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Research Journal - Volume 07 - 2010Online Research Journal Article

The French Connection (Part 2):

On the Trail of Jacques Le DouxC.W.H.Gamble

© C.W.H.Gamble 2010 2 of 75

course, under the direction of the Catholic King of Spain, Philip II, with thefinancial backing of treasure from the New World and the vast resources ofthe Papacy.

5. In 1595 the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, instructed Anthony Bacon, thebrother of Sir Francis Bacon, to begin the task of setting up an intelligence-gathering network in Europe, operating mainly in Italy, France, Germany,Spain and the Netherlands. Fortunately for historians, invaluable records ofthis network have survived amongst the Anthony Bacon Papers at LambethPalace Library in London.

Our late colleague A. D. Wraight discovered in this archive certain papers andletters of a supposedly “French” intelligencer, “Monsieur Le Doux”, including ahighly significant list of the books in his possession2, many of which aresource-works for the Shake-speare plays. These important documents,including the three extant letters from Monsieur Le Doux, were first published

in A. D. Wraight’s Shakespeare: New Evidence (Adam Hart, London, 1996).The name “Le Doux” is now believed by many to have been the alias of thesurviving Christopher Marlowe, previously supposed to have been killed on30th May 1593, just ten days after his arrest by the Court of Star Chamber oncapital charges, including that of Heresy. Marlowe’s predicament had been allthe more perilous owing to the Court’s seizure of an “Heretical Treatise” whichhe had owned - it was a serious scriptural study, but of an Arian (i.e. anti-Trinitarian) nature.

In my opinion, the arrest of Christopher Marlowe was a first step towards theplanned indictment of his friend and fellow freethinker, Sir Walter Raleigh, onsimilar charges (i.e. “Atheism” and Heresy). The disappearance of Marlowe to

some extent frustrated this plot. In the spring of 1594, Raleigh was subjectedto a formal enquiry into his religious beliefs; however, the ecclesiastical Courtof High Commission was unable to secure a conviction.

New Discoveries in the Search for “Monsieur Le Doux”

In my previous article, I assessed the significance of the twenty-onereferences to Monsieur Le Doux in the letters of Paul Choart, the Seigneur deBuzanval, French Ambassador at The Hague, addressed to King Henri IV inParis and to his Secretary of State, Nicolas de Neufville, the Seigneur deVilleroy; these letters date from October 1598 to November 15993. In additionto his duties as the bearer of official dispatches between Paris and TheHague, on several occasions Le Doux supervised the transfer of largeamounts of money to the Netherlands. In November of 1599, he appears tohave left the service of Buzanval (and possibly also that of King Henri IV).

2 Lambeth Palace Library, Bacon MSS 655 f 186, 185r & v, dated 15th February 1596 OS

3 Lettres et Lettres et Negociations de Paul Choart, Seigneur de Buzenval, et de Francois d’Aerssen, 1598-1599, edited by

George Willem Vreede (Leiden, 1846)



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Pursuing the various “leads” identified in my previous research, I have locatedeight new documentary sources4 which mention Le Doux by name; the datesrange from March/May/September of 1597 to April and May of 1598 andJanuary and August of 1599. These documents, in their turn, present us with

much new information and some intriguing “clues” which are very promisingfor future investigation. There are also official records of payments made tothe royal courier Jacques Le Doux, at The Hague, on eight separateoccasions between 1595 and 1598.

We have previously learned a great deal about the work of Anthony Bacon’sagent “Le Doux” during 1595 and 1596, based on the evidence of the AnthonyBacon Papers, as interpreted by A.D. Wraight, Peter Farey and others; morerecently, as I have said, we have learned of Le Doux’s activities during 1598and 1599, when he was travelling between the French Court (usually at Paris)and the French Embassy at The Hague. The extraordinary thing is, that wenow find a diplomatic courier of the same name, “Le Doux”, operating in many

of the same locations as before and carrying out very similar assignments,and all of this in association with an already-familiar cast of characters, manyof them eminent statesmen and scholars.

The principal persons whose names feature in the new documents are asfollows:

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547-1619), the Advocate of Holland, founder ofthe Dutch Republic. He was a statesman of great wisdom and rare patience,who together with William the Silent and his son, Prince Maurice of Nassau(1567-1625), succeeded in establishing the United Provinces of theNetherlands as a fully independent state.

Justin of Nassau (1559-1631), illegitimate son of William the Silent, Dutcharmy commander and Lieutenant-Admiral of Zealand; in 1588 he took part inthe fight against the Spanish Armada, and his ships played a vital role inpreventing the Duke of Parma from launching his landing barges. Justin’snavy also helped to deter later Spanish attacks on England.

Liévin van Calvart (d. circa 28th May 1597), Agent of the United Provincesof the Netherlands at Paris from the summer of 1593 until May 1597 (i.e.Ambassador, though he was not formally allowed that title). He attended theAnglo-French negotiations in London during April and May 1596, at therequest of King Henri. He was also Secretary of the States of Brabant.

Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), described as “the greatest scholar of theRenaissance” who “revolutionised ancient chronology”;5 he was a ClassicalScholar, a Huguenot and Calvinist. From 1593 he was Professor in Greek atthe University of Leiden, not far from The Hague. He lectured on Aristotle andCicero. With his friends Justus Lipsius and Isaac Casaubon, Scaliger is the

4 See Appendix 1

5 Oxford Companion to English Literature, O.U.P., 1973



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subject of Charles Nisard’s Le Triumvirat Litteraire (1852). In the interimbetween the death of Liévin van Calvart and the appointment of hissuccessor, Francois Van Aerssen, Joseph Scaliger acted as the unofficialagent of the States-General in Paris.

Francois Van Aerssen (d’Aerssen) (1572-1641), Dutch Ambassador inFrance from 1598 to 1613,successor to Liévin van Calvart. Like JosephScaliger, Van Aerssen was a friend of the Humanist Classical scholar JustusLipsius, whose book De Constantia was in the possession of Le Doux in 1596[see Shakespeare New Evidence , pp. 67-68, for the influence of Lipsius onTitus Andronicus (written 1592-3), Macbeth (1606) and Measure for Measure (1604) ]. Van Aerssen, it will be recalled, was closely linked with the Seigneurde Buzanval and was mentioned in my previous article, The French Connection: New Leads on Monsieur Le Doux .

Paul Choart, the Seigneur de Buzanval (c.1550-1607), French Ambassador

at The Hague from 1591 to 1607. He was a close friend of Sir FrancisWalsingham: both men were ardent Protestants and both had been survivorsof the appalling atrocities of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, atragedy retold in Marlowe’s play The Massacre at Paris (1592). Buzanval wasFrench Ambassador in London from 1585 until 1589. It is clear that he was afriend of both Anthony Bacon and Monsieur Le Doux. His letters reveal apersonality of great warmth, intelligence and foresight. He was in contact withmany eminent scholars throughout Europe.

Daniel van der Meulen (c.1550-1600), Merchant and scholar, a close friendof Lord Buzanval. Originally from Antwerp, he settled in the town of Leiden,which is about twenty miles from The Hague. Between 1580 and 1600, he

founded two trading companies which established contacts in Germany,Scandinavia, France and elsewhere. Van der Meulen had broad culturalinterests; through his friendship with Buzanval, he was put in touch with suchscholars as Joseph Scaliger and Bonaventura Vulcanius (see Letter 53 inAppendix 2, below). He also possessed a very large library of some 1200volumes, to which Le Doux almost certainly had access. Buzanval andScaliger frequently borrowed books from the Leiden merchant, and on oneoccasion Van der Meulen presented the Ambassador with the gift of a veryfinely bound copy of the Itinerario by Jan Huygen van Linschoten (see Letters63 and 64 in Appendix 2). This important book featured a new map of theSpice Islands of the East Indies, which is mentioned in Shake-speare’sTwelfth Night (see Appendix 3, below).

Sir Thomas Edmondes (1563-1639), diplomat and politician. He was sent toFrance in 1592 as agent of Queen Elizabeth to King Henri IV; was appointed“Secretary of the French Tongue” in 1596; and returned to Paris in 1597.

Anthoine De Sailly (d.1608), Agent at Calais of the States-General of theNetherlands.



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Liévin Calvart and Jacques Le Doux6

From the work of the Dutch historian Dr. N. Japikse7, I learned of certainpayments made on at least seven occasions between 1595 and 1598 by thegovernment of the Netherlands (the “States-General”) to a courier named

“Jacques Le Doulx”; it is clear that these payments are remuneration for hisservices in delivering despatches. The first payment is recorded in theResolution of 28th September 1595. The documents delivered by Le Doux onthis occasion almost certainly included a very detailed six-page Report fromthe Dutch ambassador to France, Liévin Calvart, dated 29th August 1595(NS); it was sent from Lyon and was received by the States-General onSeptember 25th 1595 (NS). Three days later, they made their first payment toMonsieur Le Doux, in the sum of fifty florins8; this would be about £2,270today, so our “French” courier was well rewarded for his efforts.

This record, dating to 28th September 1595, is the earliest information that wepossess, thus far, concerning the movements and career of “Monsieur Le

Doux”; the dating fits in well with A. D. Wraight’s thesis - namely, that fromabout one month later, Le Doux was staying at the mansion of Sir JohnHarington at Burley in Rutland [Leicestershire], where he arrived in October1595, remaining there until January 25th 1596 (NS). The information that LeDoux was using the first name Jacques (sometimes spelled “Jaques”)receives independent confirmation from Dr.S. P. Haak and Dr J. H.Kernkamp9 (see their notes to Documents D and G in Appendix 1); thesescholars also state that Jacques Le Doux was a royal courier in the service ofKing Henri IV of France.

Now, in relation to the playwright “Shake-speare”, readers will be aware of thefact that the first name “Jaques” has a certain significance, because in As You Like It (written 1599-1600) there is a very enigmatic figure of the same name,a nobleman in attendance on the exiled Duke Senior; the portrayal of“Jaques” in this play has frequently been interpreted as a self-portrait of theauthor. “Jaques”, of course, has the famous speech beginning:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players ;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts

As You Like It, II.vii.139-166

One notes, incidentally, that at the end of the play, the “melancholy” Jaques isnot really free to leave the “forest”, unlike his companions; as “Monsieur

6 In what follows, I have tried to give all dates in New Style (NS)- i.e. ten days later than Old Style (OS) - unless otherwise

specified.

7 Dr N. Japikse, Resolutien Staten-Generaal Oude en Nieuwe Reeks, 1576-1625, Vol. 8 (1925), p. 432.

8 The reference given by Dr Japikse is “R.A., S.G. 6669 (orig.) Bodeloon [i.e. “Courier Payment”] f.50 aan Jacques Le Doux: R.

[Resolution of] 28 Sept [1595]”; see also Vol. 9, p.421 and Vol. 10, pp.67 and 875. Further information may be found at thewebsite www.inghist.nl/retroboeken/statengeneraal

9 See their notes to Documents D and G in Appendix 1.



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Traveller”10 he has had to resign himself to a life of permanent exile. He isafflicted with the “humour” of “melancholy”, which he ruefully describes as “amelancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples [“ingredients”],extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my

travels, in which my often rumination [“constant reflection”] wraps me in amost humorous [changeable] sadness” (the sad experience of exile is ofcourse a major theme of the Shake-speare Sonnets 11). His Humanist, cynicaloutlook may also be significant.

It is, of course, well known that As You Like It has a number of curiousreferences to the supposedly-dead Christopher Marlowe (e.g. III.iii.9-11).Though entered on the Stationers’ Register in 1600, this play waspermanently “stayed” from publication12, for reasons which remain somewhatobscure; it did not appear in print until the First Folio of 1623.

Now, returning to Liévin Calvart, the Dutch Ambassador to France: his six-

page Report to the States-General, dated August 29th 1595, was sent fromLyon, where King Henri had arrived on the 23rd (he was still there in lateSeptember). Monsieur Le Doux was almost certainly the bearer of this Report(his name may be present in a sentence which is mostly in cipher). Calvartsends news of the general progress of the King’s military campaigns againstthe Catholic League and the Spanish army (France had declared war onSpain in January 1595).

As one might expect, Calvart’s Report contains numerous references to theDuke of Mayenne (Charles de Lorraine) and Marshall Biron (Charles deGontaut); these individuals stand behind the characters of “Dumaine” and“Berowne” respectively in Shake-speare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost, written

between 1592 and 1595.On August 24th 1595, a few days before the date of Calvart’s Report, the Kinghad written to Ambassador Buzanval’s friend Philippe Du Plessis-Mornay,confirming the submission of the Duke of Mayenne:

"The Duke of Mayenne has asked me to allow him three months for the purpose

of informing the enemy of his determination, in order to induce them to join him

in recognizing me and serving me. So doing, he has also agreed to bind himself

from this present date to recognize me and serve me, whatever his friends may

do."

The King had arrived at Lyon on 23rd August; on the 23rd of September hesent details of the truce to the Governor of Dieppe, Monsieur De La Chatre.

10 As You Like It, IV.i.31

11A.D. Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell (Adam Hart Publishers, 1994) - pp 56, 184-198.

12 Stationers’ Register entry of 4th August 1600 (OS)



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The exact date of Baron Zeirotene’s arrival in England “to see the Realme” isnot known; we do know that he was granted at least one audience with theQueen, and also that he was carrying letters from the Emperor Rudolf to KingJames VI of Scotland. Zeiroteine’s biographer, Peter Von Chlumecky, says

nothing of the Baron’s journey to England in 1595/1596, nor of his intention toproceed to the Court of King James, though he does mention an earlier visitthat took place in 1588. Curiously, Zeirotine may also have been in Englandtwo years earlier; a surviving letter from Queen Elizabeth states: “Since my last letters to you by the Baron of Zerotin, we have had no further advertisements from Connaught ”16. Was Zeiroteine, in some sense, a “doubleagent”?

The Emperor Rudolf had withdrawn from Vienna in 1583, transferring theImperial capital to Prague, primarily because the more northerly city was lessdirectly threatened by the armies of the Ottoman Turks. In the late 16thCentury, the Turks presented a serious threat to central Europe; back in 1593,

the Emperor had begun a long and indecisive war against them, which was tocontinue for thirteen years. Austria had been in grave danger from 1593 to1595 and was still under threat in 1596, when the Turks invaded Hungary. Inthat year, demonstrating the grim determination of the Turks, SultanMohammed III took to the field of battle in person, his forces taking thefortress of Erlau in Northern Hungary on October 12th 1596.17

In Christian Europe it was greatly feared that the mighty Ottomans wouldeventually attack Venice and the rest of Italy; these fears are of coursereflected in Shake-speare’s Othello . At the same time, there was a growingawareness of the need for reconciliation between the divided nations ofChristendom, so that the fight against the Turks could be conducted more

effectively. In this context, it is understandable that the Emperor’s emissary,Baron Zeiroteine, would receive a warm welcome in England.

Presumably the Holy Roman Emperor, in sending his envoy to Scotland inearly 1596, was seeking to obtain some form of support from King James inthe Turkish war, whether in the form of money, troops or munitions; perhapsRudolf also hoped that the Scottish King would exert some influence over theindependent Princes of Germany, to the same end. Another current question,and one that generated much controversy, was that of the succession to theEnglish throne. And, given the timing of Zeiroteine’s visit, he may well havemade contact with some of the English and French delegates who arrived inLondon in the Spring of 1596 to negotiate the Treaty of Greenwich. In general,

therefore, one may deduce that the purpose of Zeiroteine’s visit was to enablehim to report to the Emperor on strategic and political developments inWestern Europe. In return for this, Baron Zeiroteine could advise QueenElizabeth and King James on the extent of Turkish aggression in theMediterranean and the danger of attacks on Italy and elsewhere.

16 See the website British History Online, August 1586 (http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=49006 ).

17 See Lord Buzanval’s Letters 19 and 79 in Appendix 2.



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Extant Letters of Monsieur Le Doux and Baron Zeiroteine

In early 1596, two passports were issued for Le Doux, both over the signatureof the Earl of Essex; they are dated 10th February (OS) at London, and 10thMarch (OS) at Richmond18. Both passports specify the Low Countries and

Germany as the destinations, but neither makes any mention of BaronZeiroteine, which suggests that although Le Doux was definitely assigned toaccompany the Baron to Prague, they did not cross the Channel at the sametime (evidently Zeiroteine was planning to rejoin Le Doux at a later stage)19.

It would seem that Monsieur Le Doux and his assistant, Jacques Petit, madea brief visit to the Continent in February20. Baron Zeirotene was issued with apassport for his journey to Scotland on 7th March 1596 (OS); however, he fellill at Cambridge and was unable to continue (his servants Henri d’Eberbachand Jacques Petit were with him, but not Monsieur Le Doux). A few dayslater, on March 16th (OS), Henri d’Eberbach wrote to Anthony Baconrequesting permission for Petit to convey the letters to Scotland21, but this was

refused22. However, within three weeks Baron Zeiroteine had recovered, forwe learn from Le Doux’s first extant letter23 - somewhat surprisingly - that hehas rejoined the Baron and that they are somewhere in the vicinity of London(perhaps at Greenwich or Gravesend).

Zeirotene’s apparent change of plan requires some explanation; one can onlysurmise that he had decided to make his journey to Scotland by sea, ratherthan undertaking the long and arduous overland route. In his letter of 5th April(OS) Monsieur Le Doux, writing on behalf of Zeirotene, asks for news of theexpected Spanish invasion fleet; it would be quite understandable if the Baronhad concerns about taking ship at that particular time. Le Doux’s letter alsoreveals that the hyper-sensitive Jacques Petit was seeking to “avengehimself” by way of a meeting with Jean Castol, Minister of the French Churchin London, who was a close friend of both Anthony Bacon and Monsieur LeDoux. Petit’s annoyance was probably the result of some “slight” orhumiliation, real or perceived, endured by the irascible Gascon at the hands of“Mr Disorder”.24

18 LPL MSS 655 f191 and 656 f191

19 Thomas Birch’s statement that Monsieur Le Doux left England “with the Baron de Zerotin” is unreliable, though one cannot

absolutely preclude the possibility that Le Doux, having gone over to Middelburg in April 1596, subsequently re-crossed the

Channel in order to accompany the Baron at the time of the latter’s departure. See Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Vol II: 38. 20

See Wraight, Shakespeare: New Evidence, p.111; also Lord Buzanval’s Letter 19 in Appendix 2, dated 26th February NS

[16th February OS]

21 LPL MS 656 f27

22 LPL MS 656 f28

23 LPL MS 656 f371, received 5th April OS (Transcript and Facsimile in Wraight, op cit, pp. 136-137).

24 Petit had described Christmas at Burley as “the cause of much vain expense for tragedies and plays by Mr Disorder”, i.e. Le

Doux (LPL MS 652 f243).



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The Second Extant Letter of Monsieur Le Doux

The tone of Le Doux’s second letter25, written around 25th April 1596 (NS), israther different (unfortunately this document is incomplete; but the extant partmakes no mention of Baron Zeiroteine). In this letter, received by Anthony

Bacon on April 30th (NS), Le Doux writes of a Spaniard named Cyprian whohas travelled from a place called “Neübüry” (note the umlauts) to “this town”,in order to have a book published. The phrase “this town” hardly seemsapplicable to London, which was at that time the largest metropolis in Europe;furthermore, one would think that if the Spaniard “Cyprian” had managed toget all the way to London, he could easily have approached Anthony Bacondirectly, especially given his son’s connections with “the late Mr Walsingham”.

It seems to me that “this town” is much more likely to denote Middelburg in theNetherlands, for a large number of printing firms were based there. During the1590s and early 1600s Middelburg became (after Amsterdam) the mostimportant trading centre in the Netherlands, and the town’s printer/booksellers

were making very substantial profits26. In fact, by the end of the Sixteenthcentury, the Netherlands had become home to an abundance of printing firms;often the printers were of a freethinking persuasion - and, as Dame FrancesYates has shown27, many of them were members of the sect known as theFamily of Love (Familists). These included the famous Christopher Plantin(1514-89) and the Englishman Thomas Basson (1555-1613), who set up hispress at Leiden in collaboration with a certain Thomas Brewer. Plantin’sestablishment at Leiden was inherited by his grandson ChristopherRaphelengius, who is mentioned in Buzanval’s Letter 79 (see Appendix 2). Itis well known that the printing presses in the Netherlands were not subjectedto the rigorous censorship that was enforced in England; ChristopherMarlowe’s translation of Ovid’s Elegies was printed at Middelburg at sometime before June of 1599, when copies were burned on the orders ofArchbishop Whitgift.

I should add that the Earl of Essex owned a house at Middelburg (a letter toEssex from a merchant of Zealand, Baltazar de Moucheron, was sent “de votre maison a Middelbourg, 26 Mars 1598 ”28. Presumably this house wasused as a base for the Earl’s intelligencers.

If I am correct in surmising that Monsieur Le Doux’s second letter was sentfrom Middelburg, then clearly he had crossed to the Continent ahead of BaronZeiroteine and intended to rejoin him later (I note, incidentally, that on the22nd April (NS) Jacques Petit wrote to the Seigneur de Sancy29, Ambassadorfrom the King of France, "concerning a passport for Le Doux", which wouldseem to confirm the imminence of the latter’s departure from England).

25 LPL MS 656 f372; transcript and facsimile in Wraight, op cit , pp.138-139 26

See Laura Cruz, Bookselling in the Seventeenth Century, at www.psupress.org. 27

Francis Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 1972; Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell, (Adam Hart, 1994) - p.351.

28 Gustav Ungerer, A Spaniard in Elizabethan England , (Tamesis Books, 1974) 2 Vols.

29 LPL MS 656 f 252 - see Wraight, op cit, p.60.



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Now, this second letter from Le Doux contains some very intriguing remarksbeginning: “Our Frenchmen are not very happy with the man who is in your Library ”30 (i.e. at Essex House, where Anthony Bacon had taken up residencein October 1595). Having considered various possible identifications, I

recalled that I had read somewhere that there was a portrait of the Earl ofEssex in the Library at Essex House - that would be the obvious place to putit, since the Earl was proud of his intellectual aspirations and his patronage ofHumanist scholars. I suggest, therefore, that this remark of Le Doux’s was, infact, an oblique reference to the Earl himself; the recent events in France, inparticular the fall of Calais, and the date of Le Doux’s letter, enable us toestablish quite clearly which individuals are meant by “our Frenchmen”, andthe reason for their anger directed at Essex, somewhat unfairly it must besaid. As we will see, the phrase denotes the French Protestant (i.e. Huguenot)community residing in the Netherlands, including Ambassador Buzanval, andalso a party of Frenchmen who had recently escaped from the siege of Calaisand taken refuge in Holland and Zealand.

The citadel at Calais surrendered on April 24th 1596 (NS), after a short siegeof about two weeks. At this time, the Earl of Essex had 8,000 men at Dover, just twenty miles across the Channel; Jan den Tex makes the comment that"nothing would have pleased him more than to use the soldiers for the relief ofCalais. Elizabeth forbade it unless Henri would cede the town to her. She sent[Robert] Sidney to Boulogne to practise this discreditable blackmail. [Liévin]Calvart went with the King to the shore [around April 24th] to welcome Sidneyand heard from the former, not from the shamefaced English nobleman, howtheir conversation had ended. The King had refused. He hoped that he wouldat some time be able to recapture the town from the Spaniards, but not that itwould be given back to him by the English.”31

I conclude, then, that in writing of “our Frenchmen”, Monsieur Le Doux meansthe French Protestant community in the Netherlands, especially the circlesurrounding his friend Buzanval, and the French Protestants then at Flushingand Middelburg, many of them refugees; clearly these Frenchmen wereangered by Essex’s failure to use his ships and soldiers for the relief of Calais.Le Doux may also be thinking of Anthoine de Sailly, agent of the States-General at Calais, who was definitely known to him (see Document C inAppendix 1, below); Sailly had been sent urgently to Middelburg by theGovernor of Calais, Monsieur de Vidosan, just after the beginning of the siege(Buzanval, writing to Daniel Van der Meulen on April 12th, reported that “Sailly has arrived at Middelburg ”)32. In the same letter, Buzanval expresses the

hope that the King had concluded the siege of La Fere, but this was not thecase; in fact King Henri had to remain at La Fere until May 22nd.33

30 “Noz francois ne sont pas beaucoup contents de l’home q’est en vre [votre] librairie.”

31 Jan den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt , Cambridge University Press, 1973

32 Kernkamp, op cit, p.201.

33 Letter 24 in Kernkamp and Heyst, Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschapp, Vols 76-78 (1962).



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On 11th April 1596, soon after the beginning of the siege, AmbassadorBuzanval had written to the Governor of Calais urging him to keep open thesea approaches to the port. In giving this advice, the Ambassador was againprescient of the eventual outcome; for when a Dutch relieving force arrived in

the vicinity of Calais on April 17th, it was prevented from approaching thetown on account of the overwhelming strength of the Spanish artillery. It wasrapidly becoming clear to everyone that Calais could only be relieved from thesea; but by April 24th, all hopes of English intervention had been crushed. Onthe 3rd of May, Buzanval wrote again to Van der Meulen, confirming(somewhat regretfully) that:

“the English are going ahead with their voyage [the expedition against Cadiz]

and the ships belonging to this nation [the Netherlands] are now on their way to

Plymouth.”34

Liévin Calvart, Jacques Le Doux and the Triple Alliance

In the Spring of 1596 a French delegation, led by the Duke of Bouillon (HenriTurenne), arrived in England to take part in talks towards a “League Offensiveand Defensive” between France and England - it was anticipated that thisLeague, soon to be ratified as The Treaty of Greenwich, would be expandedinto a Triple Alliance with the Netherlands against Spain. At the personalrequest of the King of France, Liévin Calvart accompanied the Duke ofBouillon’s mission to England, arriving in London around April 26th; at thesame time Antonio Perez, the Spanish exile, managed to attach himself to theFrench delegation, only to be avoided by most of his English acquaintances.Perez was still hoping desperately for permission to reside permanently inEngland, which was refused - no doubt because the Queen and her PrivyCouncil regarded the eccentric Spaniard as entirely untrustworthy; he leftEngland around May 29th (NS).

The Seigneur de Sancy (Nicolas Harlay) was certainly a leading member ofBouillon’s delegation, although in fact Sancy had been sent ahead of theDuke to press the urgency of King Henri’s appeal for English assistance inrescuing Calais. Sancy arrived in London on the 20th of April 1596 (NS); hewas carrying a letter from King Henri to Anthony Bacon dated 11th April 1596(NS), in which the King asked his old friend Bacon to use his influence withthe Earl of Essex (i.e. towards the relief of Calais). However, as Bacon wasunwell, the King’s letter was actually delivered by our “French” intelligencer,Monsieur Le Doux, on April 21st (NS)35; apparently Le Doux was also thebearer of Bacon’s reply, entrusted to Sancy the next day. Bearing in mindwhat has been said (above) about the likely origin of Le Doux’s second letterto Anthony Bacon, endorsed 30th April 1596 (NS), we may conclude that LeDoux left England for the Netherlands around April 23rd to 25th.

The Treaty of Greenwich was duly signed by the Queen and the Duke ofBouillon on May 24th 1596 (some authorities say the 26th); the Duke was

34 Kernkamp, op cit - p.202.

35 Maurier, Golden Lads, London, 1975: pp.173-175



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back at Gravesend with Sancy on the 28th of May, waiting to cross theChannel. However, Liévin Calvart did not return to France with them, but wentdirectly to the Netherlands, in the company of Guillaume d’Ancel (FrenchAmbassador to the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor); this is confirmed by

Thomas Birch, who states that Monsieur d’Ancel “passed over to Holland witha copy of the Treaty … in the company of Laevinus Calvart, the Dutchambassador to the French King, at whose desire he had attended thenegotiation of that Treaty, which was not ratified [in England] until Augustfollowing [1596]”36. The States-General of the Netherlands formally ratified theTreaty at The Hague on 31st October.

I conclude, therefore, that since Liévin Calvart, the writer of Document A inAppendix 1, accompanied the French delegation to England in the Spring of1596 and then went to the Netherlands at the end of May, he clearly hadopportunities to renew his acquaintance with Monsieur Le Doux, particularly atMiddelburg.

The Third Extant Letter of Le Doux; Zeirotene joins him at Middelburg

Now, where was Baron Zeiroteine during April and May of 1596? The fact thathis passport for home was issued as late as May 31st (OS) must surelyindicate that he fulfilled his original commission and travelled to Scotland,delivering Emperor Rudolf’s letters to King James; and it may be significantthat the Baron’s passport was issued so soon after the signing of the Treaty ofGreenwich. Presumably Zeirotene had gleaned some useful information fromthe French delegates, which would enable him to report in detail to theEmperor on the signing of the Treaty and the prospect of a Triple Alliance.

It is notable that Zeiroteine’s passport specifies the port of Flushing as his

immediate destination - he is “to make his retorne over the seas homewardeby Flushing”37; this is modern Vlissingen, a town very close to Middelburg,where he would rendezvous with Monsieur Le Doux.

Certainly both Zeiroteine and Le Doux were at Middelburg on 22nd June 1596(probably OS), for that is the date and origin of the latter’s third extant letter38 and also of Zeiroteine’s letter to Anthony Bacon, written in Italian and sent tothank the latter “for his civilities to him in England”39. As this is some threeweeks after the issuing of Zeirotene’s passport, it seems that the Baron mayhave delayed his departure for Prague, perhaps to observe the progress ofthe Dutch towards the ratification of the Triple Alliance; for the new Treaty hadstrategic implications for the Empire, in connection with the war against theTurks and the hope of gaining the support of the German Princes.

36 Birch, op cit, Volume II, p.3.

37 Acts of the Privy Council, Volume 25

38 LPL MS. 657 f227; transcript and facsimile in Wraight, op cit, pp. 140-141

39 Birch, op cit , Vol. II: 39



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The Baron’s party probably left Middelburg at the end of June, for Le Doux’sletter of the 22nd indicates that they will be passing through Brabant, whichwas the logical route for their journey into Germany and Bohemia. No doubtBaron Zeiroteine was carrying dispatches to the Holy Roman Emperor from

Queen Elizabeth, probably also from King James of Scotland and the States-General of the Netherlands.

We must now ask this question: having accompanied Baron Zeiroteine safelyto Prague, did Le Doux then proceed from Bohemia to Northern Italy, asplanned, and if so, how much time was at his disposal? His assignment inItaly was potentially very demanding, though it is clear from the Memoires Instructives that the Earl of Essex fully appreciated this fact and noted that hisintelligencer might not have sufficient time even for a brief visit: “in case youshould find a good commodity to go to Italy”.

If we assume that Monsieur Le Doux reached Northern Italy in the autumn of

1596, this would have allowed him a few months in which to make a start, atleast, on his intelligence-gathering. But the new documentary evidence showsthat by March of 1597 he was back in Northern France, at Beauvais, soon tobe sent from there to the Netherlands.40 Evidently Monsieur Le Doux wasunexpectedly recalled from Italy in early 1597, perhaps on account of strategicdevelopments in France and their implications for the Netherlands.

It is likely that the redeployment of Le Doux was one of the matters discussedduring a meeting between Lord Buzanval and his old friend Anthony Bacon,that had taken place in London on November 28th 1596; perhaps the King’sambassador pointed out that the services of Le Doux, a reliable andexperienced intelligencer, would be extremely useful in France and the

Netherlands. Under this new arrangement, Le Doux would continue to sendinformation to Anthony Bacon, whilst providing invaluable assistance to LordBuzanval and his master, the King of France.

Events of 1597: the Fall and Re-capture of Amiens; Travels of JacquesLe Doux

Having returned from his second visit to Italy in early 1597, we now findMonsieur Le Doux travelling between Paris and the Hague, conveyingdespatches and apparently employed in much the same role as he would bein 1598 and 1599 (as outlined in my previous article); he has entered theservice of Ambassador Buzanval and the King of France.

For the year 1597, the records of the States-General at The Hague41 showthat five payments were made to the courier Jacques Le Doulx; the relevantResolutions are dated 26th July, 13th September, 9th October, 14thNovember (“per procuratie”, “by proxy” - possibly to Ambassador Buzanval?)

40See Liévin Calvart’s letter of 14th March 1597, Document A in Appendix 1

41 Japikse, op cit , Volume 9 - p.421.



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and 20th December. Le Doux would also have received a payment at the endof March, probably from Buzanval.

In a surprise attack, on March 11th 1597 the Spanish army captured the

strategically vital town of Amiens in Northern France; it was an unmitigateddisaster for the French, since all of the King’s munitions and supplies for thecoming campaign were stored there (Amiens would not be recaptured untilSeptember, after a siege of some three months).

The loss of Amiens was truly a huge setback for Henri - yet this is where hisastonishing resilience, and his sheer determination, shine through: he refusesto give in to despair, but immediately prepares to launch a counter-attackagainst the town of Arras, with the intention of cutting off the Spanish army’snorthern supply route from the occupied provinces (i.e. modern Belgium).

In the meantime, King Henri sent his special envoy, the Sieur deFouquerolles, to Queen Elizabeth with an urgent appeal for help, and withinstructions even to offer her Calais as a “pledge town” if that should benecessary. We know from Calvart’s letter of March 14th 159742 that ourintelligencer “Monsieur Le Doux” was then at Beauvais, about thirty-five milesnorth of Paris, and that the King was planning to send him immediately to thegovernment of the Netherlands with a similar appeal (the States-Generalreceived Henri’s letter on March 31st 1597).

Le Doux was back in Paris before the end of May. This is confirmed in a letterfrom the famous scholar Joseph Scaliger, addressed to the States-General ofthe Netherlands, dated May 30th 1597 43, in which he states that:

“The letters which your Lordships have written to the King [Henri] by way of

the courier Le Doulx [sic] have been delivered into the very hands of His

Majesty by the Sieur de la Rossiniere, elder son of the late Monsieur de

Calvart.”

After Calvart’s death, which had occurred a few days previously, Scaligervoluntarily took over the role of Dutch ambassador in France, whichunderlines his deep commitment to the Protestant cause,

At this point, the date of Le Doux’s return to The Hague is unknown, but it issurely significant that another payment to Jacques Le Doulx, of fifty florins, islisted in the records of the States-General for July 26th 1597 (Japikse, op cit ,Vol. 9, p.421) - this could well be in respect of a further letter from JosephScaliger. Then, in August, Monsieur Le Doux was back in France, for weknow that he was the bearer of a letter from Jan van Oldenbarnevelt, dated27th August 44, to Anthoine de Sailly, formerly agent of the States-General atCalais; in this letter, Oldenbarnevelt informs Sailly of the surrender of the town

42 See Document B in Appendix 1, and Letter 48 in Appendix 2.

43 Document B in Appendix 1.

44 Mentioned in Document C in Appendix 1.



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of Berck. Anthoine de Sailly was then at Pecquigney, near Amiens; his reply,dated September 9th45, was delivered to The Hague by Le Doux, for whichservice he received a further payment of fifty florins on September 13th (aglance at a map of Northern Europe will confirm that Le Doux could easily

have made this journey in four days, bearing in mind also that the prevailingwind in the Channel is from the west or south-west. To put this schedule intoperspective, the journey from Paris to London normally took between four toseven days).

The next development, so far as Monsieur Le Doux is concerned, is hisreceipt of a larger payment of 75 florins at The Hague on October 9th, justafter the King had recovered Amiens. The French recapture of Amiens wasexcellent news for the United Provinces of the Netherlands - the members ofthe States-General were evidently in a celebratory mood, hence the bonuspayment of an extra 25 florins from the grateful Councillors. It is clear that LeDoux’s constant diligence in these matters was as greatly appreciated by the

Dutch authorities as it was by Ambassador Buzanval.The Resolutions of 1597 authorising these payments to Le Doux aresummarised by Dr Japikse46 as follows:

• “Bodeloon (f 25 voor het brengen van de overgave en f 50 aan Jacques

Le Doulx [sic] voor het brengen van den brief): R, 9 October.”

• “Andere bodeloonen: R. 26 Juli, 13 Sept, 14 Nov. p.p., 20 Dec.- [1597]”

This translates as follows:

• Courier Payment of 25 florins for bringing [news of] the surrender [of

Amiens, on September 25th] and 50 florins to Jacques Le Doulx [sic] for bringing the letter [probably that of Anthoine de Sailly, dated 30th

September]: Resolution of 9th October.

• Other courier payments: Resolutions of 26 July, 13 Sept, 14 Nov. p.p., 20

Dec. [1597]

Early in the new year, Jacques Le Doux received another payment of 40florins at The Hague, this time as the bearer of a letter from Anthoine deSailly, as yet unlocated (Resolution of the States-General, 27th January1598).47

After the surrender of Amiens, the French King turned his attention to the

situation in Brittany, where his last opponent, the Duke of Mercoeur (PhilippeEmmanuel, formerly Governor of that province) was still holding out, with thesupport of King Philip II of Spain. King Henri led his army against Mercoeurearly in 1598 and received his submission at Angers on March 20th 1598 -

45 Document C in Appendix 1.

46 Japikse, op cit , Vol. 9 (1596-1597) - p.421

47 Japikse, op cit , Vol. 10 (1598) - p.67



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Mercouer finally came to terms for the sum of four million livres, and wasexiled to Hungary.

Negotiating the Peace: the Treaty of Vervins, 1598

We now come to the spring of 1598. At this time, King Henri was seriouslyinclining towards making peace with Spain - indeed in January he hadsecretly sent negotiators to Vervins (Bellievre and Sillery) to take part inpreliminary talks with the Spanish.

Both the Dutch and the English governments sent delegations to France todiscuss the situation and to present their objections. Clearly, for France tomake a separate peace with Spain would be directly contrary to the terms ofthe Triple Alliance; but the situation was far more complex than it might at firstappear.

Certainly the Dutch delegation, led by Justin of Nassau and Jan van

Oldenbarnevelt, was vehemently opposed to the Peace Treaty; they wanted acontinuation of the war, and, being profoundly anti-Spanish, they did not trustthe latter to abide by their promises. In this policy the Dutch had the strongsupport of the Seigneur de Buzanval, who was “fiercely anti-Spanish”48; as wewill see, Ambassador Buzanval accompanied the Dutch delegation to Angersand took part in the talks.

As for the English delegation, led by Sir Robert Cecil, there is much confusionamong historians about the purpose of Cecil’s mission and Queen Elizabeth’sintentions in sending him to France - indeed the entire episode is oftenomitted from biographies of Elizabeth, or receives no more than a cursoryglance. Where the question is discussed, the usual line is that the Queen

wanted to prevent Henri from making peace with Spain: this is a misleadingover-simplification.

The true picture, as far as I can ascertain it, is this: Elizabeth directed herenvoy Cecil to inform King Henri that she was opposed to any Peace Treatywith Spain that did not include the Netherlands; nevertheless, at the sametime, she instructed Cecil to warn the French King that England was not in aposition to provide any further help, financial or otherwise, towards thecontinuation of the war (Cecil also tactfully reminded King Henri of his existingdebts to the English treasury).

Those were Cecil’s instructions; Elizabeth herself, shrewd and pragmatic as

ever, doubtless realised that the French King was absolutely determined tomake peace with Spain, and she fully appreciated the advantages that thiswould bring. There were now many good reasons, financial and political, forfavouring such a peace, whatever opinions might prevail amongst the Englishpublic, which was instinctively xenophobic. One important factor was therapidly declining health of King Philip II, the hated tyrant who had beenEngland’s most implacable enemy (he died on September 13th 1598). As for

48 Kernkamp, op cit - p.176



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the King of France, what the Queen most resented about him was hisrecalcitrance in repaying his huge debts to the English exchequer, amountingto more than a million crowns...

What was the reasoning of King Henri in these matters? Looking at thecomplicated political situation in 1598, one begins to understand the extent ofhis difficulties. It was not merely a question of making peace with Spain; hehad also been obliged to come to terms with various rebellious factions withinthe borders of France itself, whether by force or by negotiation. In some casesthe rebels were simply paid off, as in the case of the Duc de Mercoeur. And,crucially, by 1598 Henri’s authority as King of France was at last beingrecognised by the majority of his subjects. Meanwhile his economic reformswere making good progress, and the prosperity of the nation was very likely toimprove further in the context of a peace settlement. These were all strongarguments in favour of peace with Spain, at least in the short term.

Queen Elizabeth’s embassy to France left England at the beginning ofFebruary 1598; on this mission, Sir Robert Cecil was accompanied by theyoung Earl of Southampton, who is of course associated with the name of“Shake-speare” by virtue of the Sonnets and the Dedications to both Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece (Sonnets 1 to 17 had been written forSouthampton in 1590, probably at the request of Lord Burghley, Marlowe’semployer at the time).

Cecil’s party was in Paris on 12th March 1598 and must have left the citysoon after, for they were at Blois on the river Loire on March 22nd, en route toAngers, where Cecil was to confer with King Henri and the delegates from theNetherlands. As we will see, this journey would certainly have provided the

Earl of Southampton with further opportunities to meet up with his old friend“Monsieur Le Doux”.

The Dutch embassy to France, led by Jan van Oldenbarnevelt and Justin ofNassau, departed from The Hague on 18th March 1598; its Secretary,Francois Van Aerssen, was accompanied by the Seigneur de Buzanval, who,like Oldenbarnevelt, was vehemently opposed to Henri's peace plans. Theyreached Dieppe on March 20th and then proceeded to Rouen, arriving elevendays after Cecil; they were at Blois on March 30th, eight days after theEnglish delegation. Two days later, the Netherlanders embarked on the RiverLoire, on their way to Tours (a distance of about thirty-five miles). Theirultimate destination was the town of Angers, also accessible from the River

Loire, where their conference with King Henri had been arranged. Theyarrived on April 4th, having been at Saumur on the 3rd.

Evidently at some stage of the journey, Francois Van Aerssen and LordBuzanval had gone ahead of the rest of the Dutch party, for at Saumur"Francois Van Aerssen came back from Angers with a royal courier [this was definitely Le Doux - see Document D in Appendix 1], bringing important



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messages both from Buzanval, who had gone ahead, and from Cecil"49 (this,incidentally, provides further proof that Le Doux/Marlowe knew Buzanval inthe spring of 1598; in fact they had almost certainly known each other sincethe late 1580s).

For what reason were Le Doux and Aerssen sent back up-river with these“important messages”? Undoubtedly their purpose was two-fold: firstly, towarn Oldenbarnevelt and Justin of Nassau that King Henri was firmly resolvedon making peace with Spain, and secondly (sweetening this bitter medicine)that the King had offered to give secret support to the Dutch struggle forindependence, initially in the form of substantial cash subsidies, and later inthe form of troops and munitions. A few days later, the total subsidy for thenext four years was agreed at one million ecus. True to his word, King Henricontinued to send money and supplies to the fledgling Dutch Republic for thenext ten years, until its full independence was achieved in 1609.

Henri’s proffered support of the Dutch rebellion was the main subject of aconference which took place on 7th April with Secretary Villeroy, the Sieur deMaisse [André Hurault, formerly the King’s envoy to Queen Elizabeth] andLord Buzenval. Jan den Tex explains that “Villeroy, however pro-peace, waswell disposed towards this help, since Spain, encircling France on three sides,remained a dreaded potential enemy whom it was in France's vital interest tokeep occupied on the northern frontier". King Henri "declared that he wouldnot desert the States… but by restitution of the money advanced [i.e. informer years] assist them to keep their cause going, repeating the same morethan once in high-sounding words”. It was hinted that the war would beresumed in a few years; "In the next ten or twelve years, Henri was constantlysetting a course for war, applauded by Oldenbarnevelt, while Villeroy was

doing everything to prevent it, though without for a moment stopping thesupply of money and volunteers to the States.”50

Villeroy and Buzenval "promised in the King's name a subsidy of 200,000crowns as repayment of the moneys voted by the States; half would be takenat once by Buzenval, the rest was promised by October [1598]. But this wasnot all: the King would receive Oldenbarnevelt the next day, Sunday, at aleave-taking audience and then name the whole amount. At the audience,which was again held in the garderobe, Henry fixed the total amount ofsubsidy to be granted at one million ecus of three francs each, to be spreadover four years." 51 Possibly also, later, the King would send engineers,commanders and soldiers.

Such was the compromise that the Dutch delegation was obliged to accept;but important concessions were made to the cause of Protestantism andreligious toleration. Henri, of course, would never forget his own experience ofreligious persecution as a Huguenot - that memory spurred him on in his

49 Jan den Tex, op cit . - p.264

50 Den Tex, op cit - pp.267-269

51 Den Tex, op cit - p.269



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efforts to establish freedom of worship in his divided nation. It was a boldaspiration that bore fruit in the signing of the Edict of Nantes on April 15th,shortly before the departure of the Dutch delegation; by this Edict, King Henri“secured to Protestants liberty of conscience and impartial justice”.52 Having

thus safeguarded the rights of his Protestant Huguenot subjects, and to someextent placated the Dutch, Henri had cleared the way for the signing of theTreaty of Vervins on the 2nd of May, which contained an added stipulation(however unrealistic) that the English “were to be granted a period of sixmonths to decide whether or not they wanted to join in”.53

Oldenbarnevelt and the Dutch envoys departed for Paris on 28th April 1598and reached the city on the 8th of May. A few days later, they crossed thechannel to Dover, together with Justin of Nassau, but almost certainly withoutBuzanval; they then proceeded to London, where the Queen grantedOldenbarnevelt an immediate audience. It was his second face-to-faceencounter with Elizabeth; on the previous occasion there had been a certain

coolness, but now the Dutch statesman was warmly welcomed as “thepersonally trusted leader of the policy of a valued ally, with whom Elizabethwas glad to discuss the consequences of the Peace of Vervins”.54 They alsovisited the Earl of Essex, who was ill in bed [late May 1598]. The Dutchenvoys were again received by the Queen before their departure(Oldenbarnevelt would make a further visit to England in July).

We know that on the 9th of May 1598, Monsieur Le Doux was at Paris, soonto be sent to Rennes.55 This is a distance of some two hundred miles, aconsiderable journey; Le Doux completed it in five days, covering about fortymiles a day, which represents very rapid progress indeed - one is reminded ofAmbassador Buzanval’s comments of the following year, for example “his

customary diligence” (Letter XLVII in Vreede, Lettres et Negociations ). On hisarrival at Rennes on the 15th May, Le Doux was immediately sent on byAerssens to deliver a letter to Oldenbarnevelt (presumably at The Hague,where it would await the latter’s return from England). Le Doux was back inParis by October, and was probably also there in mid-summer.

Although Sir Robert Cecil returned to England at the end of April 1598, theyoung Earl of Southampton remained in Paris for several months, from Aprilto November; this was partly to evade the fury of the Queen, incurred over thefact that Southampton had impregnated one of her maids-of-honour, ElizabethVernon (he returned to England very briefly, in August, to marry her). Thisfactor aside, we know that the “fantastical” Earl had a reputation as one who

enjoyed “the high life”, so probably the idea of spending the summer in Pariswas very agreeable to him. As we have seen, during his extended stay inFrance, Southampton had plenty of opportunities to meet up with his friendMonsieur Le Doux. One wonders if perhaps, before the Earl’s departure, Le

52 Chambers Biographical Dictionary

53 Alison Plowden, Elizabeth Regina, BCA, 1999 - p.126.

54 Jan den Tex, op cit - p.269.

55 See Document D in Appendix 1.



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Doux/Marlowe might have presented him with a finished play-script or two, forperformance by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men? If so, the likeliest plays areMuch Ado about Nothing and Henry IV Part 2.

Monsieur Le Doux continued in the service of the King of France for the wholeof 1598 and most of 1599 (as detailed in my previous article). We can nowsupplement that research with the additional information that in late November1598, Jacques Le Doux received a further payment of fifty florins at TheHague “for [conveying] a letter from Aerssen”.56 Le Doux had arrived at TheHague on November 16th (which makes one wonder if he travelled to theNetherlands with Southampton?). Ten days later, Le Doux was sent back toFrance with a letter from Lord Buzanval to King Henri (Vreede, Lettres et Negociations , Letter IV, dated November 26th)

Dr Haak’s summary of the relevant Resolutions of the States-General for1598 translates as follows: “Courier Payments were made to Jacques Le

Doux, regular courier of the King of France: Resolution of 27th January [1598,mentioned above] - (40 florins for conveying a letter from Sailly): Resolution of22nd November (50 florins for a letter from [Francois van] Aerssen); aanJohan Leveille: Resolution of 17 April.”57

For Le Doux’s activities during 1599, I must refer the reader to my previousarticle in this Research Journal. Evidently Le Doux had earned the completetrust of the King of France and Ambassador Buzanval, for apart fromconveying dispatches, in 1599 he was placed in charge of the transportationof substantial funds to the Dutch Republic, in support of their revolt againstSpain. In this work he was assisted by one Jean Du Temps, who turns out tohave been a scholar of some repute, known as “Joannes Temporarius”; he is

mentioned in the letters of Scaliger and Casaubon. Temporarius hadpublished an important book on the subject of chronology, Chronologicarum Demonstrationum Libri Tres , which was printed at Frankfurt in 1596 and againat La Rochelle in 1600; this work is mentioned in Buzanval’s Letter 62, dated4th December 1598. Thus it becomes clear that Temporarius was, likeMarlowe/Le Doux, a classical scholar; it is obvious that a thorough knowledgeof Latin would have been a considerable asset in communicating with foreignenvoys at Courts throughout Europe.

The appointment of Temporarius underlines the fact that those who servedthe King of France as royal or diplomatic couriers were always men of qualityand standing in their own right - as one would expect; frequently they were

Humanist scholars. We have a further example in the employment of thecelebrated poet Guillaume de Salluste, Sieur Du Bartas, in the role of courier;in 1587 Du Bartas had been sent on a mission to the Court of King James VI.Possibly related to this mission is a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham from

56 This was Francois van Aerssen’s letter of 10th November 1598 (Letter II in Vreede, Lettres et Negociations (p.12). The

States-General Resolution is dated 22nd November. 57

“Bodeloonen werden verstrekt aan Jacques Le Doux, ordinaris Koerier van den Koning van Frankrijk: R. 27 Jan; (f 40 voor

het overbrengen van een brief van Sailly): 22 Nov. (f 50 voor een brief van Aerssen); aan Johan Leveille: R. 17 April.” (Haak, opcit , Vol. 10 - p.67)



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Monsieur Du Pin, a Secretary of State to Henri of Navarre, dated April 9th1586 or 1587, which mentions Du Bartas as the bearer; he died in 1590.58 DuBartas had been a close friend of Anthony Bacon.

Fighting Against Famine: Agricultural and Economic Reforms underHenri IV

On the 1st of January 1599, Ambassador Buzanval wrote to his friend DanielVan Der Meulen, the Leiden merchant59, asking him to supply a consignmentof cauliflower seeds, which is to be collected from Leiden by Monsieur LeDoux and conveyed to Paris, along with the usual dispatches (by carriage, forthis was by now Le Doux’s usual mode of transportation - compareBuzanval’s reference to “his driver”, “son charrier ” in Letter 65). Le Doux wasback at The Hague within days; he left for Paris around the 5th January,bearing not only the consignment of seeds but also a letter from Buzanval toSecretary Villeroy, dated January 4th 1599 (Letter VII in Vreede, Lettres et Negociations ).

This initially-puzzling allusion to agricultural matters soon falls into place whenit is interpreted in the light of three much earlier letters60 from the Seigneur deBuzanval to Daniel van der Meulen; in these letters, dating to February andMarch of 1596, the Ambassador had pressed the urgency of a similar orderfrom the the Seigneur de Villeroy, King Henri’s Secretary of State.

Among many other items, such as pepper, Daniel Van der Meulen had beensupplying cauliflower seeds and plants for Secretary Villeroy since 1594, byway of Ambassador Buzanval and Van der Meulen’s brother-in-law, Jacquesde la Faille; the arrangement is confirmed in a letter from Jacques Reiniers tothe Leiden merchant, dated 11th May 1594.61 It is very clear, from the above-

mentioned letters of Buzanval, that the consecutive orders for cauliflowerseeds came from Secretary Villeroy; they may well have originated with theKing himself.

We should not be surprised to learn that during the late 16th Century, France(and indeed much of Europe) suffered a sequence of devastating famines:they were the “crises de subsistence” of the French people, and wereparticularly severe between 1596 and 1599. The entire national economy hadbeen shattered by decades of civil war, exacerbated by drought and byrenewed conflict with Spain (since 1595); in such times the threat of famine,or its reality, was never too far away.

The sad truth, of course, is that war, famine and disease have alwaysaccompanied one another - this unpleasant fact is sometimes overlooked inour own time, at least in the developed world, though the reality can be seen

58 Calendar of State Papers, Elizabeth, Foreign Series, Vol 21, Part 1 - p.260.

59 Document G in Appendix 1 (Letter 64 in Kernkamp, op cit, p.232)

60 Letters 19, 20 and 21 in Appendix 2.

61 Van der Meulen Archive.



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all too clearly in regions ravaged by war, in the collapse of economy andinfrastructure and in the terrible suffering of civilians. A French proverb warnsthat la guerre amène la disette - “war brings famine in its train” - recalling tomind a passage from the Prologue to Henry V (1599):

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,

Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,

Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire

Crouch for employment.

Henry V, Prologue, lines 5-8

(Ambassador Buzanval, in his letter of 4th January 1599 to Secretary Villeroy,writes of the famine then raging in Spain and Portugal - Letter VII in Vreede,Lettres et Negociations )

When Henri of Navarre became King of France in 1589, he was faced with

formidable challenges: one was the task of resolving the huge social andeconomic problems that afflicted his country. It would take a man of KingHenri’s calibre to restore the nation to prosperity - a man of intensedetermination, combined with wisdom, patience and practicality. On coming tothe throne, the King had quickly surrounded himself with knowledgeablecounsellors, and he was willing to heed their advice; foremost among themwas the financier Maximilien de Béthune de Rosny (later the Duke of Sully)under whose cautious guidance, over many years, Henri succeeded inplanning and implementing his far-reaching economic reforms. Back in 1576,Béthune had accompanied the young Henri in his flight from the French Court,and later he took an active part in the war; he also successfully reformed thecorrupt system of taxation, thus raising the huge sum of 110 million livres.

The King’s rapid progress in these matters owed a great deal to two otherexperienced counsellors: firstly, his friend Olivier de Serres (1539-1619), theHuguenot commander and scientist, author of La Cueillette de la Soie andThéatre d’Agriculture (1600, dedicated to King Henri); and, secondly,Barthélemy Laffemas (1545-1612), Henri’s Valet-de-Chambre, who from 1596advised the King on economic and agricultural reform (Robin Briggs writes of“the efforts of the tireless Barthélemy Laffemas and the conseil de commerce he organized.”62 Rosny, de Serres and Laffemas would certainly have beenknown to Monsieur Le Doux.

The most urgent task was to increase agricultural production. There were

large areas of uncultivated land, and also too much dependence on wheat,barley and oats; advanced farming techniques, such as the scientific use ofcrop-rotation, were little known. These problems were exacerbated by the factthat winters in northern France could be extremely harsh (as indeed theyoften were in the Netherlands, though the Dutch, being more advanced inagricultural matters, had largely overcome that problem). In France, thesituation would now be addressed by three main strategies: firstly, increased

62 Briggs, Early Modern France, OUP, 1977 - p.68



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local specialisation; secondly, the drainage of swamps to produce fertile land;and thirdly - perhaps most importantly - the introduction of winter crops , orrather “all-year-round” crops, such as cauliflower and other varieties ofBrassica, which are very suitable for cultivation in Northern Europe (until this

time, they had been mainly restricted to Italy; indeed, Van der Meulen’scauliflower seeds probably originated there, transported to Holland by sea).

At the same time, King Henri initiated an ambitious program of reconstruction,repairing roads, building bridges and canals, even new lighthouses. Thesefar-seeing reforms would bring many advantages; in the long term, the King’sagricultural projects would lead to improvements in diet and nutrition, and inthe meantime they would provide employment, especially for young men, thusreducing the widespread lawlessness and banditry, a problem which in recentyears had become acute.

By 1599, then, a great deal had been achieved; but there was another

important matter on the mind of the King of France. Having spent many yearsindulging in dalliances and affairs with various aristocratic ladies, Henri wasnow resolved to proceed with the negotiations towards his proposed marriageto Marie de Medici, the niece of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. His motivationwas partly financial - the bride would bring with her a magnificent dowry - butthe King was also concerned to provide himself, and France, with a legitimateheir. However, the marriage could not take place unless Henri succeeded inobtaining a Papal decree dissolving his existing (unfruitful) marriage toMargaret of Valois. And this, in turn, depended on bringing an end to the warwith Spain (if only temporarily). We will return to this question in due course.

The Disgrace of the Earl of Essex

We should now consider at what stage Monsieur Le Doux left the service ofAmbassador Buzanval and King Henri, and to what extent his departure waslinked to the predicament of the Earl of Essex - that is, his fall from theQueen’s favour and the collapse of his intelligence network.

During the late 1590s, the signs of Essex’s increasing instability had been alltoo plain. An incident that occurred in the summer of 1598 demonstrates hisgrowing arrogance and defective judgement: during a heated argument atCourt, Essex contemptuously turned his back on the Queen. For thisinsolence he received a “box on the ear” from Elizabeth, to which heresponded with the even more outrageous act of moving to draw his swordagainst her. Somehow he evaded further punishment, but the truth is thatafterwards, Essex was never fully reconciled with her.

For all the Earl’s admirable qualities and achievements - his great courage, forexample, and the spectacular success of the attack on Cadiz - it is generallyagreed that he was an extremely impulsive character, and also burdened withexcessive pride. In fact it seems that after 1598, Essex was more interested inhis own personal renown, and his status at Court, than in the service of hiscountry. It is true that his tarnished reputation was to some extent restored inearly 1599, when he was appointed as Commander-in-Chief against the Irish



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rebels, but this command was, in reality, something of a “poisoned chalice” -as everyone knew, it was a task fraught with great difficulties. Nevertheless, itrepresented a final chance for Essex to redeem himself; unfortunately, hewould fail utterly.

Having arrived in Ireland as Lord Lieutenant in April 1599, the Earl spent thenext six months squandering his army on minor campaigns, and he even heldsecret talks with the Chief of the rebels, the Earl of Tyrone, agreeing anunwarranted and ill-defined “truce”. These serious errors were compoundedby his sudden and unauthorised return to England in September, in directdefiance of the Queen’s orders; it was an act of utter folly, prompted byEssex’s delusions about his “enemies” at Court. The Earl’s disobedience inabandoning his Irish command was exacerbated by his ill-manneredbehaviour on arriving at Nonsuch Palace, intruding unannounced into theQueen’s Bedchamber (on the morning of September 28th 1599).

Within days, the Queen had issued her judgement against him: on thefollowing Monday, October 1st, he was committed into the custody of the LordKeeper at York House, under close house-arrest. A month later, his entirehousehold at Essex House was dispersed and the one hundred and sixtyservants were turned away to seek employment elsewhere.

It has been suggested, by a number of historians, that Essex’s unpredictableand erratic behaviour and his increasing paranoia could possibly have beensymptoms of syphilis in its advanced stages. But whatever the cause, hisprincipal Secretary, Anthony Bacon, can hardly have failed to notice thedeterioration in the Earl’s mental state, and he must have been extremelyalarmed by it. Certainly Essex’s disgrace, and his ever-more volatile temper,

produced a great deal of nervousness amongst his supporters - anervousness which later, after the failed insurrection of February 8th 1601,turned into terror.

By the end of 1598, Essex’s European intelligence network was unravellingrapidly; his most senior agent, Dr. Henry Hawkins, had returned from Venicein March of that year. As for Monsieur Le Doux, who was moving betweenFrance and the Netherlands during that period, doubtless he continued tosend information to Anthony Bacon from time to time, possibly throughAmbassador Buzanval; but after October of 1599, when it had become clearthat the Earl’s disgrace would be permanent, his agents in Europe wereobliged to sever any direct connection with their former master, owing to the

serious breach in security.Now in this context, the timing of Le Doux’s final departure from The Haguemust surely be significant. Essex had been placed under house-arrest on the1st of October 1599; within seven weeks of that date, we learn from a letter ofAmbassador Buzanval63 that Le Doux has gone. Clearly, then, Monsieur LeDoux’s work as diplomatic courier between Paris and The Hague had ceased

63 Letter LXV in Vreede, dated 19th/22nd November 1599; op cit , p.323



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from November 1599 at the very latest. He must also have adopted a newnom de guerre , though probably retaining his well-practised cover as a“Frenchman”.

Ambassador Buzanval, at The Hague, was well aware of the trouble in whichthe Earl of Essex found himself: in a letter to Secretary Villeroy, dated 10thNovember 1599, he mentions the ill-judged “truce” (“trêve”) which Essex hadmade with the Earl of Tyrone, which had greatly angered the Queen (LetterLVIII in Vreede, Lettres et Negociations , p. 297). A few days later, theAmbassador reports to Villeroy that “everyone is talking of the treatment of theEarl of Essex”64; in the same letter, Buzanval mentions “the lack of Le Doux”and his replacement by Monsieur Du Temps (Temporarius).

So where did Monsieur Le Doux find refuge and employment at this time? A.D. Wraight and others have put forward the interesting theory that Marlowe/LeDoux returned to Northern Italy and entered the service of Don Virginio

Orsino, Duke of Bracciano

65

and nephew to the Grand Duke of Tuscany (wewill return to this possibility in due course, with its important connection to theShake-speare play Twelfth Night ). If Le Doux/Marlowe did return to Italy inlate 1599, that would help to explain the renewed Italian influence which isevident in certain Shake-speare plays, including Twelfth Night (1600), All’s Well that Ends Well (1602-3), Measure for Measure (1604) and Othello (pre-1604).

Now it just so happens that the autumn of 1599 would have been the perfecttime for King Henri to recommend the services of his friend “Monsieur LeDoux”, a reliable and highly gifted intelligencer, to the Duke of Bracciano,since Virginio Orsino was the cousin of Henri’s fiancé Marie de Medici. In late

1599, with the King’s planned marriage to Marie rapidly approaching certainty,it would have been a simple matter for the King of France to arrange LeDoux’s transfer to Orsino’s Court in Tuscany.

What was the situation of Anthony Bacon at this time? Unfortunately there is agap in the documentary record, because the Countess of Essex is known tohave burnt most of the Earl’s papers after the failed insurrection of 8thFebruary 1601. We cannot therefore know whether Anthony Bacon formallydisassociated himself from the Earl; but in any case, Anthony’s failing healthduring 1600 and 1601 had forced him to retire from public affairs.66 Hisbrother Francis, in an infamous act of betrayal, played a major part in theprosecution of his former patron, which led to the Earl’s execution for Treason

on February 25th 1601.

64 Letter LXV in Vreede, op cit - p.323.

65 Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano (1572-1615), should not be confused with his namesake, Virginio Orsino, Duke of Selci,

who himself had numerous contacts with the Earl of Essex during the 1590s.

66 The last extant letter from Anthony Bacon is dated 4th July 1598 (OS).



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King Henri IV, Marie de Medici and Ferdinand I, Grand Duke of Tuscany

King Henri’s proposed marriage to Marie de Medici, the niece of the GrandDuke of Tuscany, had been the subject of lengthy negotiations that hadcommenced as early as 1592. The King and his ministers continued to

exchange correspondence with the Grand Duke for many years, though mostof it was conducted in strict secrecy, since Marie’s union with a formerlyProtestant King was a highly delicate matter from the point of view of bothreligion and Italian politics.

It was well known that the Grand Dukes of Tuscany were fabulously wealthy(Queen Elizabeth gave Grand Duke Ferdinand I the code name “Riches” );Ferdinand was then “perhaps the wealthiest Prince in Europe in contanti orready money”.67 The result was that the Grand Dukes were continuallyapproached for loans, not least by the Kings of France - Henri himself hadborrowed more than 100,000 crowns. In 1599, the total French debt stood atmore than a million gold crowns.

From the point of view of diplomacy, an important first step had been made inSeptember of 1595, when King Henri had received Absolution from PopeClement VIII. Two years later, Henri sent his representative Cardinal Gondi toFlorence to revive the marriage negotiations. Further delays and re-negotiations had followed, particularly regarding the amount of the dowry,which in reality was the central issue, bearing in mind the existing Frenchdebt. Then, in March of 1599,68 Henri again sent Cardinal Gondi (this timeaccompanied by Secretary of State Villeroy) to meet with the Grand Duke.The dowry was eventually agreed at 600,000 crowns: 350,000 to be paid incash, and the remainder to be deducted from the outstanding debt (one canonly estimate the true value of such a huge dowry in modern coinage, but Iwould calculate that 600,000 silver crowns would be the equivalent of about82 million pounds today).

The second major problem, that of King Henri’s existing marriage toMarguerite of Valois, has already been mentioned. In January of 1599 twospecial envoys, Cardinal Ossat and Nicolas Brûlart, the Seigneur de Sillery,were sent to Rome to seek an annulment (to which Marguerite herselfconsented in February); it was eventually granted by Pope Clement VIII on17th December 1599. That removed the final obstacle to Henri’s match withMarie de Medici, and the formal marriage agreement was concluded late inDecember.69

It may be significant that in the Spring of 1599, an English envoy visited theFlorentine Court; he was William Cecil, nephew to Sir Robert Cecil and theheir of Thomas, Lord Burleigh. Cecil was cordially entertained at the Pitti

67 Hotson, op cit - p.47.

68 For the record, since the year 1599 was evidently a turning-point in the career of “Monsieur Le Doux”, King Henri’s extant

letters to the Grand Duke include those of 13th January, 21st March, 31st May and 9th June 1599. The King may well have beenwriting to the Duke of Bracciano at the same time.

69See Louis Battifol, Marie de Médicis and the French Court in the XVIIth Century (Paris , 1908)



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Hotson achieved a real breakthrough with his detective work on Duke Orsinoand the forgotten visit to Elizabeth’s Court, but his fascinating and compellingdiscoveries are strangely overlooked (or even dismissed) in publishedcommentaries on the play. Why?

There are three main reasons for this collective obtusity:

1. “Stratfordians” are instinctively nervous about any new evidence that hasbiographical implications ;

2. “Orthodox” academics in the majority of English Literature faculties aroundthe world still adhere to the once-fashionable view that biographicalmatters have no bearing on any “literary work of art”. This is utternonsense, of course, but it nevertheless remains the “default” position inacademia.

3. Those few Stratfordian scholars who tried to make the new evidence fitWilliam Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon were unable to make it work.

On this last point, of course, I concur entirely. One must reject Hotson’s totallyunwarranted assumption throughout his book that William Shakspere ofStratford was present or had anything to do with the 1601 performance ofTwelfth Night - he was almost certainly spending a quiet Christmas at home inStratford-upon-Avon.

I believe that Shake-speare’s Twelfth Night was written during the spring andsummer of 1600. If we are correct in the hypothesis that Monsieur Le Douxhad entered the service of Duke Orsino towards the end of 1599, then hewould have had prior knowledge, for many months, of Orsino’s aspiration tovisit the English Court.

It was a tradition at Queen Elizabeth’s Court that plays and otherentertainments were presented there at Christmas, and especially on TwelfthDay and Twelfth Night. Elizabeth herself was very fond of plays, and sheenjoyed the spectacle of humorous “leg-pulling”; Twelfth Night was always anoccasion for light-hearted entertainment, with lots of music and also, ofcourse, the time-honoured element of mischief or “misrule”.

Le Doux/Marlowe would have been well aware of the kind of Courtly dramathat was required for such an occasion - his own play Love’s Labour’s Lost had been performed at Court during the Christmas festivities of January 1598,as we know from the title page of the first Quarto edition (1598). Love’s Labour’s Lost is often associated with the Earl of Southampton and his circle,and it may be significant that in late 1597 and early 1598, Southampton hadbeen in unusually high favour with the Queen.

So now, in 1600, Marlowe set about fashioning a suitable play for the comingChristmas: it would have to include musical interludes with dancing, and itwould be enlivened with a genteel merriment that would prove pleasing to theQueen, and, at the same time, would offer a fitting tribute to his noble master,



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Duke Orsino. With several months in which to complete his new play,Marlowe had plenty of time to perfect it: the Italian source that he adapted forTwelfth Night was a Sienese comedy entitled Gl’Ingannati (The Deceived Ones ), which had been “popular for seventy years in the Duke’s own

Tuscany”76

(it had first been performed in 1531).No doubt Marlowe / Le Doux had long had the comic plot of Gl’Ingannati inmind as a suitable framework for a performance at Court, and now he skilfullyadapted it for the specific occasion of Twelfth Night and the context ofOrsino’s visit, doubtless blending in certain themes and ideas which had beentaking shape in his mind for many months. He also added some topicaltouches, including jokes that touched on recent scandals at Court: these hewould have known from rumour, which even in those times spread far andwide in a short space of time. Equally, he could have heard of these mattersfrom a number of close friends, including Sir Walter Raleigh, then in highfavour with the Queen, and the famous actor/manager Edward Alleyn, whose

acting company, the Lord Admiral’s Men, performed at Court on the verysame Twelfth Day of 1601. Their master, Lord Admiral Charles Howard, hadbeen specially appointed as Lord Steward of the Royal Household for thatChristmas season.

Raleigh had been reinstated as Captain of the Queen’s Guard in 1597: in thefollowing years he had countless private conferences with Elizabeth, andfrequently went riding with her; they also spent many evenings playing atcards. Towards the end of 1600, Raleigh had also gained the friendship of theEarl of Southampton, despite the latter’s closeness to the Earl of Essex,Raleigh’s former rival.

The many honours bestowed by the Queen on Duke Orsino would include“sending her conqueror of the Armada to feast him” - Lord Admiral Howard -and also sending Raleigh, “her greatest corsair in the world, as a supper-guest”. In fact, Raleigh was much involved with Duke Orsino’s visit; onJanuary 9th, he personally guided the Duke around the Palace of HamptonCourt, and a few days later, just before the latter’s embarkation for Flanders,Raleigh accompanied him to view “her Majesties galleons and ships”, whichwere then lying at anchor on the River Medway near Rochester.77

Politically, Duke Orsino’s visit had been a very significant event - indeed itwas a considerable “coup” for Queen Elizabeth, for by welcoming the youngFlorentine nobleman, she had strengthened her bonds of friendship with the

wealthy and independent rulers of Tuscany, and, at the same time,confounded Pope Clement VIII, one of her most powerful enemies.

Did Marlowe/Le Doux accompany Duke Orsino and Marie de Medici on their journey to France? He would certainly have been an invaluable guide… anddid he then travel further, assisting Orsino on his unfamiliar route northwards -

76 Hotson, op cit - p120.




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perhaps even all the way to England? This is, of course, conjecture, but it iscertainly an intriguing possibility.78

For more information on the Grand Duke of Tuscany, his nephew Virginio

Orsino, and Marie de Medici, I refer the reader to Louis Battifol’s Marie de Médicis and the French Court in the XVIIth Century and R. Galluzzi’s History of the Grand Duke of Tuscany (Florence, 1781). On the significance of KingHenri’s marriage to Marie de Medici, and the Shake-speare connection, A. D.Wraight gives a very perceptive account in The Story that the Sonnets Tell,79 inspired of course by Leslie Hotson’s ground-breaking research.80

The “Spice Islands” Map

We can now move on to that allusion in Twelfth Night to a famous map of theEast Indies. In the third Act, Olivia’s maidservant Maria, speaking of thedeluded and love-sick Malvolio, jokes that “he does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies.”81

There has been disagreement among commentators as to whether this is areference to the extraordinarily-detailed map of the East Indies published inJan van Linschoten’s Itinerario , or to some other map of the period. However,as we will see, the evidence in favour of Linschoten is overwhelming82; itrelates to a very fine map of the Spice Islands entitled Insulae Moluccae ,drawn by the celebrated cartographer Peter Plancius of Amsterdam. InDecember 1598, Le Doux’s friend Ambassador Buzanval had acquired a copyof Linschoten’s Itinerario containing the Plancius map, which means that LeDoux would certainly have seen it.83

One can discern from Twelfth Night that the author was very interested in the

profitable Indies trade and in the recent Dutch attempts to gain access to it:what is more significant is his strong interest in exploration and discovery,which matches Monsieur Le Doux’s fascination for the subject.84 Thischaracteristic is evident throughout the works of both Marlowe and Shake-speare, but especially in Tamburlaine the Great , Doctor Faustus , The Merchant of Venice , Othello and The Tempest .

In Twelfth Night , Fabian jests that Sir Andrew Aguecheek has now “sailed intothe north of my Lady’s opinion, where you will hang like an icicle on aDutchman’s beard” (III.ii.24-6); this is agreed to be a reference to WilliamBarents and his voyages to the Arctic in search of the “North-East Passage”.This perilous venturing into the Arctic Ocean was certainly not an end in itself

78 See Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell, - pp. 369-377 and 385-423.

79 The Story that the Sonnets Tell (Adam Hart, London, 1993) - pp.371 and 385-413.

80 Published in The First Night of Twelfth Night (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954).

81 Twelfth Night III.ii.80.

82 For a summary of the debate, with an account of Plancius and his map, and further notes on the Itinerario, see Appendix 3.

83 See Letters 63 and 64 in Kernkamp; extracts in Appendix 2.

84 See Wraight’s analysis of the 1596 Book-List, op cit , pp.65-66 and 124.



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- it was an attempt to find a quicker and safer route to the East Indies. WilliamBarents made three voyages to the Kara Sea, accompanied on the first twoexpeditions (1594-5) by Linschoten himself. Barents’ third voyage to the Arcticcost him his life - he died of exposure in 1597, north of Novaya Zemlya.

Returning to Shake-speare: in The Merry Wives of Windsor (c.1597) Sir JohnFalstaff, speaking of Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, declares that “Theyshall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both” (I.iii.65-66); inTwelfth Night , Sir Toby Belch praises Maria as “my metal of India”, i.e. as veryprecious (II.v.14); and in As You Like It (1599-1600), Orlando declares that:

From the east to western Inde,

No jewel is like Rosalind.

As You Like It , III: ii: 88-89

Was Marlowe in London in the Summer of 1600?

The historian A. D. Wraight has suggested that Monsieur Le Doux made aclandestine visit to England in the summer of 1600, and that, in doing so, hebrought with him the finished manuscript of As You Like It .85 If this is correct,then it is possible that Marlowe/Le Doux also brought to England his first draftof Twelfth Night - a preliminary version, to be sure, in which he avoidedidentifying Don Virginio Orsino by calling him “the Duke” or “Duke”; as I havesaid, for political reasons Orsino’s plan to visit the English Court had to bekept secret.

Twelfth Night was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 - it is generally agreedthat there was no quarto edition, for on 8th November of that year, the playwas entered in the Stationers’ Register along with a further fifteen previously unpublished Shake-speare plays, all subsequently printed in the 1623 Folio .Curiously, the designation of Orsino as simply “Duke” throughout the stage-directions and speech-headings appears to be a survival from the originalplayscript86 - implying that the author had carefully maintained confidentialitythroughout his first draft. It would thus have been possible for the players torehearse Twelfth Night during the latter months of 1600, without having anyidea of the true identity of the Italian nobleman who was then preparing tomake a discreet visit to England.

In the autumn of 1600, when Thomas Thorpe published ChristopherMarlowe’s translation of The First Book of Lucan, he added to it a strangelycryptic Dedication in the form of a letter to his friend Edward Blount. In thisletter, Thorpe writes of “that pure Elementall wit, Chr. Marlowe; whose ghoastor Genius is to be seene walke the Churchyard87 in (at the least) three orfoure sheets”. A. D. Wraight interprets this remark as a hint that Thorpe

85 Wraight, Thorpe Writes a Letter , in The Story That the Sonnets Tell - pp.378-84.

86 “Orsino is always Duke in the stage-directions and the speech headings” - Twelfth Night (Arden edition, Methuen, 1975) -

p.xix). Even in the text, the name “Orsino” occurs only seven times.

87 St Paul’s Churchyard; the booksellers’ stalls there had been a favourite haunt of Christopher Marlowe’s.



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himself had recently seen the supposedly-dead Christopher Marlowe inperson, and that Marlowe had given him a certain manuscript or “booke”which Thorpe intended to bring to Blount. According to Wraight’s theory, the“booke” that so excited Thomas Thorpe was the finished manuscript of a new

“Shake-speare” play, As You Like It (entered on the Stationers’ Register onAugust 4th 1600 (OS), but “stayed” until 1623).88

Wraight states that Marlowe’s purpose in travelling to London was two-fold;first, to deliver the manuscript of As You Like It, and second, to set in motioncertain necessary preparations for Duke Orsino’s planned visit to the EnglishCourt. Naturally the Italian nobleman needed to ascertain whether such a visitwould meet with the royal approval. In making this enquiry during that summerof 1600, Marlowe is most likely to have approached his own patron, SirThomas Walsingham, who was then in high favour with the Queen(Walsingham had been knighted by her in 1597). If not Walsingham, therewere several alternative intermediaries: these include Marlowe’s friend Sir

Walter Raleigh and also the 5th Earl of Rutland, Roger Manners, who was aclose friend of the Earl of Southampton. Both men were given prominent rolesin the organisation of Twelfth Day and Twelfth Night of 1601; Rutland and histwo brothers had the responsibility of attending on Duke Orsino during his visitand escorting him at Court.

Whether Marlowe went to London in person in 1600, or only as far as theNetherlands, he certainly had reliable friends to whom these matters, and alsomanuscripts, could be entrusted. During that year, two of his closest friends,Sir Walter Raleigh and Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland89, went tothe Netherlands: we know that the latter was a fellow-member (with Marlowe)of Raleigh’s philosophical group, the “School of Night”. Northumberland went

to the Low Countries on several occasions in 1600; the NorthumberlandHousehold Accounts show that between February 12th and March 27th, theEarl made a payment of forty shillings “to Sir Francis Veres his players inHolland”. In July he went back to the Low Countries, accompanied by Raleighand the Earl of Rutland. Northumberland was conveying a message fromQueen Elizabeth to Sir Francis Vere, commander of the English troops in theNetherlands; he also took part in military operations, thus gaining “first-handinformation on the art of war”.90 He returned to England in February 1601, butwas again in the Netherlands from June 1st to September 29th, serving underSir Francis Vere at the siege of Ostend. (I have given this information in somedetail because of Northumberland’s friendship with Christopher Marlowe; theEarl had known King Henri IV since 1596 or earlier, for in that year he had

carried to him the insignia of the Garter).

88 Wraight, The Story That the Sonnets Tell, p.378

89 Christopher Marlowe was "very well known" to Northumberland: PRO State Papers (Holland) SP84/44/60.

90 Ref: www.questia.com



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The Background to Shake-speare’s Othello : Paolo Orsino, LazaroSoranzo and the Turkish Threat

The tragic history of the Orsino family seems to have influenced anotherShake-speare play, Othello , which of course explores the destructive power of

jealousy. The author had personal experience of this emotional torment (thetreachery of his “Dark Lady” Emilia Lanier, lamented in the Sonnets ), butShake-speare’s interest in jealousy, “the green-ey’d monster / Which dothmock the meat it feeds on” (Othello III.iii), may be related to the story ofVirginio’s father, Paolo Giordano Orsino, Duke of Bracciano. Paolo was a manof very violent temperament; he had won renown in battle as “general ofVenetian infantry against the Turk”,91 receiving an arrow-wound during thefamous sea-Battle of Lepanto (1571), but his violent temper also dominatedhis personal life - in 1575, when Virginio was only three years old, Paolo hadstrangled the boy’s mother, Isabella de Medici, in a fit of jealousy. A few yearslater, in 1582, Paolo arranged another murder, that of his mistress’ husband(she too was later murdered, at the hands of another Orsino). These tragicevents are described in John Webster’s play The White Devil (written 1609-1612) in which “the horrors of Virginio’s childhood” are graphically depicted.92 By the age of thirteen, Virginio Orsino had lost both of his parents.

In 1593, war had broken out between the Holy Roman Empire and theOttoman Turks. It rapidly developed into a serious crisis, and the EmperorRudolf II sent out an appeal to Christian princes for military assistance.Virginio Orsino, answering this call, fought at Giavarino93 in 1594 and wasrewarded the following year at Prague, receiving costly gifts from theEmperor. In 1596, the Turks commenced another invasion of Hungary andlooked set to advance into Austria.

In 1599, Duke Orsino was again fighting against the Turks, having beenappointed commander of the Grand Duke’s fleet sent to capture the island ofChios (Orsino acquitted himself well, but the expedition was unsuccessful).

In Ambassador Buzanval’s Letter 7994 to Daniel Van der Meulen, dated 20thOctober 1599, he is returning a book by Lazaro Soranzo entitled The Ottoman and seems to have ordered an additional copy. Soranzo’s book, published in1598, focused on the ambitions of the much-feared Sultan Mohammed III andthe extent of the Turkish threat to Christian Europe. This situation is, ofcourse, the background to Shake-speare’s Othello . I have not, as yet, hadsufficient time to investigate the text of The Ottoman, so any direct links withOthello will be detailed in a future article.



93 Modern Gyor in Hungary.

94 See Appendix 2.



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Monsieur Le Doux’s Books: Three Authors linked to the New Evidence

1. Philippus Camerarius (1537-1624)

The letters of Ambassador Buzanval reveal his connections with the

Camerarius brothers (for detailed information, see Letters 29, 30 and 32 inAppendix 2). Among the books in Le Doux’s trunk was a work entitled Operae Horarum Succisivarum Sive Meditationes Historicae by Philippus Camerarius,a son of the famous scholar Joachim Camerarius I (the Elder) (1500-1574).A.D. Wraight gives the date of publication as 1506, which is obviously anerror, though not hers - in 1506 even the elder Camerarius was only five yearsold!

Wraight’s error is due to a misprint on the title page of a later edition publishedat Frankfurt in 1606. Gustav Ungerer states, incorrectly, that the author ofOperae Horarum was Joachim Camerarius the Elder, but the author wasdefinitely the latter’s son Philippus. The copy in Le Doux’s trunk must have

been the first edition, published at Nuremberg (“Noribergae”) in 1591 byLochner and Hofman. Curiously, this book contains one of the earliestversions of the “Faust” legend. Monsieur Le Doux’s copy was apparentlypurchased in 1595, but if Le Doux/Marlowe knew the book at an earlier date,then it could well have influenced him in the writing of Doctor Faustus - indeedit may have been Camerarius who originally sparked Marlowe’s interest in thelegend, because Marlowe’s main source was not published until 1592 (it wasThe Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus, an English translation of the German Faustbuch of 1587 ). Marlowe’splay Doctor Faustus was written between 1592 and 1593, and first performedin 1594.

Philip’s brother, Joachim Camerarius II (1534-98), was “one of the mostlearned physicians and botanists of his age”.95 Both men knew Sir PhilipSidney, and there is an extant letter from Sidney to Philippus and Joachim,dated 1st May 1578 (now at the Huntingdon Library). Their friendship isconfirmed in an essay by D. J. Gordon96: “In his journeys abroad, Sidneycame into contact with Protestant scholars who belonged to the circle of theCamerarius family, and the sons of Joachim were themselves scholars.Philippus Camerarius records a talk he had with Sidney when Sidney was inPrague on an embassy to the Emperor [Rudolf II]”. There are at least seventyextant letters from Joachim Camerarius II - also documents describing someseven hundred medical cases and “necropsies”.

As A. D. Wraight pointed out,97 Le Doux’s interest in scientific chronology andthe true age of the world is attested by his possession of a manuscript ofunknown authorship entitled Une Astrologie Depuis le Commencement du Monde . The Shake-speare Sonnets are of course famous for their reflections

95 Chambers Biographical Dictionary

96 The Year’s Work in English Studies, Volume XXVIII, 1947.

97 Wraight, Shakespeare New Evidence - pp.72-73.



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on the subject of Time, including meditations on impermanence (for example,Sonnets 55 and 65), “the old age” (Sonnet 127) and “If there be nothing new”(Sonnet 59, inspired by the work of Francesco Guiccardini [1483-1540]).

2. Justus Lipsius (Joest Lips) (1547-1606)The Flemish Humanist and Classical scholar, a Professor at Jena, Leiden andLouvain. He was the author of De Constantia , a copy of which was owned byLe Doux. The writings of Justus Lipsius include editions of Tacitus andSeneca (both strong influences on Shake-speare). As I have mentionedabove, the influence of Lipsius is evident in Macbeth, Titus Andronicus and Measure for Measure .98 When Lipsius retired from his Professorship at theUniversity of Leiden in 1591, his friend Joseph Scaliger was appointed as hissuccessor; after initially declining the offer, Scaliger took up the post twoyears later, moving permanently to the Netherlands in 1593. We have alreadyestablished that Joseph Scaliger knew Monsieur Le Doux, as did another

friend of Lipsius, Francois d’Aerssen. The correspondence of Lipsiustherefore deserves further investigation.

3. Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe) (1511-1576)

A Humanist scholar and poet, he was personal physician to William the Silent.Junius was the author of two further books in the possession of Monsieur LeDoux, namely the Onomasticon; a Lexicon of 7 Languages and theNomenclator.

There is an interesting connection with Adriaan Junius (d.1620), a secretary toJohan van Oldenbarnevelt; this Adriaan Junius was apparently related toHadrianus Junius.99 He also seems to have known Liévin Calvart (notsurprisingly, since both were in the service of Oldenbarnevelt). It is thereforevery likely that this Adriaan Junius knew Monsieur Le Doux during the 1590s,if not before.

The link between Calvart and Adriaan Junius is confirmed by a document of1585; it is a Report from Paris, dated 23rd February 1585, from the 4th Earl ofDerby and Sir Edward Stafford, concerning the presentation of the Order ofthe Garter to King Henri III: “Next day there came to us Junius, “Moyllery”,Calvart and three more in the name of the Deputies.”100

Adriaan Junius later rose to some prominence; in 1600, he acted as acommissioner for Oldenbarnevelt, and in 1602 he became a judge in theHoge Raad.101

98 Wraight, op cit - p.68.

99 See Dutch biographical website www.dbnl.org.

100 See British History Online at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ .

101 Jan den Tex, op cit - p.240.



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Hadrianus Junius and his relative, Adriaan, are not to be confused with theEarl of Leicester's secretary Jacobus Junius, nor with the language scholarFranciscus Junius (1591-1677).

Prospects for New ResearchAlthough we still lack any further examples of Le Doux’s handwriting, we nowhave a much clearer idea of where to look. A. D. Wraight suggested that LeDoux himself wrote very few letters, but I believe that there is now goodreason for optimism. It is surely significant that Anthony Bacon, when wring toLe Doux102 in the Spring of 1596, reminded him always to use the code-names that he had been given, for himself and others, and to use the selectedcipher: “J’entends que Monsieur Reynoldes vous a baillé un Chiphre, aussi que je ne doubte que vous n’ayez arresté les noms qu’il faut user tant à la superscription que subscription des lettres ”: “I understand that Mr Reynoldshas provided you with a Cipher, also that I have no doubt that you willcontinue to use the names that must be employed, as much in the heading as

in the subscription of letters.” This obviously implies that Bacon was expectingto receive regular communications from Le Doux.

In view of the rapidly expanding amount of information on Le Doux, and thelarge number of archives involved, it is likely that more letters will bediscovered, possibly amongst the Calvart Papers at The Hague. Otherimportant archives in the Netherlands include the Nationaal Archief at TheHague, the Koninklijk Huis Archief, and the Instituut Voor NederlandseGeschiedenis.

Le Doux’s connection with the Humanist scholars Joseph Scaliger and IsaacCasaubon (1559-1614) needs further investigation. If there is one special

characteristic that emerges unmistakeably from the plays of “Shake-speare”, itis surely the fact that their author’s philosophy was firmly centred in thetradition of late Renaissance Humanism - this is exhibited throughout hisworks, in the avid search for knowledge and, at the same time, a certain angst about the human condition and human suffering - an emotion felt at sometimes more acutely than at others. It was an insecurity resulting from the endof the old “certainties” of scholastic dogma - the collapse of a world-viewwhich had arrogantly placed mankind at the centre of the universe.

Scaliger and Casaubon were both Classicists, and their work includestranslations and commentaries on many ancient authors including Aristotle,Suetonius, Sophocles, Euripides, Cicero, Homer, Seneca and Tacitus. Theircommentaries, and their interpretations of history, may thus have influencedsuch Shake-speare plays as Julius Caesar , Anthony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida , and Coriolanus . Titus Andronicus, Richard III , Julius Caesar and Hamlet have been listed by Stanley Wells as Shake-speare’s most“Senecan” plays.103 Isaac Casaubon published commentaries on Suetonius(author of The Twelve Caesars ), Aeschylus, Aristotle and Pliny (Pliny the

102 LPL. MS 656, no. 137, endorsed March 17th 1596 OS; printed in Ungerer, op cit - p.240.

103 Stanley Wells, Shakespeare; An Illustrated Dictionary, OUP, 1981, p.155.



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Elder’s Naturalis Historia is known to have influenced passages in Othello ). In1592 Casaubon published a Latin translation of Theophrastus’ Characteres (Stock Characters), with a commentary.

Collections of Private CorrespondenceThe Van der Meulen Archive at Leiden is probably the most promisingresource for those seeking to trace “Monsieur Le Doux”; it contains thousandsof letters, including those of Nicolas Malapert to Van der Meulen (sent fromFrankfurt, 1596-1600; Inventory No. 587); also those of Jacques de la Faille(Inventory No. 538), Samuel Godin, Christian Huygens, Jacques Reiniers,George Fremin, Jacques de Bodry, Baptista Oyens and Abraham Berrewijns(Van der Meulen’s clerk). The Rotterdam Record Office has a further 684documents relating to Daniel Van der Meulen. After the latter’s death in 1600,his extensive book collection was sold at auction in Leiden (on the 4th of June1601); it would be interesting to trace what happened to these books, sincewe may be sure that some of them ended up in the hands of the Seigneur de

Buzanval and his friends.

The letters of George Gilpin (1514-1602), Queen Elizabeth’s minister to TheHague, may well yield further clues. Gilpin lived in the same house at TheHague as Ambassador Buzanval (the House of Aremberg), so Le Doux musthave known him - indeed he may well have stayed there himself from time totime, as seems to be implied in some of the Ambassador’s letters. Gilpin hadbeen English Secretary to the Dutch Council of State from 1586 and had beenappointed Councillor in 1593. Other important letter-writers of the periodinclude Ralph Winwood, Secretary to the English Embassy in Paris until 1603;the Duke of Sully; Justus Lipsius; and Sir Thomas Edmondes.

For many years Ambassador Buzanval exchanged letters with his friendsJoachim II Camerarius and Philippus Camerarius. During the 1590s, theCamerarius brothers were acting as confidential agents for Buzanval, inaddition to their work as scholars, which was equally valued by theAmbassador - as had been the case with Jean Du Temps, for example.Joachim II also wrote regularly to Jacques de Bodry. Many of the Camerariusletters have survived.

The correspondence of Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon extended from1594 to 1610. Casaubon lived in Paris from January of 1599 until 1610, whenhe went to England; Le Doux was almost certainly the bearer of some of theirletters. Many letters of Casaubon are in the Collection Dupuy at the

Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Further useful information on Joseph Scaligermay be obtained through the Scaliger Institute and the Scaliger FamilyPapers.

There are thousands of letters in the Orsini Papers, and one hopes that futureresearch into these documents may reveal details of the later career of“Monsieur Le Doux”; as I have said, we need to discover his new nom de guerre, adopted towards the end of 1599.



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Some Conclusions

Since the previously-known evidence concerning Le Doux related only to theperiod from October 1595 to June 1596, the new documents here presented(in Appendix 1) provide us with a “bridge” between Wraight’s discoveries and

the later employment of Le Doux during 1598 and 1599 as a diplomaticcourier in the service of the King of France and Lord Buzanval (as outlined inmy previous article). This will enable us to construct a much more detailedpicture of Le Doux’s activities during the 1590s; we now have reliable andconsistent documentary evidence covering almost a full five years, fromSeptember of 1595 to the end of 1599.

It must be emphasised that the primary evidence identifying “Le Doux” asMarlowe/Shake-speare is contained in the documents first published by A DWraight in Shakespeare: New Evidence : this crucial evidence comprises, firstand foremost, the list of the books in Le Doux’s possession, many of whichare source-works for the plays and poems attributed to “Shake-speare”;

secondly, the significant biographical information revealed by the documentsin Le Doux’s possession (i.e. his travels and employment as an“intelligencer”); thirdly, his own letters, which prove his connection with theWalsingham family and Antonio Perez, the “Don Armado” of Love’s Labour’s Lost ; and, finally, the handwriting, which has been matched to the extant pageof Marlowe’s play The Massacre at Paris .

These arguments are now supported by an abundance of circumstantialevidence, including what has been set out in these articles. Gustav Ungerer,for one, was convinced that the “Le Doux” of the Anthony Bacon Papers wasthe same man as the royal courier “Le Doux” whom we find in the service ofKing Henri IV and Lord Buzanval during 1598 and 1599. As for theidentification of Le Doux as Marlowe and as the real “Shake-speare”, this is aquestion for the reader to decide, but in my own opinion the documentary andcircumstantial evidence are now combining to build a formidable case. We stilllack further samples of Le Doux’s handwriting, and one would like to knowmore about his book acquisitions, but hopefully these will be forthcoming.

If I am correct, with Wraight and others, in suggesting that Monsieur Le Douxhad been a friend of King Henri IV since the latter’s early years in Navarre,and was later appointed as his royal courier, then Le Doux was ideally placedto gain an understanding of the trials and burdens of kingship, which are somemorably and movingly depicted by “Shake-speare” (for example, in King Lear ). It was an age of assassinations and plots of assassinations; in suchtimes, Le Doux would have seen clearly enough that every monarch mustreign beneath the ever-present threat of the “Sword of Damocles”. Such wasto be the fate of King Henri: he was murdered in 1610, by a religious fanaticnamed Ravaillac, spurred on to the crime by the Jesuits.

King Henri is frequently, and justifiably, called France’s greatest King - Henri le Grand , famous for his courage, his cordiality, his “amours” and his wisdom.In his youth, however, Henri had been the victim of religious persecution - as



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such, he would surely have been sympathetic towards the plight of the exiledChristopher Marlowe, forced into hiding because of his religious opinions.Despite Henri’s strategic “conversion” to Catholicism in 1593, the King wouldnever forget what the Catholic mob had done in 1572, spurred on by the

Guises - perpetrating such outrages as the murder of Admiral Coligny, themuch-admired the leader of the Huguenots, and the brutal slaughter of manythousands of innocents.

It has often been pointed out that the Shake-speare plays display a familiaritywith Courtly protocol - for example, the etiquette surrounding visiting princes,ambassadors and nobles. As a royal courier and diplomatic envoy, MonsieurLe Doux was well-placed to observe the procedures of government and theconduct of international diplomacy - including the urgent “peace or war”negotiations that are so vividly depicted in Henry V :104 these matters were thevery substance of Le Doux’s daily employment. The works of “Shake-speare”,with their extraordinary knowledge of life at Courts throughout Europe, offer

us an impressively thorough portrait of that glamorous, yet precarious, world.As we have seen, King Henri’s friend Paul Choart, the Seigneur de Buzanval,was another key figure in the emerging history of Le Doux, bearing in mindBuzanval’s long residence in London during the 1580s and his friendshipswith both Anthony Bacon and Sir Francis Walsingham, Christopher Marlowe’semployer at that time. One would like to know more about Buzanval,particularly in earlier years. This aspect is yet to be confirmed, but I stronglysuspect that during his residence in London during the 1580s, AmbassadorBuzanval was a literary patron, at a time when there was a certain vogue forFrench culture; if so, then he was continuing a tradition of hospitalityestablished by his predecessor, Michel de Castelnau, who was a Humanist

patron and a friend of Giordano Bruno105

. The Seigneur de Buzanval seemsto have been associated with the circle of Sir Philip Sidney; he is known tohave been an admirer of Sidney’s beloved “Stella”, Lady Penelope Rich,106 the sister of the Earl of Essex.

It is clear that Monsieur Le Doux had easy access to a wide range of books,both in France and in the Netherlands - for example, at the Royal Library inParis, where Joseph Scaliger’s friend Isaac Casaubon was sub-Librarian fromJanuary 1599 until 1610. At The Hague and the nearby University town ofLeiden, he could readily have obtained books through the Seigneur deBuzanval, Joseph Scaliger and Daniel Van der Meulen. All of these men hadscholarly contacts throughout Europe - in the case of Van der Meulen, most

were in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Bremen and Nuremburg.

104 Particularly in Act III of Henry V.

105 Wraight, In Search of Christopher Marlowe, p.164.

106 See J. A. Van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers and the Leiden Humanists (OUP,

1962).



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I would suggest, therefore, that a number of “Shake-speare” plays of the1590s were written in Paris or at The Hague, where Le Doux’s departure wasfrequently delayed for long periods because of contrary winds in the Channel.

On a more personal level, the travels of Le Doux/Marlowe in the coastalregions of France and the Netherlands could well have presented him with anoccasional opportunity to be re-united with friends and family - perhaps evena return to England, if only briefly, for a meeting at Dover or adjacent ports.

It was to be expected that Le Doux/Marlowe, as a “fugitive” from the Court ofStar Chamber, would be careful to “cover his tracks” as far as possible; butwe are very fortunate to have the evidence that was hidden for so longamongst the Anthony Bacon Papers and so admirably expounded by our laterespected colleague, A. D. Wraight, in Shake-speare New Evidence . Thatinformation has now been supplemented with the new documentary evidencethat is discussed in these articles. Certainly there is much that remains

unknown; but, if we are willing to pursue the emerging clues with theperseverance that they merit, and with an open mind, much more will bediscovered, shedding new light on the meaning of the great works of “Shake-speare” and the powerful inspiration that lay behind them.

© C.W.H. Gamble 2010

Acknowledgements

My thanks are due in particular to the following, for their kind assistance:

• Mr Bart Smith, Head of the Humanities Reference Service at the BritishLibrary

• Ms Cara Lewis of the Hereford City Library; and to

• Dr Marie-Christine Engels and her colleagues at the Nationaal Archiefat The Hague

Appendices 1-3 follow.



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Appendix 1: The New Documentary Evidencein Chronological Order

Note: The documents analysed in my previous article, consisting mostly ofletters from the Seigneur de Buzanval and Francois D’Aerssen, are datedbetween 28th October 1598 (NS) and 22nd November 1599 (NS).

Document A

A letter from Liévin Calvart to the States-General of the Netherlands, sentfrom Paris and dated 14th March 1597 NS:

Heading: The Besieging of Calais offered by Elizabeth; Peace Proposalsthrough the mediation of the Pope.

The town of Calais had fallen to the forces of Archduke Albert in April of 1596.Early in 1597, Pope Clement VIII sent an envoy to Paris (the General desCordeliers) in the hope of persuading King Henri IV to make peace withSpain; but Calvart tells us that the King was “wavering” and still inclined tocontinue the war.

Queen Elizabeth had previously offered to send a force to besiege Calais, butonly on the condition of retaining it as a “pledge-town”, like Brill and Flushingin the Netherlands. King Henri had vehemently rejected Elizabeth’s offer, butnow, in March of 1597, we find him sending his Ambassador, the Sieur deFouquerolles, to Elizabeth with an urgent request for help towards the relief of

Amiens, and with a mandate, in the last resort, even to offer her Calais on theterms she had demanded. At the same time, the King is going to Beauvais toprepare for an attack on Arras. From Beauvais the King intends to sendMonsieur Le Doux on a mission to the States-General at The Hague. Henrileft Pontoise, just outside Paris, on March 14th 1597, and on the same day hewrote a letter to the States-General with an appeal for funds, which reachedthem on March 31st 1597.

This schedule allows plenty of time for Le Doux to return to Paris before theend of May, bringing with him the letters from the States-General which arementioned by Joseph Scaliger in Document B, below. The ever-diligent LeDoux was back in The Hague again in July 1597 (receiving a payment of fifty

florins around July 26th) and again at the end of August (a further payment offifty florins was recorded on September 13th).

The news of the disastrous loss of Amiens had reached Paris on March 12th1597, just two days prior to Liévin Calvart’s letter107.

107 For the sudden loss of Amiens, see the notes to Letter 48 in Appendix 2



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This is the relevant paragraph in Calvart’s letter, mentioning Le Doux:

His Majesty [Henri IV] requires, in the first part of the aforesaid Resolution, by

summons of his said Ambassador [the Sieur de Fouquerolles), that as soon as

my own health permits, I should attend on His Majesty, in order to resolve onthe return and dispatch of the afore-mentioned Ambassador, and that he [Henri]

will deputise the courier Le Doux from Beauvais, in order to advise Your

Honours in this matter. If His Majesty will now give instructions to the former

[“Van’t gene S.M. nu ter hant sal trekken”], he will solicit far more advice and

help, than can be said [expected?] of certain Resolutions.

Henri’s Ambassador to the Netherlands, the Seigneur de Buzanval (whocertainly knew Le Doux) had travelled to France in late January 1597; he wasin Paris on the 13th of March (Letter 48 in Appendix 2). By April 19th he wasback in Zealand, at Flushing; he reached The Hague on May 31st 1597.

From: Gedenkstukken van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt en Ziyn Tiyd (1862), VolTwo, by M. L. Deventer (Letter CV, p.148): there is a copy at the BayerischeStaatsbibliothek in Munich.

Liévin Calvart died at Paris in late May 1597. His successor was FrancoisD’Aerssens, duly appointed in 1598. The Sieur de Fouquerolles was killed inJuly 1597 at the siege of Amiens.



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Document B

A letter from Joseph Scaliger (“De Lescale”) to the States-General of theNetherlands, from Paris, dated 30th May 1597 NS

The letters which your Lordships have written to the King [Henri] by way of thecourier Le Doulx [sic] have been delivered into the very hands of His Majesty

by the Sieur de la Rossiniere, elder son of the late Monsieur de Calvart.

(signed “De Lescale”)

This letter would seem to confirm earlier indications that Scaliger and Le Douxknew each other.

A fleet of merchant vessels, passing alongside the islands of Xaitonge [off La

Rochelle], produced so much alarm in that region that the news has reached as far as this town [i.e. Paris], where the “wolf” is declared to be much larger

than it actually is - they are saying that it must be the Spanish army, consistingof a hundred and twenty ships, in which there are, supposedly, twenty thousand

soldiers.

Scaliger also mentions the departure and rapid return of Sir ThomasEdmondes, Agent of Queen Elizabeth (see Winwood’s Memorials ).

From: Vreede’s Inleiding tot Eene Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Diplomatie (1858 edition, published at Utrecht by Broese), Vol 2, part 1(Appendices, p.178 of third section, Bijlage XLVI)

Note: As the following document shows, Le Doux was the bearer of a letterdated 27th August 1597 from Oldenbarnevelt (at The Hague) to Antoine deSailly (presumably at Pecquigney).



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Document C

A letter from Antoine de Sailly, Agent at Calais of the States-General, toJohan van Oldenbarnevelt, the Advocate of Holland; sent fromPecquigny (near Amiens, on the River Somme, in Picardy, Northern

France) and dated 9th September 1597 NS

Monsieur,

I have received your letter of the 27th August via the courier Le Dou [sic], in

which you inform me of the surrender of the town of Berck. From my last letter,

of the 31st August, you will have seen how much progress there is at the siege of

Amiens. Now I can tell you that the King and the strongest of his army expect to

reach the conclusion of the siege in six days, there being soldiers installed on

the rampart between the top and the bottom, where the mines are, and five or six

of them are ready to go off.

(signed “De Sailli”)

From: Vreede’s Inleiding tot Eene Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Diplomatie (1858), Vol 2, part 1 (Appendices, pp.167-168 of third section,Bijlage XLV)

This letter is also reproduced in Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Volume 80, which is Dr S. P. Haak’s Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt (1934, publisherMartinus Nijhoff), No.194, p.362.108

Note: If Le Doux was the bearer of this letter, he would have departed on thesame day, September 9th, taking ship for The Hague; with a favourable wind,he could easily have reached The Hague in four days (the prevailing wind inthe English Channel is from the South-West or West).

The States-General made a payment (normally 50 florins) to Jacques LeDoulx [sic] on September 13th 1597; he received further payments at TheHague later in the year (Resolutions of 9th October, 14th November (“perprocuratie”, “by proxy”) and 20th December.)

108 See the website http://www.inghist.nl/retroboeken/oldenbarnevelt 1570-1620



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Document E

A letter from Francois Van Aerssen, Agent of the United Provinces inFrance, to Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, sent from Paris and dated 29thMay 1598 NS:

Much of this letter is in cipher.

Monsieur,

Matters are much improved [“meures”] since your departure for England, and my previous letters of the 15th [May, from Rennes] sent via Le Doux,

concerning which, although I could report to you but little with sufficient certainty, I do not doubt that, as you approach the frontiers, you will have been

abundantly informed from other sources. Everything has been handled with somuch secrecy that one can hardly extract any information about it. In any case,

as we are approaching the settlement, both regarding England and the publication, it will not be long before we see everything clearly.

D’Aerssen states (pp.397-398):

I spoke the day before yesterday with Monsieur Edmont [Sir Thomas Edmondes]

at Orleans, newly returned to his station from England in order to present

himself here on the day ordained, but I found him completely disposed and

inclined towards the peace” and adds that “the inclination of the Queen [of

England] is towards peace...

Sir Thomas Edmondes was in regular contact with the Earl of Essex - hisextant letters from France include those of 13th November 1594, 28th August1595 and 8th December 1595.110

France is described as:

a sick country, exhausted by the continuance of war and unable to sustain it

much longer.

D’Aerssen mentions the general apprehension, not least of Oldenbarnevelthimself, that:

the disengagement of the Queen is the certain and inevitable ruin of our State”

[i.e. the Netherlands].

Nevertheless, he still regards Elizabeth as

the Protectress of our freedoms ... She is sending ambassadors to the Kings of

Poland and Denmark.

110 See Ungerer, op cit .



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King Henri has reminded D’Aerssen that:

it is his wish that the assistance which he gives us from time to time,

surreptitiously [‘sous main’], must be kept secret.

This sentence is mostly in cipher.

From: Dr S. P. Haak’s Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt (1934, publ. MartinusNijhoff), No. 222, p.397-399.



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Document F

A letter from Francois Van Aerssen to Johan van Oldenbarnevelt,Advocate of Holland, from Paris, dated 29th May 1598 NS

I have not been able to conceal from you the contentment that people have here,regarding your negotiations, and the regret of people of goodwill - those who

are well-affected towards the conservation of the State [the Netherlands] - in

that it could not have had better success.

…your letter of the seventeenth [May] …only reached me today; since then, you

are sure to have received the letter that I had conveyed to you via Le Doux, of the 15th [May], the same day on which he arrived at Rennes. I will use all

diligence in having the two letters verified [examined], when I have received that of Seigneur Lobel.

The implication of the above, as with the previous letter, Document E (bothdated May 29th), is that Van Aerssen and Le Doux were at Rennes on May15th 1598 (rather than Paris), and that it was from Rennes that Le Doux wassent to The Hague on that occasion.

From: Dr S. P. Haak’s Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt (1934, publ. MartinusNijhoff), No. 223, pp.400-401.



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Document G

A letter from Lord Buzanval to Daniel van der Meulen, Merchant ofLeiden, sent from The Hague and dated 1st January 1599 NS

I thank you a million times for the book that you sent me, which you have greatlyenriched , for in the opinion of Monsieur de L'Escalle [Joseph Scaliger], the

ornamental borders are even more beautiful than the binding. Le Doux is

traveling to you to see if we could obtain [“recouvrer” - “recover”?] some

cauliflower seeds through your agency; I am making this request as a personal

favour and also to assist him [Le Doux] in the matter, if you have the means to

do it. As for news from France, we are pursuing [“nous sommes après”] our

Edict [i.e. the Peace of Vervins], which the King strongly urges; the judicial

Courts [“parlements”] are being evasive and the ecclesiastics are strongly

opposed. At this beginning of the New Year, the nuptials of Madame [Catherine

de Bourbon, only sister of Henri IV] are being celebrated. Your German princes

are gathering in strength, but, so far as I can see, without concluding anything.

Good day on this Happy New Year, Monsieur.

From: Kernkamp & Heyst, op cit, Letter 64, p.232.

Van Der Meulen was frequently obtaining books for Buzanval, often throughhis contacts in Germany (for example, Jacques de Bodry). Like JosephScaliger, Van der Meulen was based at Leiden; since that town is only twentymiles from The Hague, it was quite possible for them to receive each others’letters on the same day they were written.

A footnote states the following regarding Le Doux’s departure from TheHague:

Jacques Le Doux, regular Courier of Henri IV [“ordinaris Koerier van

Hendrick IV”] attended in particular to the diplomatic post between the French

government and Buzanval. On 4th January 1599, Le Doux departed from The

Hague, probably supplied with the cauliflower seeds, in order to deliver a

memorandum of Buzanval to Villeroy, who had ordered such seeds from Daniel

van der Meulen on two previous occasions.111

The phrase “ordinaris Koerier” confirms that Le Doux was a royal courier inthe direct employment of King Henri IV, rather than that of Lord Villeroy orLord Buzanval.

As I have stated above, the order for cauliflower seeds must have been madein connection with the French King’s program of agricultural reform, designedto ward off the ever-present threat of famine. In view of this danger, in a letterdated 26th February 1596, (Letter 19 in Kernkamp), Ambassador Buzanvalhad made an urgent request for Van Der Meulen’s assistance:

111 See letters 19, 20 and 21 in Appendix 2, below.



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Sir, I have a very substantial requirement for cauliflower seeds, Monsieur de

Villeroy has demanded it of me urgently.

Just two days later he had received the first consignment, with more to follow.

A letter from Buzanval to Villeroy, dated 4th January 1599, refers to thefamine then raging in Spain and Portugal, which is also mentioned byFrancois D’Aerssen in his letter of 19th June 1599.

Note: Le Doux was the bearer of Letter XLVI from Buzanval to Villeroy, dated1st August 1599 (No. XLVI in Vreede); he left The Hague on the same day,carrying also a letter from Oldenbarnevelt to van Aerssen, mentioned below.He appears to have reached Paris in about a week, for we find him at Blois(near Orleans) on the 15th August. He left Blois for the Netherlands aroundAugust 16th, travelling via Paris, and arrived at The Hague on September23rd 1599.



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Document H

A letter from Francois van Aerssen to Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, sentfrom Blois and dated 15th August 1599 NS:

Monsieur; I wrote to you from Orleans on the 8th [August], and from this town on the 12th,

which which was fairly close to what I promised, though I wrote only briefly

[succinctly] regarding the subject: however, the affairs here and the season

must sufficiently excuse me, since these consist of nothing more than a love-

clique [“qui ne consistent qu’en caballe d’amour”].

These disapproving remarks of the Calvinist Aerssen are reminiscent of theshocked response of Jacques Petit towards the immoral goings-on atBurley112.

Your letter via Le Doux gave me great satisfaction at the settlement [payment],

concerning which I notified you through my servant [“laquais”]. For previously

I dared not hope for it at once, considering the uncertainty of intentions and the

first uncertain indications of the event of your announcement [“placcart”], but

now I no longer see any difficulty that we could have in making our position

secure. I would gladly insist on promises alone, were it not for the fact that

necessities are urged upon me, of which I pretend to know nothing, more

especially as so much money is squandered [“se consument”] as a bonus. And

at least I promise myself that, nevertheless, the fruit of my entreaties will not be

entirely useless. It is the place of the servant to make his endeavours, but it is

the place of the master, in rejecting them, to consider the times, the men and the

motives involved. If I have not assessed things as you do, Monsieur - for you see

very clearly in this matter - your great experience gives me sufficient excuse.

The date of collection falls due tomorrow. To this end, Le Doux is leaving for Paris with full instructions [“avec tout ordre”]. I am awaiting His Majesty for

the authorisation, which could be delayed until Wednesday because of his pursuit [“recerches”] of Mademoiselle D’Antraques [Catherine Henriette

d’Entragues, Marquess de Verneuil], whom he will follow to Langeais[Langes], five leagues south-west of Tours; this mode of life is dissatisfying to

everyone, and still there is no sign of a conclusion; for we believe that, owing tothe indifference of the King, the Florentine arrangement [i.e. the long-standing

plan for a marriage between Henri and Marie de Medici] is virtually hopeless,

in view of the direct [non-mediated - “sans entremise”] solicitation made by the

Emperor [Rudolph II] for the success of his own suit, whereas the King usesonly indirect courses.

From: Haak, op. cit ., no 268, p.543.

Van Aerssen’s complaints are understandable, though it was not particularlyunusual for marriage negotiations to be conducted “by proxy”, as in the case

112 See Wraight, op cit ., p.100 ff



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of King Henri and Marie de Medici; indeed the initial marriage ceremonywould also be “by proxy”. Nevertheless, d’Aerssen and his colleagues werefrustrated by the protracted negotiations. In March of 1599, King Henri hadsent his senior representatives Secretary Villeroy and Cardinal Gondi to

Florence, in order to move matters along; but there were further delays, andthe Papal annulment was not issued until December 17th 1599. The marriageagreement was at last concluded in late December, and the Contract wassigned on April 25th 1600 (NS).

Regarding the marriage hopes of the Holy Roman Emperor, V. J. Pittsconfirms that:

the Austrian Habsburgs had proposed a number of Archdukes for Marie’s hand in the 1590s, even at one point Emperor Rudolph II.113

Thus we see that in 1599, the Holy Roman Emperor was wooing Marie deMedici by “direct” means. Apart from his rather gloomy temperament and hisreputation for mysticism, the Emperor would presumably have been a mosteligible husband for any aristocratic lady in Europe; in the event, he nevermarried.

Emperor Rudolph II was almost certainly known to Monsieur Le Doux from thelatter’s mission to Prague in 1596, and there certainly could have been latercontacts. Some have suggested that the magician Prospero, in Shake-speare’s play The Tempest , was inspired by Rudolph II.

113 Henri IV of France; His Reign and Age, p.229



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Appendix 2: The Letters of the Seigneur de Buzanvalto Daniel Van Der Meulen, 1595-1599;

with some Historical and Biographical Notes

Introductory Note

The eighty letters114 in this collection are all addressed to Lord Buzanval’sfriend Daniel van der Meulen, the prominent Leiden merchant. They were allsent from The Hague, with the exception of Letter 48 (from Paris).

It is certain that Van der Meulen knew Monsieur Le Doux; AmbassadorBuzanval refers to Le Doux by name in Letter 64, dated 1st January 1599(listed also as Document G in Appendix 1, above). This must be placedalongside the twenty-two further references to Le Doux contained in theAmbassador’s letters to Secretary Villeroy and King Henri IV, as published byVreede (see my previous article on this website115).

I have included certain details of the remaining letters not only because oftheir intrinsic interest, but also because they give us an invaluable insight intothe historical background for the years 1596 to 1599, for example in relation tofamine (Letters 19, 21 and 64). Furthermore, the Ambassador’s references tosuch scholars as the Camerarius brothers, Dr. Lobetius, Vulcanius, Clusiusand Temporarius present us with much useful information, since many ofthese men also acted as suppliers of intelligence, and some of them certainlyknew Monsieur Le Doux. Of course it must be understood that these“intelligencers” were not “spies” in the modern sense, but rather providers ofgeneral information on political and strategic developments throughoutEurope, in an age when accurate knowledge of such matters was continually

obstructed by slow communications and the endless spreading of rumour.For similar reasons, the extensive Van der Meulen Archive is an extremelypromising resource for future investigation; it is very likely to contain furtherreferences to Monsieur Le Doux.

Direct quotations from Ambassador Buzanval’s letters are given in blue italics;the remaining quotations are mostly from Kernkamp and Heyst.

1595

Letter 4: 28th July 1595

Mentions both Joseph Scaliger and the French diplomat and scholar Jacquesde Bodry (see Letters 29 and 30) - Buzanval and Van der Meulen were inregular contact with both.

114 As published in Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschapp, Vols 76-78 (1962), edited by Kernkamp and

Heyst. 115

Article 5 in Marlowe Society Research Journal Vol. 6 (2009): http://www.marlowe-society.org/pubs/journal/journal06.html



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Letter 7: 13th October 1595

The difficulties regarding rations [“vivvres”] are everywhere so great that I

have no idea how His Majesty will possibly be able to maintain his army in the

regions of Picardy.

There was widespread famine at this time:

If the harvest of 1594, both in the Republic and elsewhere, had already been

poor, in the following year the scarcity of corn became even worse ... from the

end of 1595, the French King repeatedly urged the States-General for urgent

assistance in the form of corn.116

Letter 8: 2nd November 1595

Because of the great losses that some of the German Princes had experienced in

the war between Spain and the Republic, the Imperial Rijksdag [Diet] at

Regensburg decided to try to bring about a peace. Emperor Rudolf II and the

States-General exchanged a number of letters, and certain German Princes

were charged with embassies to Brussels and The Hague. However, the States-

General refused them passports and notified the Emperor more than once that

the sending of delegates would not be appreciated.117

These comments may have some bearing on the mission of Baron Zeiroteineto the English and Scottish Courts.

Letter 10: 24th November 1595

The son of Buzanval’s friend Du Plessis, Philippe de Mornay (1579-1605),has enrolled as a student at Leiden - see also Letter 30, below.

Letter 11: 7th December 1595

Mentions the French envoy Nicolas Harlay de Sancy (1546-1629).

1596

Jacques de Bodry wrote to Camerarius on 18th February 1596 (Lettres , p.445), asking if it was true that the Spanish army was recruiting mercenaries inGermany.

Letter 19: 26th February 1596:

Ambassador Buzanval makes an urgent request for supplies of cauliflower

seed:

Sir, I have a very substantial requirement for cauliflower seeds, Monsieur de

Villeroy has demanded it of me urgently.

116 Kernkamp, op cit , p.189

117 Ibid , p.190



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Buzanval also states that he is expecting shortly to be sending a messengerto France (Paris is implied, since the consignments of seeds are for SecretaryVilleroy). Could this perhaps have been Le Doux? A. D. Wraight believed thathe and Petit had made a brief visit to the Continent at this time. The dates

seem to fit quite well with the issue of passports, etc.The French Ambassador at Constantinople (Francois Savary, Count ofBrèves) has reported that the Sultan Mohammed III (the “Grand Seigneur”)has personally taken up arms in the Hungarian war. The increasing power ofthe Turks, both on land and at sea, was at this time a matter of great concernthroughout Christian Europe; Buzanval warns that “they are arming 150 galleys ”.

Letter 20: 28th February 1596

Buzanval writes “I fear for Calais ” - this was a very accurate presentiment,since the town would be captured in April after a short siege. It was an event

that took everyone else completely by surprise, so the Ambassador’scomment once again reveals his political and strategic astuteness.

Letter 21: 7th March 1596

Buzanval reminds Van der Meulen of the order for cauliflower seeds.

Letter 23: 4th April 1596

Again mentions Joseph Scaliger (“Monsieur de l’Escalle”).


Reports that Antoine de Sailly is at Middelburg. He was formerly based at

Calais, but escaped before the town surrendered to the forces of ArchdukeAlbert (on April 24th1596 NS).

Now that the enemy had made himself master of Calais, many expected that the

[Anglo-Dutch] expedition into Spanish waters would not proceed. Despite this

situation, the Republic’s auxiliary-squadron sailed from Zealand at the end of

April. Nevertheless, the expeditionary fleet, under the overall command of

Essex, did not sail from Plymouth until the 13th of June.118

King Henri’s special envoy, the Seigneur de Sancy, left for England in earlyApril 1596, at the beginning of the siege of Calais; Bouillon left for Englandafter its fall. Sancy was expected to go to The Hague before returning to

France, but instead he returned directly to France (circa 28th May NS).

In a letter dated 16th May 1596 NS, Jacques de Bodry asked Daniel Van derMeulen to forward a number of letters to Sancy at The Hague; however, Jan

118 Ibid , p.202.



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den Tex confirms that Sancy did not in fact go to the Netherlands, but “againstexpectations” sailed directly for France. 119

Letter 27: 17th May 1596

Ambassador Buzanval, at The Hague, is awaiting the arrival of Sancy andLiévin Calvart returning from England. Calvart arrived there on June 5th, butwithout Sancy.

On 16th May 1596, the occupants of La Fere concluded a pact with KingHenri. The town was in his hands by the 22nd.

Letter 29: 14th June 1596

Yesterday a Royal Courier arrived here.

Monsieur Ancel…is here, preparing to go on a mission to the Princes of

Germany...

He will take with him important information for Jacques de Bodry [“tout clairté de affaires ”], but he cannot leave for another month.

Guillaume d’Ancel (d.1615) was the ambassador of Henri III and Henri IV inGermany from 1576 to 1612. Kernkamp states that “he was a member of thedelegation [to England - implied] that concluded the Treaty of Greenwich”.From June to November 1596, d’Ancel remained in the Dutch Republic and“took part in the conclusion of the Triple Alliance”120 (October 31st). Hereturned to Germany about 11th November “where, together with Jacques deBodry, he tried unsuccessfully to induce some of the German Princes to jointhe Alliance.” 121

Jacques de Bongars de Bodry (1554-1612) had been appointed in 1593 asKing Henri’s envoy to the Princes of Germany. He was a friend of IsaacCasaubon and the Seigneur de Buzanval, to whom he wrote regularly. Healso exchanged correspondence with Daniel Van der Meulen and Guillaumed’Ancel, Henri IV’s resident ambassador at Prague, much of which hassurvived (in the Van der Meulen Archive). He had contacts in Switzerland andthroughout Germany, including Cologne and Frankfurt, and was sent by HenriIV on numerous missions to Denmark, England and Holland. During the mid-to-late 1590s, he was based at Strasbourg, at the house of Dr. JohannesLobetius. This, in itself, is significant, since Dr. Lobetius had been an agent ofSir Francis Walsingham during the 1580s - see Letter 54, below.

Jacques de Bodry also corresponded frequently with the Camerarius brothers;he regularly received “all kinds of news from Southern, Eastern and CentralEurope, which reached him partly via Camerarius”.122 It was a very efficient

119 Ibid , p.203.

120 Ibid , p.205.

121 Ibid , p.205.

122 Ibid , p.179 - see Letter 30.



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system: “the reports concerning the Turkish war, which reached Paris via Vander Meulen, were among the very first to arrive there.” 123

Liévin Calvart is still at The Hague, with Ambassador Buzanval.


This letter has the following postscript:

Monsieur (Van der Meulen), there is a small packet for Noremberg which I ask

you kindly to forward.

In this context “Noremberg ” looks very much like a code-name, almostcertainly for one of the Camerarius brothers, Philippus and Joachim II, orboth. It is noticeable that Buzanval does not give their names, though it isabundantly clear from the correspondence of others that the Ambassador andhis agents knew them.

Kernkamp’s footnote reads;

This was, in all probability, Joachim Camerarius the Younger (1534-1598),

Physician and Botanist at Neurenberg, founder of the Collegium Medicorum

there, to whom Buzanval wrote and who took care of the forwarding of the

latter’s letters. Jacques de Bodry corresponded regularly with JoachimCamerarius II; the vast majority of the former’s Lettres, which were written

between 1588 and 1598, are addressed to Camerarius. They were published in1695.124

These documents are of great value, because the fiercely-Protestant Camerarius

… had very good connections with the German Princes, as did his fellow- physician Johannes Wyer. Camerarius, in return, was able to enlighten his friends regarding events in Central and Eastern Europe; thus in the summer of

1596, when the son of Du Plessis-Mornay [a close friend of Buzanval] was

staying with Camerarius, Jacques de Bodry asked the latter, now Town-

Physician of Nuremberg, to let his guest have copies of all news from Austria,

Bohemia, Hungary, Transylvania, Poland, Pruisen [Prussia] and Sweden.

The young Philippe de Mornay visited Frankfurt’s famous Book-Fair in 1596,in the company of Janus Dousa (Jr).The Book Fair was held twice a year,around Easter and in September; we may be sure that Marlowe/Le Douxwould have visited the Book-Fair at least once if he had the opportunity, which

does seem to have been the case, given his travels in Germany.Carolus Clusius, Seigneur de Watènes (1525-1609) (Charles de l'Écluse,L'Escluse) was a Flemish doctor and pioneering botanist. He kept up anextensive correspondence with Joachim Camerarius II, which was publishedin 1942 by F.W.T.Hunger. Clusius was perhaps the most influential of all 16th

123 Ibid , p.179.

124 Ibid , p.188. See, for example, his letter of 24th August 1595, sent from Ansbach.



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Century scientific horticulturists. From 1593 he was a Professor at Leiden; theEmperor Rudolf II was one of his patrons. A letter from the Seigneur deBuzanval to Carolus Clusius, dated 8th October 1599, is in the BerendsCollection at Leiden.

Note: the Treaty of Greenwich was ratified by Henri IV on 9th July 1596.


I ask you to kindly put Noremberg125

in possession of the enclosed [letters] for a

French gentleman who is in Hungary.


The Duke of Bouillon has not yet arrived in the Netherlands.

It had been anticipated that immediately after the 9th of July, Bouillon would go

to England in order to have the Treaty sworn by Queen Elizabeth, and that soon

thereafter he would come to the Republic. However, Henri IV delayed for solong over sending Bouillon - who did not arrive in England until August 25th -

that it was widely feared in the Republic that the French King was trying to

reach an accord with Philip II, and for that reason was prepared to annul the

Treaty of Greenwich.126

Letter 35: 15th August 1596

Guillaume d’Ancel is still in the Netherlands.


The Duke of Bouillon arrived at Dover on 25th August. He returned to the

Netherlands in September, arriving in Zealand on the 20th.

On 31st October 1596, the Triple Alliance and a separate Treaty between theRepublic and France were signed. At that point, Bouillon intended to return toFrance, but unfavourable winds kept him in the Republic until 25th November.

On 19th October 1596, King Henri was presented with the Order of theGarter, in Rouen Cathedral. The King remained at Rouen until the beginningof February 1597.


Guillaume d’Ancel should be leaving by ship in three days.

Dietrich Wyer (Veyer), agent of the States-General in 1596 and 1597, was sent

to Germany with the French diplomats Guillaume d’Ancel and Jacques de

Bodry, to try to persuade the German Princes to join in the Triple Alliance.127

125 “Noremberg” = the Camerarius brothers, as in Letter 30. Ibid, p.207.

126 Ibid , p.208.

127 Ibid , p.213.



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1596 - Spain Bankrupt


The Archduke Albert has attempted to have Sir Francis Vere assassinated, by

means of treachery (Sir Francis Vere was commander of English supporttroops in the Republic from 1589 to 1604).

For this purpose he made use of the Scottish nobleman James Wimes [Lord

Wemis], who made contact with Captain Zegher de Rollé …who quickly

informed on him.

Wemis was beheaded and quartered on 8th January 1597.

On 4th December 1596, Jacques de Bodry sent Van der Meulen two reportsfrom Frankfurt concerning events in the Turkish War. “the conflict betweenMohammed III and Archduke Maximilien III of Austria, brother of Emperor

Rudolf II.”On 31st December 1596, the States-General ratifies the Triple Alliance.

1597

On 16th January 1597 the Seigneur de Buzanval left The Hague on a missionto Paris, probably accompanied by Monsieur Le Doux. They were travellingwith a Dutch delegation to King Henri. Buzanval left Zealand on the 26thJanuary and had reached Paris by March 13th.

Letter 47: 16th January 1597

Buzanval asks Van der Meulen to forward a packet to Guillaume d’Ancel, whowas still in Southern Germany (now without Jacques de Bodry, however),trying to win over the German Princes and persuade them to link up with theTriple Alliance.

Letter 48: 13th March 1597 (from Paris)

On 11th March, in a surprise capture, Spanish troops had taken the

insufficiently-defended town of Amiens - which was a disaster for King Henri,

since he had laid up there everything necessary for the new campaign. Archduke

Albert now dominated the line of the Somme and directly threatened Paris. The

report of the fall of Amiens reached Paris during the night of 12th March; it

caused enormous consternation there ... [The Duke of] Sully recounts how the

report struck like a bolt of lightning in carnival-celebrating Paris.128

Amiens was not recovered until 19th September 1597.

From Liévin Calvart’s letter of March 14th, also from Paris (Document A inAppendix 1), we learn that King Henri had left Pontoise (just outside Paris)that very morning, heading for Beauvais, and that the King intended to

128 Ibid , p.220.



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“deputise” Le Doux with the mission of conveying an update on the situationto the States-General at The Hague, with an urgent appeal for assistance. Itmay be implied that Le Doux was already at Beauvais, though it is possiblethat he accompanied the King on his journey from Pontoise. From Beauvais,

King Henri hoped to be able to launch a surprise attack on Atrecht (Arras),perhaps with the intention of encircling Amiens and cutting off the northernsupply route. On the same day (March 14th 1597) the King wrote a letter tothe States-General of the Netherlands, asking them:

to help him without delay, by sending money and by directing the States’ army

to undertake some action. As early as the day of receipt, 31st March, Johan van

der Veken had obtained a mandate to transfer 75,000 guilders.129

The logical conclusion is surely that the royal courier Monsieur Le Doux wasthe bearer of King Henri’s letter to the States-General; and, if Calvart’s lettercaught up with Le Doux at Beauvais, then he could well have delivered that

also.Ambassador Buzanval was back in The Hague by May 31st 1597.


I beg you, sir, to borrow on my behalf, from Monsieur Vulcanius, a comedy by

Aristophanes, Eirene [Peace], printed at Paris [in 1589] and interpreted by

Florens Christianus; also a book in Greek interpreted by Passeratius [Jean

Passerat, 1534-1602], of which he spoke with me.

This was either Vers de la Chasse et d’Amour or Kalendae Januariae et varia quaedam poemata, both published in 1597 at Paris. The latter is mentioned in

the auction catalogue of Vulcanius’ Library, now at the Meermanno-Westreenianum Museum at The Hague.

Bonaventura Vulcanius (1538-1614), the Dutch Humanist and Classicalscholar, published the Historia Alexandri of Arrian (c.95-175 AD); he wasSecretary to Philippe de Marnix in 1577; in 1581 he took up the position ofProfessor of Latin and Greek at the University of Leiden, where his studentsincluded Daniel Heinsius and Hugo Grotius.


A package for the French Ambassador in Switzerland (Nicolas Brûlart,Seigneur de Sillery) is to be entrusted to the keeping of Doctor Lobetius atStrasbourg.

A Note on Dr. Lobetius: Dr. Lobetius had been one of Sir FrancisWalsingham’s agents during the 1580s. The British History Online website130 has the following documents:

129 Ibid , p.220.

130 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/



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• A letter dated 24th March 1583 (OS), from George Fremin to SirFrancis Walsingham, sent from Antwerp: “I send you some Swiss news, from Lobetius”.

•

A letter dated 27th

July 1583, from Cobham to Walsingham, enclosesreports from Dr. Lobetius.

• A letter dated 14th January 1586, from Dr Lobetius to Walsingham,regarding “what is to be expected from the Protestant Princes in Germany”; and

• A letter dated November 19th 1587, from Dr. Lobetius to Walsingham,sent from Strasbourg.

Dr Lobetius was a friend of Philippe Du Plessis Sr.; he also knew Sir RobertSidney.

1598

In March of 1598, a Dutch delegation travelled to France, led byOldenbarnevelt and Justin of Nassau; they were hoping to persuade Henri IVto suspend the peace negotiations (for more information, and the involvementof Monsieur Le Doux, see Documents E and F in Appendix 1 above). Thisdelegation included Francois Van Aerssen and Hugo de Groot.

The Marriage of Archduke Albert

On the 16th May 1598, King Philip II announced the betrothal of his daughter,the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, to Archduke Albert, Commander of the

Spanish army in the Netherlands; the Archduke left for Spain on 14thSeptember 1598; the marriage by proxy took place on 15th November andwas solemnised at Valencia on 18th April 1599. Evidently Albert was not onvery good terms with his brother Rudolf II:

It was intended that Archduke Albert would officially inform his brother, the

Emperor Rudolf, about his marriage; P. Bor 131 relates how the meeting took

place with a distinct lack of harmony. Since the plague was raging in Prague,

the Archduke had to visit his brother in a castle located some distance from the

city.132

Note : On October 25th 1598, Jacques de Bodry wrote to Van der Meulen from

Strasbourg, informing him that he would be travelling to France. Van derMeulen received no further communication from de Bodry until 2nd January1599 (a letter sent from Paris, 21st December 1598). The latter returned toGermany at the end of February 1599.

131 Oorsprongk , IV, p.470

132 Den Tex, p.229.



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Let me know what is being said about the protection of the towns of Bremen and

Hamburg and others taken by the Danes.

The Spanish encouraged the merchants of the Hanseatic League to take the place of the Hollanders and Zeelanders in the trade with Spain. However, the

States-General ordered the seizure of all German ships that were suspected of

carrying war-materials to Spain or Portugal. The result was friction with the

Hansa towns - for they, like King Christian IV of Denmark, from whom they

sought support, wanted to maintain a neutral position between Spain and the

Republic.133

The Hanseatic League was an alliance of nearly eighty cities on the Baltic andNorth Atlantic coasts; the principal Hansa towns were Lubeck, Danzig,Hamburg, Brunswick, Bremen, and Cologne.

Letter 61: 13th November 1598Please let me know what news you have from Germany, and whether it is true

that certain Antiacques [Hanseatic] towns have placed themselves under the

protection of Denmark.


If you know who has my book of the chronology of Temporib[us], I ask you to

take the trouble to recover it for me.134

This seems to be the earliest reference to Joannes Temporarius in Buzanval’sextant letters; also known as Jean du Temps, he was the author of

Chronologicarum Demonstrationum Libri Tres, published at Frankfurt in 1596.From November 1598, Temporarius assisted Monsieur Le Doux in theconveying of funds from Paris to The Hague, and in November 1599 he wasappointed as Le Doux’s successor in charge of such operations.


I thank you most humbly for your copy of Itinerarium; it is a gift which is most

pleasing to me.

This book was the Itinerario, Voyage ofte Schipvaert naer Oost ofte Portugaels Indien, written by Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563-1611).Linschoten was a Dutch Protestant, a merchant and explorer; the first edition

was published at Amsterdam in 1596 by Cornelis Claesz. It contained thecelebrated Spice Islands map by Peter Plancius, mentioned in Twelfth Night (see Appendix 3). The Itinerario was a huge success and was reprinted manytimes, including editions in French and German.

133 Kernkamp, op cit , p.220.

134 Ibid , p.231.



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Jan van Linschoten “is credited with copying top-secret Portuguese nautical maps, thus enabling the passage to the elusive East Indies to be opened to the English and the Dutch. This enabled the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company to break the 16th Century monopoly enjoyed

by the Portuguese on trade with the East Indies.”135

At the suggestion of the famous geographer Richard Hakluyt, an Englishtranslation was prepared; it was published in 1598 by John Wolfe, under thetitle Iohn Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages into ye Easte &West Indies . Hakluyt was a close friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, who in turn wasa friend of Christopher Marlowe.

The importance of Linschoten’s book is underlined by the formation of boththe English and the Dutch East India Companies soon after its appearance;the English East India Company was granted a Royal Charter on December31st 1600. The Dutch East India Company, established in 1602, was in fact

an amalgamation of several existing companies, for the Dutch had beensending ships to the Far East since 1595, not always successfully; a Dutchfleet had reached Java in 1597. “By 1599, ten Dutch companies had been formed, sending between them 14 fleets of 65 ships, of which 54 made the return journey from the East safely.”136

Ambassador Buzanval himself took a keen interest in the spice trade, and ona number of occasions he received consignments of pepper from Van derMeulen. For further information on Linschoten, Peter Plancius and the “newmap of the Indies”, see Appendix 3.

1599

Letter 64: 1st January 1599

Buzanval thanks Van der Meulen for his kind gift, a finely-bound copy of theItinerario mentioned above. He also asks the Leiden-based merchant tosupply another consignment of cauliflower seeds (for more information, seeDocument G in Appendix 1, above):

I thank you a million times for the book that you sent me, which you have greatly

enriched , for in the opinion of Monsieur de L'Escalle [Joseph Scaliger], the

ornamental borders are even more beautiful than the binding. Le Doux is

traveling to you to see if we could obtain [“recouvrer” - recover?] some

cauliflower seeds through your agency; I am making this request as a personal

favour and also to assist him [Le Doux] in the matter, if you have the means todo it.

Your German Princes are gathering in force, but as far as I can see, without

concluding anything.

135 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Huyghen_van_Linschoten

136 http://www.papuaweb.org/



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Kernkamp and Heyst explain the background:

In September 1598, Mendoza had invaded Germany with a large number of

soldiers, in order to capture certain positions of strength from which they could

undertake attacks on the borderlands of the Republic. However, Maurice knewwhat measures to take to prevent Mendoza from taking any substantial actions.

The Spanish troops then went to occupy various German towns, and to plunder

the countryside. The German princes were slow in making a response, not

raising an army until the following Spring; by then, the Spanish troops “had

kept their promise to leave the Empire” - in accordance with the Imperial Ban

announced by Rudolf II - “and had ventured on an incursion into the

Republic”.137

Note: We know that Monsieur Le Doux was the bearer of a letter written byAmbassador Buzanval a few days later, to Secretary Villeroy in Paris, anddated January 4th 1599.

Letter 65: 29th January 1599

Yesterday, very late, there arrived here a courier from our Court whom I was

expecting [possibly Le Doux?], and from whom I have letters dated January

21st .

January 1599: not Ancel but the Marshall of Bois-Dauphin sent asambassador to Prague.

Letter 66: 6th February 1599

A further mention of Joseph Scaliger. The Ambassador has received a letterfrom a contact in Sweden (Andreas de la Fromentière?)

Note: on 23rd February 1599, Buzanval sent a copy of the Imperial Ban toKing Henri.


Envoys from Duke Karel of Sweden (1550-1611) have arrived at the Hague -they were Jacob Heylde and Johan Nielsson, sent “to gain the Republic’s support in the difficulties with Karel’s nephew King Sigismund (1566-1632) of Poland, and if possible to bring about an alliance ” (Sigismund had also beenKing of Sweden since 1592 but had failed to establish his authority there,owing to the very strong Protestant opposition). The two envoys then travelled

to England and returned to the Hague in June 1599.Letter 72: 15th April 1599

Here, I am continually oppressed by some new setback. This very hour, a

French gentleman has just arrived from Sweden.

137 Kernkamp, op cit , p.233



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This was almost certainly Andreas de la Fromentière, envoy of Duke Karel ofSweden:

After a short stay in the Republic, he travelled on to France to gain Villeroy’s

interest in Swedish affairs. He conveyed to the latter Buzanval’s report dated 1st May 1599.


Mentions the Dutch blockade of Spanish and Belgian ports, under thecommand of Admiral Pieter van der Does.

Jan den Tex makes the following comments:

The strongest opposition [to the blockade] came from abroad. Oldenbarnevelt

had foreseen that it would, but probably not to such an extent. Buzanval had

warned him of the resentment that would be felt in France, and his prophecy

came true. Henry IV was extremely nettled, especially when a letter fromOldenbarnevelt to Aerssen, asking him to inform the King of the Edict, got lost;

at a later stage he even threatened a rupture of relations if the trade with

Calais, also forbidden under the Edict, was not allowed. Loud complaints were

heard from Scotland, the Hanseatic League and Denmark, to which country an

embassy even had to be sent to convince the King [Christian IV] of the rectitude

of the blockade, without success of course." 138

The Danish King was hardly in a position to complain very forcefully, since theDutch Republic had recently allowed him to purchase munitions from them(see my previous article, Letter XXIX).

Letter 74: 7th May 1599 Is it true that a major plot has been discovered, whereby King Sigismund of

Poland has attempted to seize control of the Sound from the King of Denmark?

Buzanval reports that the Duke of Brunswick has taken to the field, with 8,000cavalry and 10,000 foot-soldiers.


Addressed to Van der Meulen at Cologne.


At last the Duke of Brunswick and the other commanders of the German armyhad set aside their dissension and rivalry and decided to drive the Spanish

occupiers from the fortress of Cleeves. At the end of August, after a brief and fruitless investment of Rijnberg, the army was defeated before Rees; it turned

out disastrously for the German troops; in mid-September they retreated with

unnecessary haste. Maurice was therefore unable to put into effect his plan of

138 Den Tex, op cit , p.282.



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ending the 1599 campaign with a strategic offensive, by uniting his forces with

the German troops and attacking the Spanish army from the rear.139


I am returning to you your copy of the book by Sorranzo, and I thank you most affectionately for the use of it. When the books arrive from Frankfurt, kindly do

me the favour of asking Raphelengius if he has brought me a copy as promised,

and ask him to give it to my book-binder for rebinding.

Lazaro Soranzo’s book was entitled L’Ottomano, Dove si da Pieno Ragguaglio della Potenza del pres. Signor de’ Turchi Mehemeto III, della Guerre d’Ongheria , published in quarto at Ferrara in 1598 (a Latin translationappeared in 1600, under the title Ottomanus Sive de Rebus Turcicus Liber ,Continens Descriptionem Potentiae Mahemetis III ).

Though not the principal source140, Soranzo’s book may well have had an

influence on the writing of Shake-speare’s Othello (1598-1604), in which thesetting is the war against the Turks and the defence of Cyprus. One wonders,in fact, whether the ordered copy of Soranzo was actually intended forMonsieur Le Doux, who was with Ambassador Buzanval from late Septemberof 1599 (when he was “unwell”, Letter LVI in Vreede) until late October. As anaccomplished linguist who had also lived in Italy, Le Doux/Marlowe couldeasily have read Soranzo’s book in the original Italian, as he had done withthe source-books for several other plays (e.g. The Merchant of Venice ).Soranzo’s book was not translated into English until 1603 (by AbrahamHartwell).

Lazaro Soranzo was a Venetian Senator, a Humanist, who was appointed as

Consul at Constantinople. In Virginia Mason Vaughan’s Othello: a Contextual History , we read the following:

The security of Rhodes and Cyprus was precarious at best, and in 1572 Venice

lost the latter island to the Turks. Not surprisingly, Venetians defined the Turk

as irrational, deceitful and cruel. Lozarro [sic] Soranzo’s The Ottoman … is a

clear example of an anti-Turk tract. According to an entry in Elizabethan

handwriting in the Huntingdon Library copy [1603 - my bold], Soranzo was

a Venetian Senator ….He was the son of Jacomo Soranzo, a Venetian general.

His lengthy analysis of the Turkish threat describes Ottomite military strength

and its tyrannical government and concludes with a call for Europe to unite its

forces and take Constantinople.

By Shakespeare’s day, “the Turk” represented all that was barbaric and

demonic, in contrast to the Christian’s civil and moral rightness.141

139 Kernkamp, op cit , p.244.

140 That was Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, 1566.

141 From Othello: Venetians and Turks http://www.legacy.owensboro.kcts.edu/crunyon



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It should be noted, in this connection, firstly, that Le Doux’s book collection in1596 included five volumes on the subject of Turkish history142, and secondly,that Christopher Marlowe had not only written three plays about “the two greatwarriors who each successfully fought the Turks”143 - the Albanian Prince

Castrioto (George Scanderbeg) and Tamburlaine the Great (“Timur theLame”, 1336-1405) - but also a fourth play about the conflict with the Turks,The Jew of Malta . The two parts of Tamburlaine the Great were, of course, aphenomenal success on the London stage and made Marlowe’s name as aplaywright; his play about George Scanderbeg is unfortunately lost.

Christoffel Raphelengius...

... for a number of years … managed the Plantin printing house at Leiden; hebecame head of the establishment on the death of his father, in 1597. On

November 9th of that year, he was appointed by the Governors of LeidenUniversity as official College Printer, on condition that he brought with him

from Frankfurt, at his own risk and expense, the books that were needed by theProfessors and other prominent persons.”144

It would be very useful to know the titles of the other “books from Frankfurt”that Ambassador Buzanval had ordered through Raphelengius.

142 See Wraight, op cit , p.65.

143 Ibid , p.28.

144 Kernkamp, Ibid, p.245.



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The French Connection (Par

On the Trail of Jacques Le DC.W.H.Gam

© C.W.H.Gamble 2010 70 o

Appendix 3: Jan Huygen van Linschoten and Twelfth Nigh



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“More lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies”

George Steevens was the earliest commentator on Twelfth Night to identifyShake-speare’s “new map” as the extraordinary and beautiful map of the EastIndies entitled Insulae Moluccae , drawn by Peter Plancius in 1594. This famous

map, often called the “Spice Islands Map”, was first published in 1596 inLinschoten’s Itinerario: Voyage ofte Schipvaert van Jan Huyghen van Linschoten naar Oost ofte Portugaels Indien ... 1579-1592 (reprinted in 1598and many times thereafter). This Itinerario , of course, is the book with whichAmbassador Buzanval was so delighted (i.e. the 1598 Dutch edition) (seeLetters 63 and 64 in Appendix 2).

Steevens states categorically that Shake-speare’s reference to:

the new map with the augmentation of the Indies ... is a clear allusion to a Map

engraved for Linschoten’s Voyages [the Itinerario] … this Map is multilineal in

the extreme, and is the first in which the Eastern Islands are included.145

It also has navigational “rhumb lines” in abundance.

Plancius’ map of the Insulae Moluccae (the Moluccan Islands) was based on acollection of charts and “ruttiers”146 which he had acquired in Lisbon in 1592from Bartolomeu Lasso; his Insulae Moluccae is described as "one of the mostfabulous [charts] ever produced of the East Indies and one of the rarest,showing the Spice Islands in a level of detail never previously seen ".147 Thismatches Shake-speare’s use of the word “augmentation”, which is not a title butsimply means “enlargement”, with the implication of greater accuracy.

Thus it is clear that Linschoten’s book provided for the first time a completely

accurate and comprehensive navigational guide, revealing the safe sea-routesto the Spice Islands and the East Indies, across seas that were notoriouslydangerous; these routes had previously been known only to the Portuguese.This is why the Plancius map qualifies perfectly both as an “augmentation” andas “new”, i.e. disclosing hitherto secret information. The Itinerario , with its newmaps, created an absolute sensation when it first appeared, because of theimplications for the very profitable Spice Trade.

The publication of the Itinerario served as a direct stimulus to the building of the

vast English and Dutch overseas empires. The book became indispensable to

commercial navigators, since it was a compendium of sailing directions,

information on islands, harbours, local produce, etcetera. It provided a general

guide for any merchant wishing to trade in exciting and active new markets. The Itinerario was thus of immense benefit to merchant mariners, particularly for its

detail on trade and navigation throughout the Indies. The maps that accompanied

the book were based largely on Portuguese sea-charts that were never otherwise

145 Quoted by H. H. Furness in the New Shakespeare edition of Twelfth Night (Philadelphia, 1901, p.208). See below for a

refutation, by Dr H. R. D. Anders, of an alternative theory.

146 “Ruttier: a marine guide to routes and tides, etc” - O.E.D

147 David Parry, http://www.bibliopolis.com/



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printed; they are amongst the most sumptuously designed and engraved maps of

any period.148

W. Klooster states that:

the Itinerario contained so much detailed and accurate information about

shipping lanes, winds, and currents that seafarers could use it virtually as a

handbook. Many of Linschoten’s maps were in fact copies of the excellent models

of the Portuguese cartographer Fernão Vaz Dourado.

The Itinerario and its maps thus provided the Dutch with extremely valuable

information regarding Portuguese sea routes to the East, their resupply pointsaround Africa and their trading stations in the East, as well as vital navigational

data about currents, deeps and the location of islands and sandbanks. Additionally, Linschoten gives detailed descriptions of the Portuguese territories

and how they were administered, and, most importantly, he included descriptionsof spice trees and spice growing areas. Apart from his detailed account of the

spice trade, Linschoten was not blind to other possibilities for profit, and he

therefore documented many other commodities … such as gems, minerals,

textiles, timber and porcelain.

Linschoten left the Netherlands for Spain in December 1576 to join his brothers

in Seville. He spent six years on the Iberian peninsula, eventually taking

employment with a merchant in Lisbon. When there was a downturn in trade,

Linschoten decided to take alternative employment. His brother, Willem, secured

him a position with the newly appointed [Portuguese] Archbishop of Goa,

Vincente de Fonesca. Jan van Linschoten set sail with De Fonesca for Goa on 8

April 1583. He spent just over five years as Secretary to the Archbishop of Goa,

where he had access to many Portuguese portolans

149

, as well as other sensitivecommercial information, much of which he copied.150

In September 1592, Linschoten returned to the Netherlands from Lisbon andimmediately began work on his Itinerario , assisted by the eminent scholarBernard ten Broecke (known as “Paludanus”). Linschoten was already verywell-informed about every aspect of the spice trade; he knew precisely whatcommodities were in demand in the East Indies and also which currency waspreferred by the local inhabitants - pieces-of-eight. Crucially, he also knew thesea-routes that were used by Portuguese ships in traversing the China Seas.Much of this information was based on secretly-obtained charts, originallydrawn up by the Portuguese cartographers Fernão Vaz Dourado and

Bartolomeo Lasso (cosmographer to the King of Spain).The Itinerario encompassed Linschoten’s explorations of the geography,peoples and natural history of Africa, India, China and the New World.

148 http://www.vialibri.com/

149 A “portolan” or “portulan” is defined by the OED as “a book with sailing directions, describing harbours etc, and illustrated

with charts.”

150 Website ISS: Information Services and Systems - Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563-1611)



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Petrus Plancius (1553-1622) (= Plantevoet / Platevoete, etc), a Calvinistclergyman, was Holland’s foremost geographer and astronomer. He was afounder of the Dutch East India Company and was appointed as their officialcartographer. At his nautical school in Amsterdam, Plancius instructed the

Company’s pilots in navigation, teaching systematically how Spanish andPortugese possessions in the East could be usurped.

Like many other Protestants, Plancius had fled to the United Provinces from theSpanish Netherlands; he was based at Amsterdam for many years, so theLeiden merchant Daniel Van der Meulen almost certainly knew him - likewisethe Seigneur de Buzanval (possibly Le Doux also).

The Riches of the East: Nutmeg, Cloves, Sandalwood and Pepper

The three most costly spices (nutmeg, cloves and sandalwood) are beautifullyillustrated on the Plancius map Insulae Moluccae , to emphasise the prospect ofprofitable trading with the East Indies.

Pepper could be obtained in India without too much difficulty, but it wasnecessary to travel much further to obtain nutmeg and cloves. In his fascinatingbook Nathaniel’s Nutmeg , the historian Giles Milton explains that “even in theEast Indies … nutmeg was a rarity; a tree so fussy about climate and soil that itwould grow only on a tiny cluster of islands, the Banda archipelago, which wereof such impossible remoteness that no-one in Europe could be sure if theyexisted at all.” Milton adds that the Banda Islands possessed “a rich volcanicsoil and a strange micro-climate” which was the perfect environment for thenutmeg tree. “In the Banda Islands, ten pounds of nutmeg cost less than oneEnglish penny. In London, that same spice sold for more than two pounds andten shillings - a mark-up of a staggering 60,000 percent.” 151

Aside from its use as a food preservative and flavouring, nutmeg was believedto have powerful medicinal properties - in England it was even claimed that itcould cure the plague. It was also used in the manufacture of perfumes. As forcloves, Milton states that the clove tree “could only be found on a handful ofislands in the Indonesian archipelago.”152

There had, of course, been attempts to transplant these valuable trees andcultivate them elsewhere, but always with unsatisfactory results.

The Dutch and English East India Companies

After the Portuguese, it had been the Dutch who made the earliest voyages tothe East Indies, not always successfully; nevertheless, their progress wasclosely watched by the merchants and investors of northern Europe. By 1599,there were ten Dutch companies sending ships to the Far East, sendingbetween them 14 fleets of 65 ships, of which 54 safely made the return journey

151 Giles Milton, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg (Hodder, 1999) - pp.3-6.

152 Ibid , p.21.



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from the East. The amalgamated Dutch East India Company was formallyincorporated in 1602.

In September 1599, a consortium of English merchant adventurers applied to

Queen Elizabeth for permission to trade with the East Indies; she consented,but the project was blocked by the Privy Council. In 1600 they tried again; thistime, the Queen sought the advice of Sir Fulke Greville, her Treasurer of theNavy, who supported the project with the invaluable information on the spicetrade which he had learned from his own copy of Linschoten’s Itinerario .153

The English East India Company’s Charter was duly signed by QueenElizabeth on 31st December 1600 - just six days before the first performance ofTwelfth Night .

There were strong links between the English East India Company and theVirginia Company, which was to receive its Royal Charter in 1609. Sir ThomasSmythe was the Governor of both Companies, while the famous Captain JohnSmith, a leader of the first Jamestown colonists, was a friend of Peter Plancius- and himself a skilled map-maker.

An Alternative “Map” Theory Refuted

Whilst expressing certain reservations, a few commentators on Twelfth Night ,among them C. H. Coote, have contested the point and tried to identify Shake-speare’s “new map” as a certain “map of the world” prepared by Edward Wrightand published in 1599 in Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation . However, this “world map” is full of seriousdefects and inaccuracies; it certainly does not depict the East Indies in anydetail.

Strangely, opponents of Steevens make much of the “rhumb lines” on theEdward Wright map, ignoring the fact that Linschoten’s maps too have anabundance of “rhumb lines” - indeed the Insulae Moluccae map is completelycovered with them; as Steevens says, it is “multilineal in the extreme”. These“rhumb lines”, showing all the directions of the compass, were an extremelyuseful aid to navigators.

Dr H. R. D. Anders, in his PhD thesis entitled Shakespeare’s Books 154 , is highlycritical of Coote’s opinions about Maria’s “new map with the augmentation ofthe Indies”, indeed he demolishes Coote’s assertions completely.

To begin with, Dr Anders points out that Coote’s remarks:are open to the following criticism. If, as Coote supposes, 'Indies' refers only to

the East Indies, he should certainly have taken into consideration not merely

maps of the world but also maps of Asia alone. [What Coote claims as] "a marked development in the geography of India proper" and "Ceylon" is non-existent. As

153 Ibid , p.72.

154 Dr H R D Anders, Shakespeare’s Books: a Dissertation on Shakespeare’s Reading and the Immediate Sources of his Works



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early as 1561, Gastaldi had drawn a fairly good map of India in his map of Asia.

Compare also the advanced delineations of India in Mercator's Mappemonde

(1569), in De Jode's Asia Partium Orbis Maxima (1593), and the map of

[mainland] India in Linschoten's Itinerario. Coote's statement, by the way, "India

proper, then known as ‘the land of the Mogores or Mogol’ ”, requires to becorrected, as only the northern part of the peninsula was subject to the Mogul

(compare the Atlases of Metellus, Janson, and Blaeu). The “great improvement”

in the geography of Corea, Cochin China, and Japan on Coote's map is not very

noticeable or plain, when we compare maps like Plancius's Orbis Terrarum

Typus (1594) [published in Linschoten’s Itinerario] or (setting aside Korea) De

Jode's above-mentioned Map of Asia, and the map of South-Eastern Asia (with

the islands) in Linschoten's Itinerario, 1596 [i.e. Insulae Moluccae].

The same remark applies to the delineation of the Malay Archipelago.155

With

regard to Coote's suggestion as to Australia, I think that the tract of land, drawn

below Java, is nothing more than a remnant of the old 'Terra Australis". What

Coote means by the "traces of the first appearance of the Dutch tinder Houtmanat Bantam" is difficult to say. Bantam had appeared on maps long before 1600.

We have to hear in mind, too, that Coote's map is what it professes to be: a

hydrographical map, that is, a chart, on which only coast-names are noted.

Coote's map has, indeed, comparatively few names. In the Eastern Archipelago,

for example, including the Philippines, we find but three-and-twenty place-names.

On Mercator’s Map of the World (1569) there were twenty-seven on Sumatra

alone. Even Plancius's Orbis Terrarum Typus [1594] has twenty-four. But sapient

sat! [“A word is enough to the wise!”] Whatever may be thought of the map in

Hakluyt's work, Mr. Coote's arguments for it require revision.

Further arguments against the “Coote” theory may be found in the works of L.

Hallam and J. Lennox. Hallam, discussing the world map by Edward Wright156

which is “found in a very few copies of Hakluyt’s Voyages ”,157 admits that “theUltra-Indian region is inaccurate”; likewise James Lennox, discussing Hallam,not only acknowledges the superb accuracy of the Plancius map Insulae Moluccae but also admits that it was “the first in which these islands [the East Indies] were delineated on a large scale, or with any pretensions to accuracy.”158

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