The Heretics (48 page)

Historical Notes

Exorcisms at Denham

The sordid story of the exorcisms carried out by Father William Weston and other priests is still a matter of controversy more than four hundred years later.

That the rituals happened is not in doubt. Weston himself mentioned them with some pride in his autobiography, saying, ‘out of many persons demons were cast . . . before my own eyes’.

What is in dispute is the nature of the exorcisms.

The chronicler and sceptic Samuel Harsnett documented evidence against a group of twelve priests who gathered at the houses of fervent Catholics around London and who, he claims, performed a series of disturbing and unsavoury rites.

The hub of all this activity in 1585–6 was the home of Sir George Peckham at Denham in Buckinghamshire. His son Edmund was the prime mover in allowing the priests to use the house.

Those present included the would-be assassins Father John Ballard, Anthony Babington, Sir Thomas Salisbury and Chidiock Tichborne. All four were executed later that year for conspiring to kill the Queen in the Babington plot.

The atmosphere at Denham was feverish. Harsnett names some of those who were exorcised over many months: these include three sisters – Sara, Alice and Frances Williams; and three men – Richard Mainy, Francis Marwood and a servant named Trayford.

There was much violent shrieking, banging of walls and ceilings, flinging of holy water and scratching the names of demons on the walls. The ‘possessed’ men and women were stuck with pins, forced to inhale burning sulphur and had relics applied to them.

On one occasion the priests were said to have applied a relic ‘to the secret place’ of a maid in the service of Lord Vaux when she was having menstrual problems. These relics were often the bones or clothes of martyrs.

Father Weston, a stern Jesuit, owned various relics of Edmund Campion, who had been executed at Tyburn in 1581. They included parts of his body, especially his thumb, which, said Weston, ‘did wonderfully burn the devil’.

Sara Williams, who had become possessed in her mid-teens, was frequently bound to a chair and given potions, one of which consisted of rue, wine, oil and various other substances. Brimstone and feathers were burnt in a dish under her nose.

‘At one time she was so extremely afflicted with the said drinks and smoke as that her senses went from her and she remained in a swoon. At her recovery, she remembers that the priest said that the devil did then go down in the lower parts of her body.

‘Also, she remembers well, that at one time they thrust into her mouth a relic, being a piece of one of Campion’s bones, which they did by force, she herself loathing the same.’

Harsnett says, too, that the priests ‘caused a woman to squirt something by her privy parts’ into Sara’s body, ‘which made her very sick’.

Sara’s sister Frances claimed that the priests told them they needed to be baptised anew to be rid of devils. They were baptised this time with salt in the mouth, saliva on the eyes and oil on the lips.

Cats were seen as devilish creatures. Once, a group of priests whipped a cat around the room until it fled.

Father Richard Sherwood, who was later martyred, would pinch Frances until she was bruised all over and say it was done by the devil. He also thrust pins into her shoulders and legs, seemingly to stab and trap the devils that were supposed to crawl beneath the skin.

A young Catholic gentleman in the service of Lord Burghley testified that he saw the exorcisms and said, ‘You could actually see the devils gliding and moving under the skin. There were immense numbers of them, and they looked like fishes, swimming here, there and everywhere.’ This tale is related by Weston himself.

Dozens of demons were named. They included Modu (described as the dictator of the demons), Cliton, Bernon, Hilo, Motubizanto, Killico, Hob, Portirichio, Frateretto, Fliberdigibbet, Hobberdidance, Tocabatto, Lustie Jollie Jenkin, Lustie Dickie, Delicat, Nurre, Molkin, Wilkin, Helcmodson and Kellicocam.

But how much of Harsnett’s account was a true reflection of events?

Weston’s involvement is accepted as ‘ill-judged’ by Philip Caraman, a Jesuit priest who translated Weston’s autobiography from Latin into English in 1955. He adds, however, that in the sixteenth century exorcism was ‘considered a universal remedy for all cases that would now be classified as hysteria, mental derangement and obsession’. He describes Samuel Harsnett’s book as ‘worthless as historical evidence’, used only to discredit the priests who had taken part, adding that ‘the book contains charges of such gross immorality both against Weston and the other participant priests that it must be rejected as Protestant propaganda’.

However, Father Caraman, writing in the introduction to his translation, fails to mention that Harsnett also attacked Protestants for carrying out exorcisms. Some Protestants did a roaring trade in the theatre of exorcism – and got equally short shrift from the disbelieving quill of Harsnett in an earlier volume,
The Fraudulent Practices of John Darrel
(a Puritan exorcist who attracted large crowds to his rituals), written in 1599.

Harsnett had sat on the commission that condemned Darrel for fraud. His volume exposing the Catholic priests,
Popish Impostures
, was written four years later in 1603 and was probably read by William Shakespeare, for he used the names of demons such as Hobberdidance and Flibbertigibbet in
King Lear
.

It should also be mentioned that some of the older priests in the company of Weston disapproved of the exorcisms. They had heard of similar goings-on in Europe and did not want them in England.

After his arrest, William Weston remained imprisoned in Wisbech Castle and the Tower of London until he was exiled during the reign of James I. He went to Spain where he wrote his autobiography
.

Harsnett went on to become Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and later Archbishop of York.

The True Story Behind Sorrow Gray

The character in this book named Sorrow Gray was inspired by the true story of Ursula, the daughter of Thomas Gray, keeper of Wisbech Castle in Cambridgeshire when it was an internment camp to Catholic priests in the 1590s.

Ursula and her husband, already parents and expecting another baby, were leading members of the Puritans, a strict Protestant movement considered heretical by the Catholics.

She was so zealous that she was considered almost a prophet among the Puritans of Wisbech and the surrounding fens of Cambridgeshire. She and her husband did their best to convert the Catholic priests to their religion.

Though the priests were held captive, they were allowed a degree of liberty and were permitted to argue with the Puritans who would flock to the castle to heckle them.

There was, too, infighting among the Catholic priests themselves. The inmates had split into two ill-tempered factions – the majority led by the unbending ascetic William Weston (who reveals the tale of Ursula Gray in his autobiography – see the Acknowledgments), the rest by his sworn enemy Dr Christopher Bagshawe, a seminary priest who despised the Jesuit order and resented Weston’s assumption of power among the thirty or so priests held in the castle.

But it was the debates between the Catholics and the Puritans that enthralled Ursula. According to Weston, she was particularly struck by her husband’s impotence in trying to refute the priests’ arguments.

She converted in secret to Catholicism, the faith she had once loathed, and sometimes spoke out in favour of her new religion. Her father Thomas Gray, described as a ‘vigorous Puritan’, began to harbour suspicions.

As it became clear that she had converted, he became enraged and started to threaten her. ‘Nothing was left him,’ says Weston, ‘except to show openly his implacable anger and hatred and his solid alliance with the devil.’

Her father and her husband joined forces against her. Though she was pregnant, they would not allow her the services of a midwife. Subsequently, she suffered a miscarriage, narrowly escaping with her life.

She left her husband and went home where she had to put up with daily barracking from her father. Even her mother, who still loved her, argued with her constantly.

When they tried to make her to go to the parish church, she refused and they attempted to drag her there by force.

Tempers boiled over and a public row ensued. Her father was heard to call her a ‘base woman’. In a fury, he drew his dagger and ran at her. Ursula tried to flee but her father caught her. There was a struggle against a door in which she managed to wrest the knife from him. She ran off into the town but could find no refuge. The locals were terrified of her father. ‘But an honourable and wealthy woman having pity on her took her in for the night,’ wrote Weston. ‘Then, with the help of Catholics, it was arranged for her to ride off on horseback as quickly as possible to a certain Catholic house.’

Not only did she leave behind her parents and husband, but also her own children. She is believed to have never seen her family again.

Though Ursula is long dead, it would be wrong to suggest that my character Sorrow Gray is based on her, nor would it be right to impugn her reputation in any way. It was merely the idea for Sorrow that came from the young woman’s story.

The Deaths of Drake and Hawkins

In August 1595, the great mariners Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins set sail from Plymouth on what would prove to be their last voyage. They both died at sea while attempting to capture Panama from the Spaniards.

Hawkins, whose brilliant reputation as a seafarer and treasurer of the navy has been tarnished in recent times by his activities as a slave trader, died first, on 12 November of that year, after a two-week illness. He was sixty-three, and was buried at sea near Porto Rico. He was largely credited with having built the fast, nimble warships that defeated the Spanish Armada.

Drake followed two months later, dying, as he had lived, in a most dramatic fashion. The seemingly immortal admiral caught dysentery in January 1596 while refitting his ships at the island of Escudo.

He put to sea again, but his condition worsened and by 27 January, as they approached Porto Bello, it became clear he would die soon. An unseemly battle over his property and will then broke out between one of his captains named Jonas Bodenham and his brother Thomas Drake.

Sir Francis ordered the two men to shake hands to make up. In the early hours, sensing that death was close, he rose from his sick bed and had his servants dress him in his armour so that he might die as he had lived, as a warrior.

But he was too weak to remain on his feet and returned to his sickbed, where he died within the hour at 4 a.m. on 28 January, aged fifty-six. He had asked to be buried on land, but he was buried at sea in a lead coffin off Porto Bello.

His heroic place in history was guaranteed by his defeat of the Spanish Armada, but it was his circumnavigation of the globe – the first by a sea captain (Magellan died en route) – that was his greatest glory.

Three Early Feminists

Queen Elizabeth was not the only powerful and highly educated woman in England in the sixteenth century. Three of the very finest minds of the age appear as characters in this book . . .

Lady Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent (born 1554)

Susan Bertie spent her early years in exile in Poland with her parents Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and Richard Bertie. They were outspoken Protestant radicals who returned to England only when Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. Susan was educated to a high degree. Miles Coverdale, the translator of the Bible, has been named as her tutor. At sixteen, she married Reginald Grey, who was raised up as Earl of Kent, but she was widowed three years later, aged nineteen. Susan joined the court and was taken into Elizabeth’s orbit. In 1582, she married the soldier Sir John Wingfield and went with him to the Low Countries where their son Peregrine was born in 1589.

Back in England, she became a patron of the arts and a mentor to the young Emilia Lanier, who was greatly influenced by Susan’s Protestant humanist circle of friends. Lady Susan greatly valued and emphasised the importance of young girls receiving the same level of education as young men. Emilia Lanier called her ‘The mistress of my youth, the noble guide of my ungoverned days’.

Emilia Lanier (1569–1645)

One of the first Englishwomen to be a published poet, Emilia has been suggested as the Dark Lady of William Shakespeare’s sonnets. She was the daughter of Baptista Bassano, a court musician. On his death she entered the household of Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent, where she received a humanist education, learnt Latin and developed a love of poetry. She became the mistress of the great courtier and patron of the arts Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, who was forty-five years her senior and held senior office as Lord Chamberlain. When she became pregnant at twenty-three with his son Henry, Hunsdon paid her off and she married a musician named Alphonso Lanier.

She was clearly a beautiful woman and it is possible she met William Shakespeare about this time. The identification of her as his ‘Dark Lady’ – seemingly the object of the author’s affection in his sonnets – was first suggested by the historian A. L. Rowse. Much of what is known about her is revealed in the diary of Dr Simon Forman, who seems to have had a sexual interest in her but was rejected. He says she had several miscarriages and tells us much about her happy relationship with Lord Hunsdon and her subsequent unhappy marriage to Lanier. ‘The old Lord Chamberlain kept her long,’ says Forman. ‘She was maintained in great pomp . . . she had £40 a year.’ Not so with Mr Lanier. ‘Her husband has dealt hardly with her and consumed her goods and she is now in debt.’

In 1611 her proto-feminist poem
Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
was published with dedications to both Lady Susan Bertie and the Countess of Cumberland. It tells the story of Christ’s passion almost entirely from the point of view of the women around him. Emilia makes a point of denying the subservience of women.