. To conclude, the English books listed in the 1767 inventory, which give us a sense of the holdings of the College library throughout the early modern period, largely respond to the tools needed by the young missionary priests at the earliest stages of the mission. Not only were they trained in the vernacular for debates with polemic literature, which provided them with weapons against their opponents, but also with historical works, both Catholic and Protestant and allowed them to exercise in their arguments. Furthermore, they could also resort to their English books in order to enjoy spiritual nourishment in their own language, as well as for social purposes. Many books were imported for them from other European Catholic strongholds and, supported by this transnational intellectual network of Catholics, the seminarians at St Alban’s could feel closer to and more ready to fulfil their holy mission. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 202 Revilla-Rivas Appendix: List of English Books Inventoried in the Library of St Alban’s College in 1767 Abbreviations of Bibliographical Indexes Allison A.F. – Rogers D.M., The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640: An Annotated Catalogue, vol. 2: Works in Languages other than English (Aldershot: 1989). Clancy Clancy T., English Catholic Books, 1641–1700: A Bibliography (Aldershot: 1996). ESTC English Short Title Catalogue: http://estc.bl.uk/ USTC Universal Short Title Catalogue: https://www.ustc.ac.uk/ ARCR Religious Books Anderton Lawrence, The progenie of Catholicks and Protestants (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1608). ESTC S233, USTC 1436574, ARCR 20. Anderton Lawrence, The Protestants apologie for the Roman Chvrch (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1608). ESTC S120647, ARCR 19. Anderton Lawrence, The Triple Cord, or Treatise Proving the Truth of the roman religion (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1634). ESTC S100159, ARCR 28. Augustine St, The confessions of the incomparable doctour S. Augustine, translated into English (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1620). ESTC S100307, ARCR 534, USTC 1436865. Bristow Richard, Motives inducing to the Catholike faith (Saint-Omer, n.p.: 1641). ESTC R39627, USTC 1515118, Clancy 143. Brown Ignatius, An unerrable church or none being a rejoynder to the unerring unerrable church against Dr Andrew Sall’s repley [sic] entituled The Catholic apostolic Church of England (Douai: n.p.:1678). ESTC R33267, Clancy 146. Caussin Nicolas, The holy court. Or the Christian institution of men of quality (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1626). ESTC S107628, ARCR 402, USTC 1437110, USTC 3012543, USTC 6002714. Champney Anthony, A treatise of the vocation of bishops, and other ecclesiasticall ministers. Prouing the ministers of the pretended reformed churches in generall, to haue no calling (Douai, John Heigham: 1616). ESTC S1550, ARCR 134. Cressy Hugh-Paulin, Exomologesis or A faithfull narration of the occasion and motives of the conversion unto Catholique unity (Paris: 1647). ESTC R30281, Clancy 261. Fisher John, A reply made vnto Mr. Anthony Wotton and Mr. Iohn VVhite ministers (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1612). ESTC S115048, ARCR 599. Fisher John, The answere vnto the nine points of controuersy, proposed by our late soueraygne (of famous memory) vnto M. Fisher of the Society of Iesus (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1626). ESTC S102112, ARCR 598. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 203 Floyd John, A secure and prudent choice of beliefe. Written by a student in diuinity (SaintOmer, English College Press: 1639). ESTC S114863, ARCR 301, USTC 1437470. Floyd John, Purgatories Triumph over Hell, maugre the Barking of Cerberus in Syr Edward Hobyes Counter Snarle (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1613). ESTC S115113, ARCR 300. Floyd John, The ouerthrovv of the Protestants pulpit-Babels (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1612). ESTC S102371, ARCR 297, USTC 1436675. Gother John, Papists protesting against Protestant-popery. In answer to a discourse entituled, A papist not mis-represented by Protestants (London, Hen. Hills: 1686). ESTC R227532, Clancy 459.3–460. Kellison Matthew, A survey of the new religion, detecting manie grosse absurdities which it implieth (Douai, Laurence Kellam – S. Foigny: 1603). ESTC S107995, ARCR 472, USTC 1436463. Keynes George, The Roman Martyrology according to the reformed Calendar (SaintOmer, English College Press: 1627). ESTC S112359, ARCR 475. Leech Humphrey, Dutifull and Respectful Considerations upon foure severall heads of proofe & triall in maters of religioun proposed (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1609). ESTC S103433, ARCR 495–496. Martin Gregory, A discouerie of the manifold corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the heretikes of our daies (Reims, John Fogny: 1582). ESTC S112358, ARCR 514. Martin Gregory, The love of the sovle (Saint-Omer, George Seutin, 1633). ARCR 515. Matthew Tobie, Of the love of our only lord and savior Iesus Christ (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1622). ESTC S112463, USTC 1436981, USTC 3010080, ARCR 537. Norris Sylvester, An Antidote or Treatise of thirty Controversies: against the pestiferous writinges of all English Sectaries (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1622). ESTC S113275, ARCR 569, USTC 3010527, USTC 1436959. Norris Sylvester, Antidote or soveraigne remedie against the pestiferous writings of all English sectaries. Part 1 (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1615). ESTC S101900, ARCR 567, USTC 1436841. Norris Sylvester, Antidote or soveraigne remedie against the pestiferous writings of all English sectaries. Part 2 (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1619). ESTC S113270, ARCR 568. Persons Robert, A Christian Directory guiding men to their salvation (Louvain, Laurence Kellam: 1598). ESTC S121960, ARCR 619, USTC 402440. Persons Robert, A discouerie of I. Nicols minister, misreported a Iesuite, latelye recanted in the Tower of London (Stonor Park [Pyrton], Greenstreet House Press: 1581). ESTC S120349, ARCR 625. Persons Robert, A revievv of ten publike disputations (Saint-Omer, François Bellet: 1604). ESTC S105135, ARCR 636. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 204 Revilla-Rivas Persons Robert, A treatise of three conuersions of England from paganisme to Christian religion (Saint-Omer, François Bellet: 1603). ESTC S114212, ARCR 638. Persons Robert, Discussion of the answere of M. William Barlow, D. of Divinity, to the booke intituled: The judgment of a Catholike Englishman living in banishment for his religion &c (Saint-Omer, s.n.: 1612). ESTC S114157, ARCR 626, USTC 1436668. [Pinckney, Miles] Carre, Thomas, Occasionall discourses (Paris, n.p.: 1646). ESTC R220529, USTC 6035381, Clancy 774. Puente Luis de la, Meditations upon the Mysteries of our Holy Faith (Douai, C. Boscard part 1, P. Auroi, part 2: 1610). ESTC S1664, ARCR 351. R.N., Christians manna (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1613). ESTC S113011, ARCR 565, USTC 1436682, USTC 3005633. Rodríguez Alfonso, The Practice of Christian Perfection (London, Thomas Hales: 1697). ESTC R36792. Rowland William, Late act of the convocation at Oxford examined (Rouen [i.e. Oxford], Henry Hall: 1652). ESTC R219949, Clancy 839. Southwell, Robert, An epistle of comfort, to the reuerend priests ([S. Omer, English College Press], 1616). ESTC S104579, ARCR 716. Sweet John, Monsig[neu]r fate voi. Or A discovery of the Dalmatian apostata, M. Antonius de Dominis, and his books (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1617). ESTC S107581, ARCR 739. Torsellino Orazio, The history of our B. Lady of Loreto. Tra[n]slated out of Latyn, into English (Saint-Omer, n.p.: 1608). ESTC S118494, ARCR 662. Verstegan Richard, Odes in Imitation of the Seaven Penitential Psalmes, with sundry other poems and ditties (Antwerp, Arnout Conincx: 1601). ESTC S110748, ARCR 765. Walpole Michael, A briefe admonition to all English Catholikes, concerning a late proclamation set forth against them (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1610). ESTC S102695, ARCR 777, USTC 3004385. Walpole Richard, A brief, and cleere confutation, of a new, vaine, and vaunting chalenge, made by O.E. minister, vnto N.D. author of the Ward-word (Antwerp, Arnout Conincx: 1603). ESTC S114148, ARCR 97. Walsingham Francis, A search made into matters of religion (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1609). ESTC S119356, ARCR 785, USTC 1436601, USTC 3003807. Whitford Richard, Certaine devout and godly petitions, commonly called Jesus Psalter (London, John Danter: 1569). ESTC S105796, ARCR 197. Wilson Matthew (alias Knott Edward), Christianity maintained (Saint-Omer, English College Press: 1638). ESTC S102198, ARCR 819, USTC 1437404. Woodhead Abraham, Motives to holy living, or Heads for meditation (Oxford, s.n.: 1688). ESTC R10046, Clancy 1119. Woodward Philip, A detection of diuers notable vntruthes, contradictions, corruptions, and falsifications ([London?], s.n.: 1602). ESTC S113395, ARCR 834, USTC 3001051. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 205 Non-Religious Books Articles of peace, entercourse, and commerce, concluded in the names of the most high and mighty kings, Charles by the grace of God King of Great Britaine, France and Ireland, defender of the faith, &c. and Philip the fourth King of Spaine, &c (London, Robert Barker and John Bill: 1630). ESTC S122628, USTC 3014981. Camm John, The memory of the righteous revived being a brief collection of the books and written epistles of John Camm & John Audland (London, Andrew Sowle: 1689). ESTC R22076. Du Bartas, Bartas his deuine weekes & workes translated & dedicated to the Kings most excellent Maiestie By Iosuah Syluester (London, printed by Humfrey Lownes dwelling on Bred-streete hill at the signe of the Starre: 1605). ESTC S116457, ESTC S112205, ESTC S1703. Dugdale William, Monasticon anglicanum, or, The history of the ancient abbies, and other monasteries, hospitals, cathedral and collegiate churches, in England and Wales (London, Printed for Sam Keble at the Turks-Head: 1693). ESTC R8166. Gordon Patrick, Geography anatomiz’d: or, the geographical grammar. Being a short and exact analysis of the whole body of modern geography, after a new and curious method (London, printed for J.J. and P. Knapton, R. Knaplock, D. Midwinter and A. Ward, A. Bettesworth and C. Hitch, B. Sprint, J. Osborn and T. Longman, J. Brotherton, R. Ford, and J. Clarke: 1733). ESTC T106461, ESTC N65736. Jonson Ben, The workes of Beniamin Ionson (London, William Stansby: 1616). ESTC S126501, ESTC S112455, ESTC S111817. Ludlow Edmund, Memoirs (unidentified edition). Lyly John, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (London, George Eld, for William Barrett, sold by Arthur Johnson: 1617). ESTC S108987. Milton John, Paradise Regain’d (unidentified edition). Shakespeare William, Mr. VVilliam Shakespeares comedies, histories, and tragedies. Published according to the true originall copies (London, Thomas Cotes: 1632). ESTC S123146. Sidney Philip, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia. Written by Sir Philip Sidney knight. Edition Now the sixt time published (London, Humphrey Lownes, for Simon Waterson: 1622). ESTC S125996, ESTC S125995, ESTC S95208, ESTC S112632, ESTC S104138. Smith Richard, An historical epistle of the great amitie and good offices betvvixt the popes of Rome, and kings of Great Britanie (s.l., n.p.: 1652). ESTC R184318. Speed John, The historie of Great Britaine vnder the conquests of the Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans (London, John Dawson and Thomas Cotes: 1632). ESTC S997. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 206 Revilla-Rivas Bibliography Allison A.F. – Rogers D.M., The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English CounterReformation between 1558 and 1640: An Annotated Catalogue, vol. 2: Works in Languages other than English (Aldershot: 1989). Arblaster P., Antwerp & the World. Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation (Leuven: 2004). Arias de Saavedra Alías I., “La biblioteca de los jesuitas de Granada en el siglo XVIII, una aproximación”, Actas de la IV Reunión Científica de la Asociación Española de Historia Moderna Alicante, 27–30 de mayo de 1996 2 (1997) 609–626. Arias de Saavedra Alías I., “La biblioteca del jesuita José Ruiz, profesor de teología moral (1767)”, in López-Guadalupe Muñoz M.L. – Lara Ramos A. – Cortés Peña A.L. (eds.), Iglesia y sociedad en el reino de Granada (ss. XVI–XVIII) (Granada: 2003) 311–325. Arias de Saavedra Alías I., “Los libros privados de los profesores del colegio jesuita de San Pablo de Granada”, Aulas y saberes 1 (2003) 159–180. Burrieza Sánchez J., Valladolid: tierras y caminos de jesuitas. Presencia de la Compañía de Jesús en la provincia de Valladolid, 1545–1767 (Valladolid: 2007). Cano Echevarría B. – Sáez-Hidalgo A. – Redworth G. – Hutchings M., “‘Comfort without Offence’? The Performance and Transmission of Exile Literature at the English College, Valladolid, 1592–1600”, Renaissance and Reformation, Renaissance et Réforme 31,1 (2008) 31–67. Clancy T., English Catholic Books, 1641–1700: A Bibliography (Aldershot: 1996). Corthell R., “Politics and Devotion: The Case of Robert Persons vs. Edmund Bunny, Author of A Book of Christian Exercise”, Journal of Jesuit Studies 1 (2004) 558–571. Cummings B., “Shakespeare and the Inquisition”, Shakespeare Survey 65 (2012) 306–322. Duncan-Jones K., “Sir Philip Sydney’s Debt to Edmund Campion”, in McCoog T.M. 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Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access ENGLISH BOOKS AT ST ALBAN ’ S COLLEGE LIBRARY, VALLADOLID 207 Játiva Miralles M.V., La biblioteca de los jesuitas del colegio de San Esteban de Murcia, Ph.D. dissertation (Universidad de Murcia: 2007). http://hdl.handle.net/10803/10910. Martínez de Bujanda J., El índice de libros prohibidos y expurgados por la Inquisición española (1551–1819) (Madrid: 2016). McCoog T.M., “‘The Flower of Oxford’: The Role of Edmund Campion in Early Recusant Polemics”, Sixteenth Century Journal 24 (1993) 899–913. McCoog T.M., “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission”, The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits (Woodbridge: 1966) 119–139. Park J., “Not Just a University Theatre: The Significance of Jesuit School Drama in Continental Europe: 1540–1773”, in Wetmore K.J. Jr. (ed.), Catholic Theatre and Drama (Jefferson – North Carolina – London: 2010) 29–44. Questier M.C., Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: 1996). Rodda J., Public Disputation in England, 1558–1626 (Surrey: 2014). Sáez-Hidalgo A., “St Alban’s English College, Valladolid: Enclave or Doorway to the Reception of English Books in Spain?”, South Atlantic Review 79, 1–2 (2014) 105–123. Scully R.E., Into the Lion’s Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580–1603 (St Louis: 2011). Stillman R.E., “Philip Sidney and the Catholics: The Turn from Confessionalism in Early Modern Studies”, Modern Philology 112, 1 (2014) 97–129. Weiner A.D., Sir Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Protestantism: A Study of Contexts (Minneapolis: 1978). Whitehead M., English Jesuit Education: Expulsion, Suppression, Survival, Restoration, 1762–1803 (Farnham/Burlington, VT: 2013). Williams M.E., St Alban’s College Valladolid: Four Centuries of English Catholic Presence in Spain (London: 1986). Williams M.E., “The Library of St Alban’s English College Valladolid: Censorship and Acquisitions”, Recusant History 61, 1 (2003) 135–142. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access chapter 9 Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance Mark Hutchings The proposition that early modern diplomacy was theatrical is hardly a controversial one, yet in the main the analogy tends to be deployed rhetorically, giving the impression that ‘theatricality’ requires no further elucidation.* Moreover, the texts on which our understanding of the significance of protocol and ceremonial is based are rarely interrogated for their performative or quasiperformative characteristics – or, as I shall argue in what follows, approached in terms of their original function. This chapter explores a deceptively simple hypothesis: if ceremonial was central to the practice of diplomacy, as William Roosen urged forty years ago, what might it mean to treat accounts of diplomatic activity as documents of performance?1 Like drama, diplomacy depended on actors and audiences; and like drama it was scripted, choreographed, and (sometimes) presented in print to serve as a putative record of the event – which, in turn, invited an imaginative reenactment on the part of the reader. Indeed, sometimes the two overlap seamlessly, such as we find in textual accounts of performance events in the dispatches to Philip III from Spain’s ambassador to the court of James I and VI in 1604, during the peace-making that led up to the signing of the Treaty of London. In such cases key features of diplomacy, or rather the rendering thereof through writing, are hardly distinguishable from theatrical texts (here a court masque and a royal entry into the capital).2 The ordering and procession of persons recorded, that is, serve overlapping and intersecting purposes of diplomatic * An earlier version of this essay was delivered at the 3rd International Conference on Anglo-Iberian Relations: From the Medieval to the Modern held at the University of Oviedo, 14–16 November 2019. I would like to thank the Organizing Committee for the opportunity to try out some of the ideas reproduced here on that occasion. 1 Roosen W., “Early Modern Diplomatic Ceremonial: A Systems Approach”, Journal of Modern History 52, 3 (1980) 452–476. 2 See Cano-Echevarría B. – Hutchings M., “The Spanish Ambassador and Samuel Daniel’s Vision of the Twelve Goddesses: A New Document [with Text]”, English Literary History 42, 3 (2012) 223–257, and Hutchings M. – Cano Echevarría B., “The Spanish Ambassador’s Account of James I’s Entry into London, 1604 [with Text]”, The Seventeenth Century 33, 3 (2018) 255–277. © MARK HUTCHINGS, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004438040_011 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms Ana of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 209 account and theatrical choreography. Our knowledge of one such episode, the visit of an English embassy to Valladolid in 1605 to ratify the Treaty of London, is largely dependent on surviving first-hand (notionally eyewitness) accounts, in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, and it is the last of these I am going to focus on in this chapter. One way to tell this story is to bring together the surviving English, Spanish, and Portuguese witnesses to establish, as best as one can, what took place. But that of course was not the intention of the writers of these texts, whose audience was domestic and partial, rather than putatively international; although texts did circulate, few if any people – even monarchs – were in a position to carry out the kind of comparative analysis scholars practice today, even had it been considered desirable to do so.3 There is good reason, therefore, to approach these texts as discrete entities, and to resist the historicizing imperative of modern scholarship. It is understandable that, for historians, surviving texts, scrupulously mined for information, provide the evidentiary basis of modern narrative reconstructions (in as much as they can be) of past events. Thus sifted, however, these early modern texts rarely speak as themselves – in other words, except perhaps (and then only to a degree) for specialists who return to the original documents, these texts no longer function as they were so designed, since they only appear partially, fragmented, in selective quotation. Notwithstanding the unavoidable convention of quotation and omission, this essay explores how they might do so, and on what terms: how, in returning the wheat to the discarded chaff, such narratives may speak afresh. For originally, they did so in ways that illuminates our understanding of both diplomacy and its dissemination in the period. What this ‘formalist’ approach lacks in contextual thoroughness it gains in the kind of close reading that, I will argue, both reveals the purpose for which these texts were designed and hints at the ways in which they were read. There are certainly sound hermeneutic as well as aesthetic reasons for filleting out the apparently less interesting material: this genre is by no means rewarding, in conventional terms, at least at first, and rarely repays the kind of critical endeavour informed by literary approaches or sensibilities. But then these texts were not designed to serve such purposes, their function being to provide reliable, factual (that is, quasi-objective) information within a circumscribed environment, rather than capture the subjective views or opinions of their authors; indeed, far from offering reader or writer an opportunity to 3 James I did acquire a copy of the Spanish Relacion documenting the embassy’s visit to London, published in Seville 1604, but this kind of collecting ought not to be taken for or confused with a more modern notion of scholarship. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 210 Hutchings range imaginatively beyond the ostensible subject matter, these texts are characterized by a deliberate simplicity of expression in the service of (apparent) objectivity on the one hand and precision of narrative focus on the other. In other words, they are rather dull. Mary C. Fuller has written about the ‘dullness’ of much of the material Richard Hakluyt assembled in his monumental Principal Navigations (1589; 1598–1600), pointing out how historians and literary scholars tend to approach the collection quite differently, the latter rarely finding the texts aesthetically rewarding.4 A similar challenge awaits the modern reader of diplomacy narratives, such as the account I am going to focus on in this chapter. Robert Treswell concludes his address ‘To the Reader’ that prefaces A Relation of Svch Things As were obserued to happen in the Journey of the right Honourable Charles Earle of Nottingham, L. High Admirall of England, his hignesse Ambassadour to the King of Spaine, with a concession that, on the surface, appears to be no more than a sop to the conventions of such paratexts.5 ‘In reporting whereof’, he writes, ‘I had rather be condemned for plainnesse, than once suspected for reporting an untrueth’.6 The reader is certainly in for a lot of ‘plainnesse’. This is not, however, to be taken as an apology (or mock apology) for a deficiency in skill or style; quite the contrary. For records of diplomatic missions were in part intended as prose ‘re-performances’ of the events they represented; while they functioned as a form of propaganda (rather than travelogue, say, or mere generalized news report), their conventions were specific to both diplomacy and its dissemination. For ‘plainnesse’ read accuracy and design, precisely to avoid ‘untrueths’; this unornamental style, moreover, does not lack detail, but serves as a coding system, not only in terms of both record and reception but also design. Treswell was a herald, an office whose duties included the choreographing of ceremonial for the event that was to take place. His account of the Earl of Nottingham’s embassy to Spain in 1605 conforms to the requirements of that office (and the conventions of the genre), and in so doing was designed to convey to the reader what was important: ‘plainnesse’ of fact, unadorned by ornament that might obscure or divert the reader’s understanding of the import of what was being communicated. 4 See Fuller M.C., “‘His dark materials’: The Problem of Dullness in Hakluyt’s Collections”, in Carey D. – Jowitt C. (eds.), Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe (London – New York: 2016) 231–242. Hakluyt’s original collection was expanded into three volumes and published at the end of the sixteenth century. 5 On the significance of such materials see for example Smith H. – Wilson L. (eds.), Renaissance Paratexts (Cambridge: 2011). 6 Treswell Robert, A Relation of Svch Things As were obserued to happen in the Journey of the right Honourable Charles Earle of Nottingham, L. High Admirall of England, his hignesse Ambassadour to the King of Spaine (London, Melchisedech Bradwood: 1605) B1v. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 211 Indeed, Treswell had a further reason to stress this virtue because he was aware of what he describes as ‘a Pamphlet of many false and erroneous obseruations’ recently published, which his version purports to correct. That text, penned by an anonymous member of the mission who styles himself as ‘a better souldier then a Scholler’, is similarly framed: ‘I abhorre not the English I was borne to, neither will I go about to plucke from the Inkhorne any solemne Paraphrases, to set forth that, which rather (for the truth therof) desires a plaine and easie deliuerie’.7 Here, then, we are a very long way from the discussion and appreciation of ‘ornament’ in George Puttenham’s The Art of English Poesy, for example.8 The nature of such texts, and the conventions underpinning them, requires the scholar to privilege ‘plainnesse’ (and what it meant to the early modern reader) over literariness, which we naturally value today and whose absence we tend to lament. To read and understand these texts now requires a recalibration of value. If the rendering of diplomatic ceremonial textually, for dissemination, was not ornamental in substance, nor was the practice itself, as Roosen demonstrated. Writing in 1980, he observed that scholars have been slow or reluctant to appreciate the significance of protocol and ceremonial, tending to regard them as ‘a hindrance to rather than a necessary and essential part of effective diplomacy’.9 In other words, the modern perception that ceremonial was and is but the precursor to the serious business that follows, behind-the-scenes, has obscured our understanding of these early modern practices. If that is no longer the case now, nonetheless Diplomacy Studies lacks a theoretical underpinning of its treatment of ceremonial. One question that might be put, then, is how we might conceptualise the performative nature of diplomacy; and one answer, I propose, is to focus on the texts as records of performance, drawing on another comparatively recent development in the academy, Performance Studies.10 Once we think of the offices of diplomat or herald in terms of theatremaking it becomes possible to forge a more direct link between the practice of diplomacy, the staging of performance, its dissemination as text, and reception 7 8 9 10 The Royal Entertainment of the Right Honourable the Earle of Nottingham, sent Ambassador from his Maiestie to the King of Spaine (London, Valentine Sims: 1605) A3r. See Wigham F. – Rebhorn W.A. (eds.), The Art of English Poesy by George Puttenham: A Critical Edition (Ithaca and London: 2007); especially relevant is Book 3, ‘Of Ornament’, 221–387. Roosen, “Early Modern Diplomatic Ceremonial” 453. For a discussion of how early modern historians conceptualized space in their rendering of ceremonial, see for example Dillon J., “The Trials of Queen Katherine in Henry VIII”, Shakespeare Survey 63 (2010) 149–161. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 212 Hutchings by domestic audiences. Heralds like Treswell were responsible for scripting events according to the rules of protocol, so that ceremonial was choreographed precisely, respecting matters of rank and hierarchy through the laws of proxemics and procession; in the case of A Relation of Svch Things, Treswell is not only the figure behind this scripting of diplomacy but also responsible for narrating these events into prose. For this reason, the text has a particular authority. The event is choreographed, experienced (for the most part), and written up by him, the principal agent in both the performance of the embassy and its textual re-presentation. Although not involved in the organizing of either the Hampton Court masque or royal entry into London, both of which he witnesses first-hand, the Spanish ambassador takes similar care in the presentation of the texts he has drawn up and sent to his master, Philip III. It is telling that the Conde de Villamediana’s texts are rendered according to the conventions of their respective genres. Both texts (masque and royal entry) preserve – and indeed insist upon the reader grasping – a sense of the event as an unfolding narrative performance, framed with a beginning and an ending: these are texts that operate on the page, that is, to give the impression of rolling chronological time. This attention to sequence, and its preclusion of any kind of retrospective knowledge – presenting the reader with a temporallybound performance experience – is a signal characteristic of diplomatic writing dealing with official events. In literary terms, using the Russian Formalists’ distinction between fabula and sjuzet, where fabula represents the actual chronology of events represented and sjuzet the arrangement (plotting) of these events in a narrative sequence that may but usually (in literary fictions) does not coincide with the fabula, ambassadors’ and heralds’ accounts conform to the fabula model. Although not entirely free of interpretative intervention (no writing can be), the writers of these texts strive not only for accuracy but also to convey the event as a narrative that precisely parallels (and indeed is, in the act of reading) the action – not unlike, by anachronistic analogy, early cinema before technological advances facilitated editing. Significantly, then, this genre invests in the reader interpretative agency, the conceit of this textual reperformance being that it offered a vicarious experience of the original event. Before moving on to explore Treswell’s text it may be worth thinking about how a printed play-text shapes its readers’ interpretative experience, and use this as the basis for analysis of the account the herald provides of the English mission to Spain. The architecture of the printed play guides the reader, inviting her to engage in specific ways: stage directions are usually placed distinctly, in the margin or centred – in both cases set apart from the main text, their difference underscored usually by being printed in italic (a convention followed today); thus may we distinguish readily between the Haupttext, or main text, Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 213 i.e. the dialogue, and Nebentext, the apparatus of stage directions, or side text.11 This division has periodically led to scholars making a distinction between authorial material – dialogue – and the theatrical provenance of stage directions, but recent studies attending to the status of these plays as experiences designed for readers have sought to connect (or reconnect) these two features. In questioning the traditional separation of dialogue from non-dialogue Douglas Bruster and Emma Smith open up fascinating ways of reading plays.12 Diplomacy narratives might be similarly approached, even if the premise is inverted: here I want to treat prose accounts as containing – and blending – the Haupttext and Nebentext, understood as consisting of a different kind of distinction. In place of a dialogue/stage directions binary these prose texts consist primarily of scenarios framed and produced by entrances and exits, the choreography of the stagecraft precisely recorded – striking (in terms of the comparison being advanced, admittedly) for the absence of Haupttext dialogue. These texts, I propose, invite a specific kind of reading, whereby the Haupttext – conventionally understood, in terms of hierarchy, as the primary component – gives way to, or is subsumed by, indeed incorporated into, the Nebentext; and the Nebentext, here, correspondingly is key to how these accounts present early modern diplomatic ceremonial. Thus it is that Treswell adopts a sparse, minimally descriptive approach that nonetheless records – indeed privileges – the visual elements of diplomacy, such as the placing and (most importantly) proximity of persons to one another, the clothing worn, and the spaces in which these events take place: in other words (to recall a device in playmaking), the text is a ‘dumb show’, since the Haupttext (dialogue) is (understandably) ‘missing’ from these accounts. In a recent discussion of this device Jeremy Lopez proposes that the dumbshow is ‘a threshold between drama (a play as textual artefact) and theatricality (the quality of experience a play provides live and in real time)’.13 This sense of the visual-but-silent sequence of the dumb show as straddling print and performance is suggestive for the argument being advanced here, for the diplomacy narrative must also contest with the ‘problem’ of translating visual material into prose. But whereas Lopez finds dumbshow stage directions ‘difficult to 11 12 13 The terms are Roman Ingarden’s, developed in Das Literarische Kunstwerk (Halle: 1931). Margaret Jane Kidnie discusses the application of these terms in “Text, Performance, and the Editors: Staging Shakespeare’s Drama”, Shakespeare Quarterly 51, 4 (2000) 456–473. See Smith E., “Reading Shakespeare’s Stage Directions”, and Douglas Bruster, “Shakespeare’s Literary Stage Directions”, in Dustagheer S. – Woods G. (eds.), Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre (London: 2018) 93–114, and 115–137 respectively. Lopez J., “Dumb Show”, in Turner H.S. (ed.), Early Modern Theatricality (Oxford: 2013) 291–305; here 292 (italics original). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 214 Hutchings read’, and argues that the in-between-ness of the device renders it unsatisfactory for either medium, in diplomacy narratives what I consider the equivalent of the dumbshow would appear to operate satisfactorily – based as it is on an ethos of ‘plainnesse’.14 Crucially the Nebentext does not compete with the Haupttext but displaces it altogether, so that that there is no perceived or actual conflict. Stripped of (unattainable) Haupttext, A Relation of Svch Things is an elaborate, extended form of Nebentext. Thus the ‘side text’ takes centre stage. In what follows I propose to read Treswell’s account as essentially an elaborate, extended sequence of stage directions; in other words, as a record of performance, which, after Roosen, is key to early modern diplomacy, both in terms of diplomatic practice and its popular dissemination. Treswell’s account takes the reader from London, where the embassy is assembled and takes its leave of King James I & VI, to Spain, where after a long journey to the court of King Philip III it is entertained in Valladolid, and then back to England. Instead of anchoring at Santander, as Philip anticipated, and travelling directly south to Valladolid from there the flotilla continues west to A Coruña, which necessitates a delayed and arduous journey through mountains south to the royal city. Once the embassy reaches Valladolid it becomes clear that Philip III has taken great care to choreograph the entire visit, with the city a theatre for the staging of the ratification of the peace; the birth of the future Philip IV in April enables his father to incorporate the baptismal procession and ceremony into the entertainments for the Earl of Nottingham, the preparations for which are aided by the embassy’s late arrival following its landing at A Coruña. The Spanish king instructs Nottingham to remain there until sufficient supplies of horses and mules can be sent to transport the English south. In the meantime, the embassy is entertained by the governor of the town, and on its journey south this hospitality is repeated as the mission passes through a succession of small towns. Treswell’s role as herald and design as author of this account is particularly conspicuous in the text’s presentation of the small-scale, set-piece entertainments Nottingham receives, first at A Coruña and then during the journey south. As noted earlier, this herald is both choreographer and recorder. The significance of this is that he is actually or vicariously present as narrator: his office, his status, gives him access. Thus, his text takes the reader into the elite, high-status world from which the vast majority would otherwise be excluded. This can be illustrated by a brief comparison with the ‘rival’ account, The Royal Entertainment, whose author Treswell describes (not unfairly) as ‘not well 14 Ibidem 293. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 215 informed’.15 Both texts implicitly proclaim, or betray, the extent, or limit, of their access to the events they recount – which reveals the witness’s place in the social hierarchy; that is to say, that on occasion in the anonymous, ‘pirate’ text the author simply does not have access to the event, which as a consequence is either treated cursorily or omitted altogether. For example, whereas Treswell devotes two pages to the Lord Admiral’s celebration of Saint George’s Feast in A Coruña, the compiler of the other text, evidently neither present nor well informed, reports simply: ‘the two and twentie Day of Aprill being Tuesday, his Lordship did keepe George his feast in the Gouverours house, in as great state as the place and time could afford, and his owne charges’.16 That Treswell is present on this occasion – as he would be, given his official duties – is confirmed in the third person in the narrative: ‘At the comming in of the second course, according to the fashion of England, the Kings stile was proclaimed in three seuerall languages by Somersett herauld cying, Largesse, who had a liberall reward for the same’.17 A Relation of Svch Things is a succession of ‘scenes’, a number of them, such as the celebration of Saint George’s Day here, intimate, private events. As Janette Dillon points out, in the European court kinesics (the movement of people) and proxemics (their relative spatial positioning) are crucial to how this world saw itself and was seen.18 While the text is a narrative account, a strictly chronological account, of the English embassy, Treswell (unsurprisingly, given the duties of his office) has an eye to the theatricality of the events he choreographs, often witnesses, and describes. He is alert to the importance of kinesics and proxemics, which constitute diplomatic protocol. He notes, for example, but need not comment on a detail that would be obvious to the early modern reader, how the Earl of Nottingham is greeted when the embassy arrives at a town on the route to Valladolid: Sunday the fifth day of May we rode forward to a very faire towne called Lugo, being distant from Villa Alua seuen leagues. The Alcaylde [mayor] and other officers of the town, meeting his Lordship about halfe a mile without the gates, and accompanying vs into the towne, the streets being decked with bowes and the wals of their houses garnished with their best hangings and furniture.19 15 16 17 18 19 ‘To the Reader’ A4r. The Royal Entertainment, 2. For comparison see Treswell, A Relation of Svch Things 18–19. Treswell, A Relation of Svch Things 19. Dillon J., The Language of Space in Court Performance, 1400–1625 (Cambridge: 2010) 2. Treswell, A Relation of Svch Things 25. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 216 Hutchings The key detail concerns kinesics, the movement through space: the mayor shows his deference to the higher-ranked visitor by greeting Nottingham outside the town and escorting the entourage through the gates. It is a seemingly small yet key detail, rendered unobtrusively, even ‘naturalistically’: for Treswell and his readers the mayor is performing an act of respect to the King of England by proxy. Even when not involved in the arrangements, as is plainly the case with entertainments laid on by the Spanish, Treswell is concerned to provide a description that conjures up a three-dimensional image for the reader, in this case an arena in Valladolid that will shortly host an elaborate masque: Thursday the second day of May, there was prepared in the market place, a certaine peece of ground railed in square the space of twenty yeards or more, with Scaffolds, built of purpose about the same: wherein the English were very sufficiently appointed and placed, for the seeing of these sports. His Lordship and other the Noblement were placed in seuerall windows, in a very faire roome in the Kings Statehouse, being for that purpose hanged with rich Arras and seuerall clothes of estate ouer the windows, on the wall on the outside the house.20 Here we have the setting (and language) of theatrical performance. Treswell provides his reader with an idea of the size of the performance space, its shape, the demarcation of the playing arena (it is ‘railed’), and the seating (‘Scaffolds’). The placement of the Lord Admiral, and where, is a significant detail, of course, and it also lends a kind of hierarchical verticality to the evocation of the scene. Both the description of the theatre space and the implied point of view of Nottingham, from on high, helps the reader visualize the performance that follows in Treswell’s text. On two occasions Treswell takes a different approach. Just as Villamediana sets out the masque and royal entry in such a way as to best convey the movement of high-status figures through space and time, at points Treswell chooses to match the mis-en-page to the events being described. Two prominent examples, both consisting of lists of dignitaries, are the names of the senior members of the embassy and the identities of the Spanish caballeros who participate in the Juego de Cañas tournament in the plaza mayor in Valladolid. In the first of these, Treswell’s list, which begins with ‘The Earle of Pearth’ and includes thirty-three names, ordered according to rank, each member is given his own 20 Ibidem 21. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 217 line on the page.21 It is a list but also, figuratively – visually – a procession, as if the members of the embassy are marching onto the ships that are also named, following a paragraph of prose giving other members of the mission below the rank of knight and concluding with the brief remark – accounting for some five hundred men – ‘diuers whose names are not heerein remembered’.22 On the following page this procession of names – a dramatis personae, as it were – present themselves to the Lord Admiral: the greatest number of them being very richly apparelled themselves and extraordinarily appointed for their seruants, gaue their attendance at Nottingham house the said one and twentie day of March, his Lordship hauing appointed many barges and boates for conueying himself, the said lords and knights and their company to the Court, the Kings Highnesse then being at Greenwich.23 Here the reader is invited to connect the list of senior members of the embassy given with the prose account of the party’s departure – to visualize, that is, the procession of figures, listed according to rank, as they take their leave. Villamediana must have received help with identifying the masquers and those who processed into London; similarly, Treswell was assisted in identifying the eighty Spanish noblemen who participated in the Juego de Cañas on 31 May, for he states that ‘The number of horsemen that shewed themselues in these sports were fourscore, whose names hereafter follow, according to a note thereof deliuered by one of good woorth and of especiall respect with the King’.24 Divided into groups of five, two each of which formed a Quadrille, or squadron, the contest is described as follows: After this, beganne their sports of Inego [sic] de Canas, wherein the King himself was an Actor. […] At their first appearance they came riding in by couples two after two, very swiftly, richly attired with their Targets on their shoulders, holding and shaking long staues such as the Moores or Arabians are described to vse. When they were all come, they diuided themselues to sides, euery side into foure squadrons, euery squadron being tenne in number; when they were ready holding their staues in their hands, the Kings side gaue 21 22 23 24 Ibidem 3–4. Ibidem 4. Ibidem 5. Ibidem 47. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 218 Hutchings the first charge; the other side vndertaking the same and charging on them likewise; thus they continued still chasing one another, squadron vpon squadron throwing their Canes one after other, by the space of a long houre or better: and so their sports ended.25 This description follows the double-page layout of the eight quadrilles [Fig. 9.1].26 Here, as previously, the reader is invited to connect the prose description to the diagrammatic presentation of the formation, which in the mise-en-page represents the geometrical formation adopted by the horsemen. It is not made clear how the quadrilles engaged precisely, whether the first (led by Philip III) faced the fifth, the second the sixth, and so on, but if so, Treswell’s figure 9.1 Robert Treswell, list of personages involved in the Juego de cañas, in A Relation of […] the Journey of the right Honourable Charles Earle of Nottingham […] Ambassadour to the King of Spaine (London, Melchisedech Bradwood: 1605) 48–49. RB69675, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California 25 26 Ibidem 47, 50. Ibidem 48–49. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 219 layout (informed by a Spanish source) presented the reader with a visual image that was not simply a list of participants but which marked out both the physical space of the arena and the disposition of the caballeros. That is, the theatre of the Juego de Cañas is conjured on the page. If (clearly) the principal object of this activity was to convey Habsburg power – reminding those present that Spain was still a formidable power – this was available too (ironically, given the text’s propagandistic purpose) to the reader of Treswell’s Relation. Treswell pays particular attention to the visual in another respect. Here is how the text describes the entry into Valladolid on 16 May. First, he lists the Spanish nobles who come out of the city to greet the Lord Admiral and his embassy, and then we read the following: The order of our going into the towne was appointed as followeth: First rode two Trumpets, all the sumpter and carriages being about two hours before sent into the towne: after whom followed certain Gentlemen seruants to the Knights and Lords, as also the Leadger Ambassadors seuants in liueries very faire to the number of sixty. Then followed six Trumpeters of his Lordships in suits of Damaske holding their Trumpets in their hands, but not sounding. Then came diuers Gentlemen of good sort, with whom also followed his Lordships Gentlemen and principall Officers in their Liueries of blacke velvet to the number of thirty. Then followed the Esquires, Knights and Lords euery one according to their degree, being accompanied with seueral Spanish Knights and Lords; after whom came his Lordship […].27 ‘Euery one according to their degree’ is a code readily understood by the early modern reader, as is the significance placed on the colour of clothes, though there are other more illustrative examples. This procession, as a performance, signified both in Valladolid in May and in the text (and reader’s imagination) some months later. It did so in part not only because diplomacy was performative, but because wider society was, too. As is well known, early modern England was a ‘cloth society’, as Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass remark, a society subject (until their repeal in 1603) to the longstanding ‘sumptuary laws’ that had been reinforced when Elizabeth I came to the throne and which governed who could wear what kind of fabric or colour of clothes, according to rank.28 These laws, for as long as they were enforced and enforceable, 27 28 Ibidem 31–32. Jones A.R. – Stallybrass P., Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: 2000). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 220 Hutchings codified a social hierarchy in visual terms, as Lisa Jardine has shown.29 When Treswell remarks on colours or materials of clothing, as he does in the above sequence, he does so because this information encodes social and hierarchical meaning. What it also does, simultaneously, is conjure up a theatre of socially stratified colour in the reader’s imagination. Thus, when Treswell placed dignitaries in their correct position according to rank (in Valladolid and in the text), he was creating and recording a visual display defined by colour, and hence by difference, and the early modern reader was guided by these descriptors. The descriptions of apparel we find here do not so much add colour as call up the semiotics of colour-coding; and this is underscored when the English aristocrats and their Spanish counterparts meet, the choreography – in which equals meet on equal terms – reinforcing the performative context through a stable, legible coding system that created in the reader a theatre of the mind, as it were. And although lost to us today, unless we study the sumptuary legislation that had been designed to regulate personal performance and representation until its repeal in 1603, the detailed information about fabrics, colours, and costume we find in texts such as these can offer us an insight into the performative nature of early modern diplomacy. Although the conceit underpinning this chapter risks switching too radically between apparently distinctive genres of writing – the kind of risk James Thurber has great fun with when he has a modern reader mistakenly taking Macbeth for a murder-mystery whodunnit and concluding, with irresistible logic, that Macbeth could not have killed Duncan because, in whodunnits, the murderer is never revealed so early on – I want to take it further and propose that in fact diplomacy narratives offer much more information about actual performance than printed plays in early modern England.30 They are, in other words, better performance records of the events they purport to represent than printed plays. If we consider Hamlet, for a moment, a play where Timothy Hampton fixes on the portrayal of diplomacy, we can readily see how and why it offers more for scholars interested in the literary intersections with diplomacy than for its depiction of actual practices, as Hampton’s discussion demonstrates. The approach taken here both complements and departs from his thesis that ‘the new political tool of diplomacy and the emerging culture of secular literature [in early modern Europe] shape each other in important ways’, producing what 29 30 Jardine L., Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare 2nd ed. (London: 1983) 141–168. Thurber, J., “The Macbeth Murder Mystery”, in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Other Pieces [1945] (London: 2000) 83–86. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 221 he terms a ‘diplomatic poetics’.31 In his wide-ranging account that takes in the theories of Machiavelli, Gentili, and Guicciardini, among others, and explores the portrayal of diplomatic encounter in canonical literary texts such as Camões’ Os Lusíads as well as Hamlet, Hampton argues that correspondences between diplomatic practice and literary genres point to a mutuallydetermining, symbiotic relationship: literary fictions depict diplomacy, which in turn draws on literary genres and conventions, not least in the scripting of communication between envoys and masters. In this respect Hampton echoes Hayden White, who contends that the writing of history employs literary genres to frame narrative (and, implicitly, conveys its moral).32 While Hampton notes that the ‘theatricality’ of the early modern court and the likening of diplomats to ‘actors’ was a cliché of the period, his concern is not with its enactment in physical time and space – that is, as theatre.33 ‘Diplomatic missions’, he writes, ‘were generally understood, theoretically at least, as scripted and controlled units of movement’;34 but this insight is not developed in the direction of ceremonial.35 His persuasive reading of Hamlet focuses on how Claudius’s instruction to his ambassadors is precisely calibrated so as to ensure that they conduct themselves to the letter of the commission; but it does not attempt to explore how a play might replicate diplomatic ceremonial in its very theatre, as for example we find in Janette Dillon’s study of space in the early modern court.36 And yet if Hamlet in performance might offer a notable instance of the staging of diplomacy in a literary fiction, in print the case is less persuasive. If in seventeenth-century performance the play evoked and exploited contemporary awareness of diplomatic practices, the surviving textual witnesses offer little in the way of confirmation, if that was the case. The quarto and folio texts of Shakespeare’s play (Q1, 1603; Q2, 1605; F, 1623) – like any other surviving printed (or manuscript) play of the period – privileges the Haupttext, or dialogue, over the Nebentext, or stage movement information, something that historically has not worried too many literary critics but poses problems for 31 32 33 34 35 36 Hampton T., Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca and London: 2009) 2. See White H., Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: 1973) and The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: 1987). Hampton, Fictions of Embassy 142–143 and passim. Ibidem 154. Indeed, Roosen’s essay is not included in Hampton’s extensive bibliography. See Dillon, The Language of Space; Dillon does include Roosen’s essay in her bibliography but does not discuss it. See also Dillon J., Performance and Spectacle in Hall’s Chronicle (London: 2002). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 222 Hutchings those scholars interested in performance. Early modern readers of this play, like modern directors, receive no guidance as to which entry or exit points are used on the stage, and the order in which characters in group entrances or exits move is not indicated; nor, crucially, is the relative placement on the stage – the blocking of characters – in any way clarified. And while sometimes the dialogue includes what scholars refer to as ‘implicit stage directions’, which might indicate that a character has kneeled or removed headwear, for example – and indeed in a play about a royal court the actors must have observed at least some of the protocol through which early modern subjects understood the social make-up and hierarchy of their world – nevertheless the textual witnesses are notoriously silent on choreography. These texts that lay claim to being ‘documents of performance’ – or, rather, have such claims thrust upon them by scholars – offer very little evidence of how performances of stage plays were choreographed. Accounts of diplomatic practice, on the other hand, are textual representations of a certain type of performance first and foremost. Performance, central as it is to early modern diplomatic practice, is correspondingly prominent in these texts. Tresswell’s account of the visit of the English embassy to Valladolid is more than an account – it is a record of the choreography of encounter between Spanish and English figures in a variety of formal occasions and events, public and private, from the embassy’s arrival in A Coruña to its departure from Santander: a choreography in which Tresswell, as Somerset Herald, played a major role. As such, he understood not only the importance of providing an accurate – plain – account, but that readers would decode the performance rendered by the text, that their world – however remote from high offices of state – was also codified and organized according to the rules of ceremonial. And as choreographer he was in a position to oversee the entire ‘production’ – from the planning of each official event to its recording and eventual rendering into print.37 Take for example this description of the ceremonial ratification of the peace treaty, which, if read as a kind of extended stage direction, is much more informative than the kind of Nebentext we find in printed drama:38 37 38 This, admittedly, is mostly surmise, since no evidence has survived to indicate that Robert Treswell oversaw the printing of the text he authored, either in London or Edinburgh; and no manuscript exists. But given the political importance of the English embassy – above all domestically, as well as internationally – it would seem reasonable to conclude that Treswell was commissioned (and made aware of the commission) to provide an authoritative account of the embassy’s reception prior to its sailing from England. At any rate the anonymous author of The Royal Entertainement evidently saw a way to capitalize on an opportunity that may well have arisen from knowledge of Treswell’s commission. Dillon, The Language of Space 1–4, discusses an elaborate stage direction in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII, but as she points out, here the play was indebted to the chronicle sources. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 223 His Lordship being thus receaued, was conueied vp through a long Gallery into a Presence, and so into another inner roome: the Gentlemen, Knights and Lords euer going before in very good order. In which roome his Maiestie staied for the coming of his Lordship, receauing him with affable and kind congratulation, and tooke him along with him by his side. The Kings Sergeaunts at Mace going first, after following all the Graundes and Lords of Spaine one among another: then the foure Kings of Armes in their coats of Armes: then the Duke of Lerma bearing the Sword naked, wherein one thing is especially to be noted, that the Duke bare not the Sword vpright, as is the custome of England, but bare it lying vpon his right shoulder: so the King and his Lords went together into a very faire banquetting house verie lately built, the Ambassadour Leadger, the Lords and diuers others following.39 Here we have what is unquestionably an eyewitness description of diplomatic ceremonial, where attention is paid especially to the treatment of the Lord Admiral by Philip III, who ‘tooke him along with him by his side’. The banqueting house to which the party is conveyed had been specially constructed for the occasion of the peace. Treswell takes the reader into this elite, restricted space, through ‘a long Gallery into a Presence, and so into another inner roome’, where Philip awaits the Lord Admiral, and then on ‘into a very faire banqueting house verie lately built’. Here once more Treswell is concerned with movement through space and the relative proximity of the dignitaries; as elsewhere, Nottingham’s favourable treatment (for which the Spanish texts do not offer corroboration) is prominent. At this point Treswell’s account continues; note the attention given to proxemics and the actions of the dignitaries: The King sitting in his Estate, his Lordship and the Ambassadour Leadger were placed vpon his left hand: the Grandees and other the Noblemen of Spaine being seated on the other hand, two degrees lower. Before the King was brought a little Table, whereon lay the Bible and a Crucifix vpon it. The Archbishop of Toledo read the oath with a reasonable loud voice: at one part of the oath his Lordship held the Kings hands between his: to which oath the King sware kneeling and laying his hand vpon the Booke, and afterwards subscribed to the Articles and Agreements drawen and concluded by both Kings.40 39 40 Treswell, A Relation of Svch Things 44–45. Ibidem 45. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 224 Hutchings Treswell is alert to important details (‘two degrees lower’): he understood the significance of this, and clearly he expected his domestic readership to recognize the compliment being paid to James’ representatives – and thus to the King of England himself. This kind of expectation was keyed, as we have seen, to a specific kind of visual semiotics in early modern culture, whether relating to attire, which signified rank and hierarchy, or movement through space, which was restricted and similarly codified. The theatricality of diplomacy was reproducible and reproduced textually. Indeed, in print diplomatic activity was conveyed precisely through its affinity with stage performance; but whereas plays privileged speech (the Haupttext), the absence of dialogue in these diplomacy narratives – partly displaced by the narrative voice of the author-witness – opened up a space for the privileging of the Nebentext. If the conceit that diplomacy was theatrical or performative is accepted, we may thus regard narratives such as Treswell’s as composed principally of a series of stage directions, of choreographed movement, otherwise known as ceremonial. To do so is not only to reread these texts through a different kind of cultural frame of reference but also to recognize that diplomacy and theatre drew on a shared language that was principally grounded in the visual, particularly with respect to the choreographing of important state occasions. Behind the ‘plainnesse’ of Treswell’s style – or, rather, imbued within it – lay the essence of diplomatic ceremonial, translated into prose. To describe early modern diplomacy as ‘theatrical’ – or, more properly, its representation, from private (or quasi-private – that is to say, elite) encounter to full-scale, public ceremonial – is not only to call up through analogy a social and cultural practice that was also (in parallel in England and Spain) establishing itself over the course of the sixteenth century as a professional activity, but also to risk treating the evidentiary basis for such a claim as primarily a scholarly source.41 In mining texts such as Treswell’s for what they can tell us about past historical events we lose sight of how they operated in their own time, for their readers. Precisely how early moderns read these accounts is largely beyond retrieval of course, and we must allow for resistant readings: indeed, given the unpopularity of the peace policy it is surely beyond doubt that for some their textual engagement was overdetermined by fears for England’s future. But when we approach these texts on their own terms, consider their design, and think in terms of the ‘ideal reader’ – then it is possible to interrogate 41 For a comparative study of the emergence of the English and Spanish traditions, see Cohen W., Dream of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance England and Spain (Ithaca – London: 1985). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 225 the concept of ‘theatricality’ at the level of the text itself. In other words, this chapter has urged that we attend to these texts not simply or solely as sources of evidence for the performance of diplomatic ceremonial in early modern Europe but as evidence of how diplomacy was framed and shaped for a nonelite (if not popular) audience through the medium of print. The conceit I have explored here might be considered less outlandish than it appears once we recognize that the implicit claims of any printed play – that the text represents theatrical performance – is inherently problematic; and yet, we habitually use the printed text (‘drama’) as the basis for putative ‘reconstructions’ of past and future performance (‘theatre’). But if the printed play, both in content and form, nonetheless offers itself as just such a representation, notwithstanding the insurmountable obstacles that arise in representing one medium through another, perhaps it is possible to see not only the problems in approaching the genre of diplomacy narratives in a similar fashion but also the strategies deployed by the authors of these texts to capture, however imperfectly, the theatricality of diplomatic encounter. Indeed, if our understanding of theatricality in the playhouses of early modern England (or Spain) is entirely text-derivative – and it is – then we ought to acknowledge not only (as we do) that print supplies for us now the basis for our scholarly activities in conjuring up performance but also that these texts are, for all their ‘deficiencies’ as imperfect records of performance, our only starting point. That is, they were also, for early modern readers, their starting point, too, for a vicarious experience of performance through the act of reading. Given the importance of ceremonial for the practice of diplomacy and, as I have argued here, its corresponding significance in the textual representation of diplomacy, and bearing in mind the growth in the printing of plays from the 1590s onwards, which testifies to the demand for, supply of, and familiarity with such texts, it is not unreasonable to suppose that readers of Treswell’s account were equipped to interpret the text’s rendering of performance.42 Not all playgoers were playreaders, but it is worth remembering that the pageantry of ceremonial that early moderns witnessed in the streets of London was staged in the playhouses, too, and the symbolism of diplomatic ceremonial – its visual, proxemic ordering and presentation of the social order as choreographed performance – was not so much exotic and different so much as a perhaps more refined version of familiar behaviour; it is not so much that high-status figures like nobles and ambassadors were familiar because they travelled publicly 42 On the printing of plays in early modern London, see Blayney P., “The Publication of Playbooks”, in Kastan D.S. – Cox J.D. (eds.), A New History of Early English Drama (New York: 1997) 383–422. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 226 Hutchings through the streets of London, more that early modern society understood the kinds of social codes that were as central to the ‘performance’ of diplomacy as they were to any other aspect of society – itself understood in anthropological terms as ritual. As a herald Treswell understood this doubly. It was his duty to order things correctly when he choreographed events; and he sought to convey the precision of this orchestration in the text that he produced for publication. He did so by providing what in theatrical terms we might regard as an extended ‘dumb show’, where the visual is all; and this works because the governing proxemics and protocols are not only familiar to him but, through his text, recognized by the reader also. Indeed, what is striking about these texts, their subject matter, construction, and reception – and this is so obvious as to pass without comment from scholars – is that the high-status activity that was early modern diplomacy could be conveyed to and understood by a non-elite audience precisely because its textual form relayed information that could be readily understood within the cognitive framework of more general knowledge of a hierarchical society. Moreover, as I have argued above, if we consider the set-piece descriptions of diplomatic activity as examples of an extended Nebentext, a kind of dumbshow with which playreaders were familiar, then the ‘theatricality’ of diplomatic ceremonial may be understood as principally and most usefully as a textual attribute, for what this genre calls up is a text-reader relationship analogous to the culture of reading printed drama. Treswell’s text operated on these terms. Bibliography Primary Sources The Royal Entertainment of the Right Honourable the Earle of Nottingham, sent Ambassador from his Maiestie to the King of Spaine (London, Valentine Sims: 1605). Treswell Robert, A Relation of Svch Things As were obserued to happen in the Journey of the right Honourable Charles Earle of Nottingham, L. High Admirall of England, his hignesse Ambassadour to the King of Spaine (London, Melchisedech Bradwood: 1605). Secondary Sources Blayney P., “The Publication of Playbooks”, in Kastan D.S. – Cox J.D. (eds.), A New History of Early English Drama (New York: 1997) 383–422. Bruster D., “Shakespeare’s Literary Stage Directions”, in Dustagheer S. – Woods G. (eds.), Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre (London: 2018) 115–137. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Diplomacy Narratives as Documents of Performance 227 Cano-Echevarría B. – Hutchings M., “The Spanish Ambassador and Samuel Daniel’s Vision of the Twelve Goddesses: A New Document [with Text]”, English Literary History 42, 3 (2012). Cohen W., Dream of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance England and Spain (Ithaca – London: 1985). Dillon J., “The Trials of Queen Katherine in Henry VIII”, Shakespeare Survey 63 (2010) 149–161. Dillon J., Performance and Spectacle in Hall’s Chronicle (London: 2002). Dillon J., The Language of Space in Court Performance, 1400–1625 (Cambridge: 2010). Dustagheer S. – Woods G. (eds.), Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre (London: 2018). Fuller M.C., “‘His dark materials’: The Problem of Dullness in Hakluyt’s Collections”, in Carey D. – Jowitt C. (eds.), Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe (London – New York: 2016) 231–242. Hampton T., Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca and London: 2009). Hutchings M. – Cano Echevarría B., “The Spanish Ambassador’s Account of James I’s Entry into London, 1604 [with Text]”, The Seventeenth Century 33, 1 (2018) 255–277. Ingarden R. Das Literarische Kunstwerk (Halle: 1931) 231–242. Jardine L., Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare 2nd ed. (London: 1983). Jones A.R. – Stallybrass P., Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: 2000). Kidnie M.J., “Text, Performance, and the Editors: Staging Shakespeare’s Drama”, Shakespeare Quarterly 51, 4 (2000) 456–473. Lopez J., “Dumb Show”, in Turner H.S. (ed.), Early Modern Theatricality (Oxford: 2013) 291–305. Roosen W., “Early Modern Diplomatic Ceremonial: A Systems Approach”, Journal of Modern History 52, 3 (1980). Smith E., “Reading Shakespeare’s Stage Directions”, in Dustagheer S. – Woods G. (eds.), Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre (London: 2018) 93–114. Smith H. – Wilson L. (eds.), Renaissance Paratexts (Cambridge: 2011). White H., Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: 1973). White H., The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: 1987). Wigham F. – Rebhorn W.A. (eds.), The Art of English Poesy by George Puttenham: A Critical Edition (Ithaca – London: 2007). Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access Index Nominum Abu Abdallah Muhammad XII, aka Boabdil (Emir of Granada) 136, 141 Acquaviva, Claudio 156, 159 n. 16 Ahmed ed-Dehebi (Sultan of Morocco) 61 Alcaide Ally see: Carr Allen, William 158 Alvares, Manoel de 48–49 Anderton, Lawrence 190 António, Prior of Crato 109 Araújo, Manoel de 33 Arras, bishop of see: Perrenot, Antoine de Azambuja, Diogo de 35 Azpilicueta, Martin de 79 n. 5, 88 n. 35 Bancroft, Richard 164, 166 n. 50 Barbosa de Machado, Diogo 39 Barros e Sousa, Manuel Francisco de (Viscount of Santarém) 34 n. 9, 35, 38, 40 n. 31, 42 n. 39 Barry, Thomas 65 Bartas, Guillaume du 199 Bedford, Earl of see: Russell, Francis Blount, Sir Henry 61 Boabdil see: Abu Abdallah Muhammad XII (Emir of Granada) Boleyn, Anne (Queen of England) 82 n. 14 Bragança, Duchess of see: Catarina, Duchess of Bragança Braithwaite, John 59 n. 30, 60 n. 38, 61 n. 45, 68–69 Bright, Timothy 157 Bristow, Richard 190 Brooke, Agnes 38 Bunny, Edmund 160–163, 166, 172, 178, 180, 192 Cabredo, Rodrigo de 84 n. 22 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro 82 n. 14 Camden, William 157, 194 Camm, John 199 Campion, Edmund 92–93, 143–144, 189, 197–198 Cárdenas, Gutierre de 136 Cardoso, Ayres 33, 41 Carr (Alcaide Ally) 59 n. 30, 68 Carvajal y Mendoza, Luisa de 84, 94 Castile, Constable of see: Fernández de Velasco y Tovar, Juan Castilho, António de 33 n. 3 Catarina, Duchess of Bragança 57, 63 n. 58 Catarina de Habsburg see: Catherine of Austria (Queen of Portugal) Catherine of Austria (Queen of Portugal) 33, 43, 45 Catholic monarchs 130–134, 136–144, 147; see also: Ferdinand II, Isabella I Caussin, Nicolas 192 Cecil, William 20 n. 18, 34, 40 n. 31, 43–44, 47 Cervantes, Miguel de 77–79, 81, 98, 105 n. 6 Charlemagne (Emperor of the Carolingian Empire) 104–105 Charles II (King of England, Ireland and Scotland) 64 Charles III (King of Spain) 186 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain 21, 33 Cheke, John 157 Clinton, Lord see: Fiennes, Edward Clitherow, Margaret 90 n. 44 Conti, Sigismondo di 137 n. 27 Cornelius, John 95 n. 54 Crashaw, William 166 n. 50 Creswell, Joseph 83–84, 88–89, 90 n. 43, 92–95, 194 Delaval, George 68 Devereux, Robert (Earl of Essex) Diriksen, Rodrigo 22, 23 n. 22 Dongan, Thomas 63 Donne, John 88 n. 36 Duarte I (King of Portugal) 115 Dugdale, William 194 77 Eclesal, Tomas 84 n. 21 Edward IV (King of England) 51, 142 n. 45 Egmont, Count of see: Lamoral Elizabeth I (Queen of England and Ireland) 6, 32–33, 40–42, 47–48, 62, 77, 82, 95, 109, 146, 156, 219 Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 230 Emmanuel Philibert (Duke of Savoy) 15, 18, 20, 24, 27 Essex, Earl of see: Devereux, Robert Fabyan, Robert 137–138, 139 n. 32 Ferdinand II (King of Aragon) 8, 131, 132 n. 6, 133–134, 136, 141–143, 146 Feria, Count of see: Suárez de Figueroa y Córdoba, Gómez Fernández de Velasco y Tovar, Juan (Constable of Castile) 95–98 Fiennes, Edward (Lord Clinton) 18–19 Fisher, John 190 Fleming, Abraham 144–147 Fleming, John 62 Fowler, Francis 82 n. 16 Foxe, John 158, 191, 193 Froissart, Jean 27 Garnet, Henry 88, 92 Gaudid, David see: Wadding, David Giraldes, Francisco 49 Gondomar, Count of see: Sarmiento de Acuña, Diego Gordon, Patrick 199 Grafton, Richard 139–141 Hakluyt, Richard 210 Hall, Edward 8, 130, 137–147 Hall, Peter 67 Harding, Thomas 172 Harrison, William 144 Harvey, Gabriel 179 Hastings, Henry (Earl of Huntingdon) 90, 92 Hatfield, Anthony 68 Hawkins, John 44–45 Henrique, Cardinal D. see: Henry I (King of Portugal) Henry I (King of Portugal) 44–45 Henry VI (King of England) 32, 51 Henry VII (King of England) 132–133, 139, 142 Henry VIII (King of England and Ireland) 29, 82, 138 n. 28, 139, 194 Herbert, William (Earl of Pembroke) 18–21, 28 Heron, Richard 42–43 Hoare, Michael 66 Index Nominum Holanda, Rodrigo de see: Diriksen, Rodrigo Holder, Botolph 43, 48 Holinshed, Raphael 8, 17–18, 130, 137–138 n. 31, 143–144, 145 n. 57, 146 n. 58, 147 Hooker, John 144 Hor, Michael see: Hoare Michael Howard, Charles (Earl of Nottingham and Lord High Admiral) 8, 105, 117, 122, 210, 214–219, 223 Huntingdon, Earl of see: Hastings, Henry Illescas, Gonzalo de 82 Innocent VIII, Pope (Giovanni Battista Cybo) 131 Isabella (Queen of Portugal) 33 Isabella I (Queen of Castile) 131–133, 136, 142 n. 45, 146 Ismael Ibn Sharif (Sultan of Morocco) 59 n. 30, 60, 69 James I & VI (King of England, Ireland and Scotland) 95, 109, 208–209, 214 James II (King of England, Ireland and Scotland) 64 Jewel, John 172 João III (King of Portugal) 33, 45 John I (King of Portugal) 109, 115 Jonson, Ben 197 Kavanagh, Phelim 63 Keynes, George 192 La Fons, Quentin de 28 Lacy, William 65 Lamoral (Count of Egmont) 27 Lee, John 49 Lee, Sir Richard 19 Lelesma, Juan de 96, 97 n. 60, 98 n. 61 Lerma, Duke of see: Sandoval y Rojas, Francisco Gómez de Loarte, Gaspar 159 Lopes, Fernão 108 López de Carvajal, Bernardino 134–135 López de Mendoza y Quiñones, Íñigo (Count of Tendilla) 136 Lyly, John 195 Lynch, Anthony 58 Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 231 Index Nominum Machyn, Henry 16 n. 2, 17 Magennis, Arthur 65 Martin, Gregory 190 Mary I (Queen of England, Ireland and Spain) 5, 16, 18, 30, 82, 98, 146 Mason, William 95 n. 54 Matthew, Tobie 166 n. 50 McCarthy, Charles 62 McCarthy, Florence 63 Mendoza, Bernardino de 33 n. 3, 43 Milton, John 195, 197 Molony, Matthew 64 Montmorency, Anne de (Duke of Montmorency and Constable of France) 15 More, Thomas 106 Morlim, James 63 Morton, John (Archbishop of Canterbury) 8, 137–138, 140–142, 144–145 Murphy, Richard 61 Naughten, Cornelio 58 Neville, Richard (Earl of Warwick) 51 Norden, John 164 Norris, Sylvester 190 Nottingham, Earl of see: Howard, Charles O’Driscoll, Cornelius 62 O’Driscoll, Florence 63 O’Driscoll, Thaddeus 63 O’Hehir, Raymond 60 O’Hurley, Andrew 58 O’Morachen, Arthur 62 O’Neill, Hugh 62 O’Reilly, Alexander 66 O’Reilly, Nicholas 66 Paddon, George 68 Palencia, Alfonso de 135 n. 24 Pembroke, Earl of see: Herbert, William Peralta, Francisco de 84 Pereira Dantas, João 33, 36, 40 n. 30 Pereira, Francisco 37 Perrenot, Antoine de (Bishop of Arras) 18–19 Persons, Robert 9, 79 n. 6, 83, 88 n. 35, 90, 92, 94, 158–164, 166 n. 49, 171–172, 176–180, 185–186, 189–193 Phelan, Cormac 63 Philip I & II (King of England, Spain and Portugal) 5, 15–30, 32, 33 n. 3, 41 n. 36, 43, 45, 49, 82 n. 14, 90–91, 95, 98, 109, 146 n. 58, 157, 186 Philip III (King of Spain and Portugal) 208, 212, 214, 218, 223 Philip IV (King of Spain and Portugal) 103, 214 Philippa of Lancaster (Queen of Portugal) 109, 115 Pinedo, Juan de 16 n. 4, 27 Pinheiro da Veiga, Tomé 5, 8, 103–128 Pires de Távora, Lourenço 50–51 Pitt, Thomas 165 Price, John 165–166, 179 Price, Thomas 192 Puente, Luis de la 192 Puttenham, George 211 Quadra, Álvaro de la 33 Quiroga y Vela, Gaspar de (Archbishop of Toledo) 155–156 Rastell, William 139 Rawlins, Alexander 95 n. 54 Ribadeneyra, Pedro de 82 Rice, Dominic 61 Rolles, John 44 Romero, Julián 29 Rowlands, Richard see: Verstegan, Richard Ruiz de Medina, Juan 134–135 Russell, Francis (Earl of Bedford) 20 Russell, George 68–69 Russell, John 61 Sander, Elizabeth 84 n. 20 Sander or Sanders, Nicholas 158 Sandoval y Rojas, Francisco Gómez de (Duke of Lerma) 113, 223 Sankey, William 167, 196 Santarém, Viscount of see: Barros e Sousa, Manuel Francisco de Sarmiento de Acuña, Diego (Count of Gondomar) 82 n. 16, 83 n. 17 Savoy, Duke of see: Emmanuel Philibert (Duke of Savoy) Schedel, Hartmann 135–136 n. 26, 140 Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 978-90-04-43804-0 Downloaded from Brill.com12/29/2020 05:37:57PM via free access 232 Index Nominum Sebastian I (King of Portugal) 32, 39 n. 29, 41–45, 50, 58, 109 Sebastião D. see: Sebastian I (King of Portugal) Shakespeare, William 32, 51, 127 n. 77, 143 n. 49, 167–168, 195-196, 221–222 n. 38 Shaw, Mrs see: Margaret Shea Shea, Margaret 60, 68-69 Sidney, Philip 195, 197–198 Southwell, Robert 89 n. 40, 95 n. 54 Speed, John 194 Spes, Guerau de 33 n. 3 Spratt, Devereux 60 Stanihurst, Richard 144 Stapleton, Thomas 158 Starne, Peter 42–43 Stow, John 137, 144–145 Stukley, Thomas 58 Suárez de Figueroa y Córdoba, Gómez (Count, and Duke of Feria) 18, 19 n. 14 Tassis, Juan de (Count of Villamediana) 212, 216–217 Thynne, Francis 144 Topcliffe, Richard 91, 179 Torsellino, Orazio 192 Tregian, Francis 44 95, Treswell, Robert 10, 210–220, 222–226 Treves, James 61, 66–67 Turnbull, Richard 164 Turpin 7, 104–106, 110–111, 113–126 Valera, Diego de 133 Verardi, Carlo 134, 137 Verstegan, Richard 89 n. 40, 166, 178, 192 Villamediana, Count of see: Tassis, Juan de Vives, Juan Luis 119 n. 54 Wadding, David 66–67 Wadsworth, James 165–166, 179 Wallace, Nicholas 61 Walpole, Henry 88–95 Walpole, Thomas 90 Walsingham, Francis 190 Warwick, Earl of see: Neville, Richard Wijngaerde, Antoon van den 5, 15, 21–24, 26–27, 29 Wilson, Thomas 6, 32–34, 37–50 Winter, George 38 Winter, William 34, 38, 40, 47 Wolfe, Reyner 143 Woodville, Edward 142 n. 45 Wriothesley, Charles 17 Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and Berta Cano Echevarría - 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