'Fama' and her Sisters: Gossip and Rumour in Early Modern Europe 9782503541846, 2503541844

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Fama and her Sisters

EARLY EUROPEAN RESEARCH Series founded by the Australian Research Council Network for Early European Research, and now directed by The University of Western Australia Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. General Editors Andrew Lynch, University of Western Australia Claire McIlroy, University of Western Australia Editorial Board Tracy Adams, University of Auckland Emilia Jamroziak, University of Leeds Matthias Meyer, Universität Wien Juanita Feros Ruys, University of Sydney Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Universitetet i Oslo Nicholas Terpstra, University of Toronto

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 7

Fama and her Sisters Gossip and Rumour in Early Modern Europe Edited by

Heather Kerr and Claire Walker

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Fama and her sisters : gossip and rumour in early modern Europe. -- (Early European research ; 7) 1. Gossip--Europe--History--16th century. 2. Gossip--Europe--History--17th century. 3. Gossip--Europe--History--18th century. 4. Rumor--Europe--History--16th century. 5. Rumor--Europe--History--17th century. 6. Rumor--Europe--History--18th century. 7. Gossip in literature. 8. Rumor in literature. I. Series II. Kerr, Heather, 1957- editor. III. Walker, Claire, 1965- editor. 302.2'4-dc23 ISBN-13: 9782503541846

© 2015, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2015/0095/4 ISBN: 978-2-503-54184-6 Printed on acid-free paper

Contents

Acknowledgements vii Introduction: New Perspectives on Fama

Claire Walker and Heather Kerr 1

Whispering Fama: Talk and Reputation in Early Modern Society Claire Walker

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Telling Tales: Negotiating ‘Fame’ in Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Christopher Marlowe’s Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage Lucy Potter 37 Witchcraft and Rumour in Renaissance Venice Elizabeth Horodowich

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Rumour and Reputation in the Early Modern English Family Amanda L. Capern 85 Face-to-Face with the ‘Flanders Mare’: Fama and Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of Anne of Cleves Lisa Mansfield 115 Poison, Pregnancy, and Protestants: Gossip and Scandal at the Early Modern French Court Una McIlvenna 137

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Contents

The Queen of Bohemia’s Daughter: Managing Rumour and Reputation in a Seventeenth-Century Dynasty Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent 161 Gossip, Intimacy, and the Early Modern Scottish Household Katie Barclay 187 The Pleasures and Perils of Gossip: Sociability, Scandal, and Plebeian Poetry in the Long Eighteenth Century Peter Denney 209 Index 233

Figure p. 116: Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Anne of Cleves, Paris, Musée du Louvre. c. 1539.

Acknowledgements

T

his volume was conceived during discussions about public opinion in the Early Modern Reading Group (EMRG), a monthly interdisciplinary seminar held at the University of Adelaide, attended by academic staff, postgraduate and undergraduate students from the University of Adelaide and Flinders University. Talk about public opinion inevitably led us to consider the role of gossip and rumour in its formation. Our discussions about the literature on these subjects contributed to the development of the current project: a reevaluation of the function of gossip and rumour in the early modern state, economy and society. We would accordingly like to thank first and foremost the members of EMRG; in particular, Helen Payne, Lucy Potter, Virginia Kenny, Jane Nelson, Emily Cock, Elizabeth Connolly, Elsa Reuter, Lisa Bennett, Jean McBain, Joanne Hocking, Tania Jeffries, Andrew Herpich, Peter Davis, and Han Baltussen. We thank the Musée du Louvre for permission to include the image of Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Anne of Cleves in Lisa Mansfield’s essay, and the British Museum for permission to use ‘An airborne female figure of Fame sounding a trumpet held in her right hand, by Palma Giovane’ as our cover image. We are also grateful to the authors of the essays not only for the quality of their contributions but also for their forbearance and good humour during the protracted editorial process. We would similarly like to thank Andrew Lynch for his support and encouragement, and Guy Carney and the editorial team at Brepols for their prompt responses to questions and unfailing enthusiasm for the book.

Finally, we dedicate this volume to the memory of Philippa Maddern (1952– 2014), colleague, mentor and friend to many of the contributors. Philippa’s passion for studying the past, her incisive commentary and her support for our scholarship will be sorely missed. Heather Kerr and Claire Walker Adelaide, July 2014

Introduction: New Perspectives on Fama Claire Walker and Heather Kerr

F

ama is derived from the Latin fari and the Greek phanai, meaning ‘to speak publicly’, and is defined by Hans Jürgen Scheuer as the ‘personification of public speech’.1 The word’s meanings and its wider semantic association with tidings, hearsay, and reputation derive from its classical origins; in particular, its evocative embodiment as Fama, Virgil’s feathered monstrum horrendum (awful and huge monster) with multiple eyes, tongues, mouths, and ears, who spreads news of Dido and Aeneas’s scandalous affair in Book 4 of the Aeneid. Although the goddess Fama is largely unknown outside her literary representation in Virgil, Ovid, and later medieval poets, most notably Chaucer, her broad semantic reach — gossip, rumour, news, public opinion, and reputation — populated the legal, religious, and poetic discourse of medieval Europe. Common knowledge provided evidence in law courts, and the reputation of witnesses and defendants was central in determining the validity of their testimony. Preachers and clerics decried idle and dangerous words as sinful and they were prosecuted as threatening to the common peace and secure government of the state. Illustrators and craftspeople depicted the entrance to hell as a gigantic mouth.2 Fama’s reach was accordingly as broad as it was deep, and its permea1  2 

Fenster and Smail, eds, ‘Introduction’, p. 11; Scheuer, ‘Fama’. See Bardsley, ‘Sin, Speech and Scolding’, p. 147.

Claire Walker ([email protected]), Senior Lecturer in History, University of Adelaide, and Associate Investigator, ARC Centre for the History of Emotions, 1100–1800. Heather Kerr ([email protected]), Senior Lecturer in English, University of Adelaide, and Associate Investigator, ARC Centre for the History of Emotions, 1100–1800.

Claire Walker and Heather Kerr

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tion of medieval society continued in the early modern world. In the age of print and readily reproduced images, the allegorical Fama who spread tidings with her wings and trumpets was easily recognizable.3 This collection of essays draws upon existing scholarship about gossip, rumour, and reputation and extends it to consider the dynamics of talk, whether spoken or written, in defining relationships and establishing authority. The papers reveal the complex functions of conversation about other people’s affairs between couples, within families, at royal courts, and in neighbourhood, business, and literary communities. Employing a wide range of sources from classical literature to plebeian poetry, legal records to manuscript letters, and even a Holbein portrait, the contributors explore the productive and destructive capacity of words. They show that gossip and rumour comprised a common currency of early modern social, economic, and political transactions; they also point to ways that the same information might be employed to conflicting ends by different parties, and explore the apparently unlikely possibility of controlling or managing rumour, or fama. The collection opens with Claire Walker’s discussion of the complex relationship between Fama and her ‘sisters’: gossip, rumour, and reputation. Drawing from a range of historical and literary sources and the diverse scholarship relating to them, Walker investigates the meaning and function of fama in early modern Europe. Focusing principally on England, she argues that, contrary to a common tendency to align ‘gossip’ to a private, often feminine sphere, and ‘rumour’ to a wider, non-gendered public stage, it is rarely possible to distinguish absolutely between the two oral practices. They are commonly entwined, and the intimate communication of neighbours might metamorphose into widely disseminated information of political, economic, religious or social import. Fama functioned in multiple ways in early modern society. At times it might constitute a form of sociability and perform a vital role in the formation of group membership and communal identity; however, it was also significant in societies and polities where patronage networks were the key to individual and institutional advancement. Talk was often used as an indirect, occasionally subversive, form of political action, by people who were otherwise powerless to enact change in communal relations, but it was also prevalent in business interactions and matters of state. Walker argues accordingly that, far from being indiscriminate chatter condemned by the clergy and arbiters of social and political harmony, gossip and rumour were potent tools in the hands of the powerful and dispossessed alike. 3 

An airborne female figure of Fame sounding a trumpet held in her right hand, by Palma Giovane (1550–1628), etching, BM 1925, 0406. 134.

introduction: new perspectives on fama

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Lucy Potter’s essay interrogates the success with which Fama was ‘managed’ in Virgil’s and Ovid’s telling of the Dido and Aeneas story in the Aeneid and Metamorphoses, before considering Christopher Marlowe’s retelling in Dido, Queen of Carthage. Potter considers the Virgilian and Ovidian attempts to harness the productive energies of Fama to drive epic narrative, concluding that while Ovid and Marlowe achieved the laurel of authorial fame for their renditions of the story, Virgil, who lost mastery over the goddess, did not. Potter’s essay thus establishes the classical heritage and meanings of Fama, and draws attention to her conflicting constructive and destructive power — a theme which runs through several other essays. Lisa Mansfield’s essay examines the positives and negatives of establishing reputation. Mansfield analyses a selection of oral, written, and visual reports of Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, to reveal the ways in which sixteenth-century royal marriages could be contracted and dissolved. Henry chose Anne after receiving favourable accounts of her beauty and demeanour from diplomats and friends, and after viewing her ‘application’ portrait, painted by Hans Holbein. The ‘virtual’ princess of Cleves, constructed in words and paint, was at odds with Henry’s appraisal of his new bride when they met in the flesh, and his subsequent inability (or unwillingness) to consummate the marriage rendered the union a disaster. Mansfield traverses the ensuing gossip about the ‘Flanders Mare’s’ allegedly matronly body and its detrimental effect on the king’s capacity to sire another heir, demonstrating how Henry, his ministers, and the court used indiscreet talk about the royal couple and their sexual difficulties to bring about the desired outcome — the dissolution of the marriage. Anne of Cleves’s fama was accordingly established and then destroyed by words, suggesting that talk was ultimately more powerful than image in defining her reputation. The destructive power of gossip in creating personal and corporate fama, and dynastic strategies for dealing with damaging rumours, are explored in essays by Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent, and Una McIlvenna. Broomhall and Van Gent examine the responses of various members of the von der Pfalz, Stuart, and Orange-Nassau families to the shock conversion of Princess Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz to Catholicism and her subsequent entry into a religious cloister, which events elicited rumours of pregnancy and disgrace. Letters were the principal means of spreading gossip about the princess absconding from the court, while later providing the means by which family members might endeavour to make sense of her actions and dispel rumours about her supposed pregnancy. Louise’s mother disagreed with her sons about how best to counter the negative reports, revealing how perceptions about fama and strategies to manage it among kin might differ according to gender, confessional identity, and

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position within the family hierarchy. Una McIlvenna suggests that on occasions it was possible to control the subject matter of gossip, even in an environment like the French court, where innuendo and rumour were common currency in the constant jostling for preferment and power. Isabelle de Limeuil, one of Catherine de Medici’s ladies-in-waiting, and mistress of the Protestant Prince de Condé, gave birth in 1564 to an illegitimate son. Consequently, she was removed from court and imprisoned in a convent. While rumour-mongers assumed Limeuil’s fall from grace was a consequence of her sexual indiscretion and failure to hide its outcome from public scrutiny, the lady had also been accused of threatening to poison the prince de la Roche-sur-Yon. McIlvenna demonstrates how Catherine de Medici controlled the flow of information released about her lady-in-waiting so that news of the poisoning charge never entered the public domain. Instead, rumours concentrated upon the scandal of the birth and the suggestion that the child was fathered not by Condé but by one of the queen mother’s secretaries of state, the seigneur de Fresnes. In this case, rumours about cuckoldry and unseemly illegitimate birth masked the potentially more damaging news to Limeuil’s reputation of the poisoning accusation. Both essays raise questions about the impact of indiscriminate talk on fama, suggesting that those whose reputations stood to be impugned by negative reports, whether from kin or employees or coreligionists, might attempt to limit the damage, and in some instances such measures might achieve a degree of success. The capacity to manipulate and even to transform gossip in institutional settings is considered by Elizabeth Horodowich and Amanda Capern. Horodowich argues that in sixteenth-century Venice gossip was used by women to shape the rules of everyday living, hierarchy, and orthodoxy, and that it might also constitute a form of popular justice when neighbours were perceived to have acted against communal interests or values. Examining cases of witchcraft brought before the inquisition, she explains that communities relied upon the forces of gossip to locate witches when in need of their services, but also to curb the activities of witches when they were considered a threat. Public talk brought witches to the attention of the authorities, and in the courtroom neighbourhood gossip was converted into legal evidence. Although the construction of fama through neighbourhood chatter was not always reliable, in witchcraft cases the reputation of the witch was predominantly formed via the gossip of her neighbours. Amanda Capern similarly argues that in the court of Chancery, in early modern England, destructive gossip and rumour could be neutralized into justice. Chancery dealt with disputes over inheritance, money, loan repayments, and land title. The oral testimony of witnesses who could attest to local knowledge about who owned land, where the boundaries lay, and whether individuals had made verbal agree-

introduction: new perspectives on fama

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ments about money and land transfer in their presence, became crucial evidence in establishing the truth, turning ‘rumour into law’. Indeed, as Capern notes, ‘hearsay meant more than gossip in early modern society because it also meant that people had heard it said that agreements had been struck’.4 Her essay deftly weaves the complexities of early modern gossip, rumour, and fama, arguing that the spatial locale in which gossip was presented provides a key to understanding its import. While it could prove damaging in defamation courts, in Chancery negative talk about individuals’ reputations was modified and transformed into formal evidence which could solve legal cases concerning financial issues. The Janus-face of gossip, which enabled it to function to both positive and negative ends, often concurrently, continued to feature in eighteenth-century usage and understandings.5 Katie Barclay and Peter Denney each explore its significant role in establishing relationships and its potential to destabilize authority. Barclay discusses the ways servants used gossip to foster relationships among themselves, and with their masters and mistresses. Using the letters of Dorothy Salisbury, Barclay argues that gossip about mutual friends and the Hamilton household, where they had both been in service, offered separated lovers, Salisbury and Alexander Inglis, ‘a space to create intimacy, relying as it did on a shared knowledge of the subject matter and a feeling of trust created through the sharing of confidential stories’.6 Barclay demonstrates the emotional investment servants had, not only in one another, but also in the family which employed them, arguing that servants’ gossip established masters’ and mistresses’ reputations among their staff and those who might be future employees. Such gossip, however, might also seep into the wider community beyond the household to damage the financial and moral standing of employers. The uneasy sociability which might exist across the social divide, and the role of gossip in regulating relations between the lower social orders and the elites, is explored in Peter Denney’s analysis of plebeian poets, which considers such talk as a form of resistance. Denney untangles the often ambivalent attitude to gossip among plebeian writers, which reflected the full gamut of its productive and its ‘idle’ functions. In the verse of John Clare gossip bound ‘people together in customary rural society, just as it gave work a communal dimension and invested the land with meaning’.7 Yet it could also serve to sever the plebeian poets from their social milieu. Derided for ‘scribling’ by their fellow labourers, and equally 4 

Capern, p. 100. Hardie makes reference to this in ‘Why Is Rumour Here?’, pp. 68–69, 72. 6  Barclay, p. 195. 7  Denney, p. 228. 5 

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lauded and ridiculed for their rusticated literary ambitions by the elites, talk about labouring-class poets in learned circles condescendingly characterized them as amusing novelties, while their rural neighbours regarded such writers with suspicion as ‘outsiders’ who might ridicule plebeian culture as vulgar. Fama, like her sisters, gossip, rumour, and their many other manifestations, was accordingly an unstable entity. She might assume positive or negative hues, depending upon circumstance, locale, and the identity of those seeking to define her. Her chameleon-like nature is also reflected in her role as the one responsible for bestowing good or bad reputations. Fama’s purpose was to reveal secrets — to make public what was private. This was indispensible for the public sphere in an age before daily newspapers but, as this volume argues, it cut much more deeply to shape individual, community, and institutional identities. Far from ‘idle talk’, gossip and rumour were the tools with which early modern people and organizations obtained the information necessary for the daily transaction of relationships, business, and politics. Women and men needed to access information, and they did so via the plethora of guises Fama assumed. Yet, to use this data effectively, they needed to sift through the layers of detail to discern what was important for their interests and what was superfluous. Keith Botelho has coined the term ‘earwitnessing’ to define this capacity to differentiate truth from falsehood. Aural discrimination was the mark of masculine authority, according to Botelho, and it was the key to controlling information.8 However, establishing the truth, although important, was not as vital as the ways in which people used gossip and rumour. As the scholarship of recent decades has made clear, and many of this collection’s essays argue, early modern people, from Henry VIII to the plebeian poet, Ann Yearsley, recognized the possibilities and dangers of playing Fama.9 Regardless of the improbability of containing gossip and rumour once unleashed, thereby managing fama, talk, whether productive or unproductive, oiled the early modern social, economic, and political order. Women and men of all ranks, from the British Isles to France, to the city-states of Italy and beyond, employed it to negotiate the world and their place within it. Virgil’s Fama, with her multiple feathers, eyes, tongues, and ears kept constant watch and the whispers from her permeable house were carried far and wide by her subjects.

8 

Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses, pp. 6–7. See Peter Denney’s paper in this collection for a discussion of Ann Yearsley and Lisa Mansfield’s for Henry VIII. 9 

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Works Cited Bardsley, Sandy, ‘Sin, Speech, and Scolding in Late Medieval England’, in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. by Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 145–64 Botehlo, Keith, Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity (New York: Palgrave, 2009) Fenster, Thelma S. and Daniel Lord Smail, ‘Introduction’, in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. by Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 1–11 Hardie, Philip, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?” Tracking Virgilian and Ovidian Fama’, Ordia Prima, 1 (2002), 67–80 Scheuer, Hans Jürgen (Göttingen), ‘Fama’, in Brills New Pauly, Antiquity Volumes, ed. by Hubert Cancik and Helmut Schneider, Brill Online (2012) [accessed 8 October 2012]

Whispering Fama: Talk and Reputation in Early Modern Society Claire Walker Ne never rest is in that place That hit nys fild ful of tydynges, Other loude or of whisprynges; And over alle the houses angles Ys ful of rounynges and of jangles Of werres, of pes, of mariages, Of reste, of labour, of viages … Of trust, of drede, of jelousye, Of wit, of wynnynge, of folye; Of plente, and of gret famine, Of chepe, of derthe, and of ruyne; Of good or mys governement, Of fyr, and of dyvers accident. (The House of Fame, 3:1956–62, 1971–76)1

G

eoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century retelling of Virgil’s and Ovid’s epic accounts of Fama, her dwelling, and the destructive capacity of the rumours she lets loose, presents a useful entrée to this essay, which considers some of the many forms assumed by Fama in early modern England, and the ways in which gossip and rumour transformed individual and collective reputations, for better and for worse. Chaucer’s House of Rumour is a meet1  Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Benson, p. 371. I would like to thank Heather Kerr for our many discussions about gossip and rumour, and for her careful editing of this essay.

Claire Walker ([email protected]), Senior Lecturer in History, University of Adelaide, and Associate Investigator, ARC Centre for the History of Emotions, 1100–1800.

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ing place for travellers and other purveyors of news and gossip, where hearsay is exchanged, embellished, and then released beyond the confines of the babblinghall into the wider world of public opinion. The Chaucerian dwelling is indebted to Ovid’s House of Fama in Metamorphoses: Fama tenet summaque domum sibi legit in arce, innumerosque aditus ac mille foramina tectis addidit et nullis inclusit limina portis; nocte dieque patet: tota est ex aere sonanti, tota fremit vocesque refert iteratque quod audit; nulla quies intus nullaque silentia parte, nec tamen est clamor, sed parvae murmura vocis. (12. 43–49)2 (Rumour dwells here, having chosen her house upon a high mountain-top; and she gave the house countless entrances, a thousand apertures, but with no doors to close them. Night and day the house stands open. It is built all of echoing brass. The whole place resounds with confused noises, repeats all words and doubles what it hears. There is no quiet, no silence anywhere within. And yet there is no loud clamour, but only the subdued murmur of voices.)

However, Chaucer’s personification of Fama herself, while grounded in the Virgilian figure who broadcast tidings of Dido and Aeneas’s tryst, does not embody rumour and hearsay, but rather stands for fame and reputation. Virgil’s Fama in Book 4 of the Aeneid was monstrum horrendum, ingens, eui, quot sunt corpore plumae, tot vigils oculi subter (mirabili dictum), tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris […] multiplici populos sermone replebat gaudens, et partier facta atque infecta canebat: (181–83, 189–90) (a monster awful and huge, who for the many feathers in her body has as many watchful eyes below — wondrous to tell — as many tongues, as many sounding mouths, as many pricked-up ears […] exalting with manifold gossip, she filled the nations and sang alike of fact and falsehood.)3

She is designed to impart gossip, rumour and news with her eyes, ears, tongues, and winged feet.4 However, in Chaucer, the murmurs which fill the air to become 2 

Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by Miller and ed. by Goold, ii, 182–85. Virgil, Aeneid, trans. by Fairclough. 4  For a discussion of Fama in Virgil and Ovid, see Lucy Potter’s essay in this collection; and 3 

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the whispers and clamour upon which reputations are made or broken emanate not from Fama but from this mysterious house.5 As the embodiment of talk and the building with ‘a thousand apertures’, Fama and her residence figuratively represent gossip and rumour and the spaces in which they were generated, transmitted, and transformed. Fama and the House of Fame provide a useful paradigm for analysing early modern gossip and rumour. They point to the complex and transformative power of words, whether spoken formally, as evidence in law courts, in sermons or confession at church, in political speeches; or informally, in social gatherings between kin and neighbours, or among strangers seeking news of the wider world. These spoken words invariably come down to us in written documents: inquisition registers and court records, manuscript and printed religious tracts and penitential manuals, political statutes, debates, petitions, and intelligence reports; and in the ballads, broadsheets and newspapers which distilled, recorded, and disseminated this information for the wider reading public. We also find the narratives and imagery associated with Fama and her highly permeable abode in the poetry, drama, and novels of the period. Similarly, the gossip of the streets and hearths, ale and coffee houses, royal courts, and spaces of public authority, and other newsworthy locales, is translated from oral into literate culture, firstly in manuscript via official and personal correspondence and newsletters, and later in printed newssheets and pamphlets. Woodcuts and satirical prints translate the words disseminated verbally and via published texts into artefacts of visual culture. Fama and her echoing house of whispers were accordingly inescapable features in the cultural, legal, and political fabric of the early modern state and society.

Defining Fama Defining fama can be as difficult as identifying the source of the murmurings that escape the House of Fame. It has a vast semantic range. The Oxford Latin Dictionary lists a number of definitions, ranging from talk to reputation, with hearsay, news, and ill-repute in between on a scale comprising several possible meanings.6 The complexity is evident in Hans-Joachim Neubauer’s definition:

Hardie, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?”’, pp. 67–80. 5  Neubauer, The Rumour, pp. 60–65; Lochrie, Covert Operations, pp. 80–92. 6  Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. by Souter, s.v. ‘fama’.

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In Latin the word has a host of meanings, such as fame, public opinion, reputation, idle talk and rumour. A good name as much as a bad reputation is called fama. The word’s meaning is double-edged: for while meaning ‘information’, in the sense of news, fama [sic] also means the image that is formed of a person on account of this information.7

This essay will explore Fama in her variant guises, and argue that any semantic separation of her meanings is problematic because, as Neubauer makes obvious, gossip or ‘idle talk’ and ‘rumour’ or hearsay are intimately connected with the construction and destruction of personal fame, or ‘reputation’. Yet, many scholars have attempted to break Fama into her constituent parts, and to discern the differences between them, particularly if they wish to focus on one of her specific characteristics. I will accordingly first consider the early modern meanings and understanding of Fama and her sisters: gossip, rumour and reputation, before I discuss their many functions in the second part of the essay, concluding with a reflection upon the gendering of fama. As a verb, ‘gossip’ dates from the early seventeenth century, meaning ‘to talk idly, mostly about other people’s affairs; to go about tattling’. Yet the term is derived from the Old English ‘godsibb’, meaning a baptismal sponsor, which in Middle English was interpreted as ‘a familiar acquaintance, friend, chum’.8 Gossip existed in medieval Europe, but it was not termed thus. Rather, medieval texts refer to ‘ydel talke’ and ‘jangling’ which, as Susan Phillips has argued, are commensurate with modern interpretations of gossip.9 Unsurprisingly, ‘jangling’ was castigated in penitential manuals as ‘a Sin of the Tongue that encompassed a range of verbal transgressions: excessive chatter, impudent and unproductive speech, tale-telling, news, disturbing reports, bawdy jokes, lies, and scorning one’s neighbor’.10 Yet in contrast to popular early modern usage, which gendered transgressive speech as a predominantly female characteristic, medieval preachers admonished all parishioners for their idle talk, and even priests were warned against breaching the confidence of the confessional by indiscreetly revealing their penitents’ sinful misdemeanours to others.11 The spiritual dangers inherent 7 

Neubauer, The Rumour, p. 37. OED Online, s.v. ‘gossip’. 9  Phillips, Transforming Talk, pp. 3, 6–8. 10  Phillips, Transforming Talk, p. 6. 11  Phillips, Transforming Talk, pp. 14, 24, 47–48. Gossip might also be gendered in medi­ eval usage; see Lochrie, Covert Operations, pp. 56–92; Matlock, ‘Secrets, Gossip and Gender’, pp. 210–12, 215–16. 8 

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in gossiping, for both men and women, continued to attract the attention of the early modern clergy. Thomas Adams’s sermon, The Taming of the Tongue (1616) based upon James 3. 8, ‘But the tongue can no man tame: it is an unruly evill, full of deadly poyson’, argued that God had provided tongues to praise him and to use for the good of humanity and society, but while men might control their other senses and even subdue wild animals, ‘the tongue is too wild for any mans taming’.12 He warned that the tongue ‘is an unruly evill to our selves, to our neighbours, to the whole world’.13 Such non-gendered spiritual admonitions against unproductive talk continued into the eighteenth century. Roughly a century after Adams, Richard Bingham preached against idle words, drawing upon similar biblical texts, yet identifying the different circumstances in which men might misuse the power of words, including ‘unreasonable and uncharitable divulging of prejudicial truths’.14 He counselled those who gossiped that they would have to account for their indiscriminate and spiritually dangerous speech on Judgement Day.15 In popular understanding, however, from the sixteenth century, a ‘gossip’ frequently denoted ‘a person, mostly a woman, of light and trifling character, esp. one who delights in idle talk; a newsmonger, a tattler’.16 As Adam Fox observes, the labour most commonly associated with women, spinning, was a common metaphor for gossiping, which was depicted in images as a woman with a distaff.17 This gendering of chatter is evident in the sixteenth-century Venetian proverb: ‘El segreto de le femene no lo sa nessun, altro che me e vu e tuto’l comun’ (No one knows women’s secrets except for me, you, and the whole city).18 The preacher, Thomas Adams, conceded that ‘woman, for the most part, hath the glibbest tongue […and] a firebrand in a franticke hand doth lesse mischiefe’.19 The clergyman William Gouge also listed gossip as a sin committed by wives, while their husbands might count idleness and neglect of duty among their misdemeanours.20 The personification of gossip as female became a popular trope on the stage. In 12 

Adams, The Taming of the Tongue, sig. C4v–D3r, sig. Ev–E3v. Adams, The Taming of the Tongue, sig. F1r. 14  Oxford, Bodl. Lib. MS.Eng.th.e.156, fol. 201r. 15  Oxford, Bodl. Lib. MS.Eng.th.e.156, fols 193r, 201v. 16  OED Online, s.v. ‘gossip’. 17  Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, p. 340. 18  Bianchi, Provervi e modi proverbiali Veneti (1901), cited in Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, p. 139. 19  Adams, The Taming of the Tongue, sig. E3v. 20  Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, pp. 19, 251, 255–56. 13 

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Thomas Dekker’s Old Fortunatus, Fortunatus ponders the goddess Fortune’s bleak prophecy after he has chosen riches above wisdom, musing, ‘I wonder what blind gossip this minx is, that is so prodigall’.21 Many of Shakespeare’s plays associated transgressive talk with women: in Titus Andronicus Lavinia’s tongue is cut out to prevent her from revealing the truth, and in King Lear, Cordelia refuses to flatter her father with her tongue, unlike her garrulous and insincere sisters.22 In his personification of Rumour in the induction of 2 Henry IV, Shakespeare represents her as a Virgilian Fama, ‘painted full of tongues’. She explains her function: Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. (6–8)

Shakespeare assumes his audience knows Fama, who asks ‘But what need I thus? | My well known body to anatomize | Among my household?’ (20–22)23 Theatre-goers’ familiarity with the proverbial and the dramatic personification of gossip as female was played out in law courts across Europe, as women were reported for exchanging indiscriminate words which tarnished neighbours’, priests’ and local worthies’ reputations. In the Languedocian consistory court in Montauban in 1595, Béatrix Cuérande defended a charge of spreading rumours about an illegitimate birth by explaining how the gossip had passed to her via a chain of at least three neighbours, two of them women.24 Similarly, in the seventeenth-century trial of Margaret Knowsley in Nantwich, for defaming the municipal preacher by revealing to two female confidantes his sexual advances towards her — gossip that spread rapidly through the town — twenty of the twenty-eight people giving evidence were women, pointing to the centrality of women’s oral networks in its transmission.25 The idea of female verbal incontinence was widely accepted and often cited to dismiss the authenticity of their words. In a 1717 dispatch to the duke of Marlborough, an English spy disparagingly dismissed the espionage activities of a Poor Clare abbess, writing ‘you can judge what secretaries nuns are, but more particularly my Lady Abbess, who can keep nothing longer than she can find occasion to tell it’.26 Such examples not only reveal the associa21 

Dekker, The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus, sig. B3v. Botehlo, Renaissance Earwitnesses, pp. 75–94. 23  Hardie, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?”’, pp. 67–69 discusses this point further. 24  Lipscombe, ‘Crossing Boundaries’, p. 414. 25  Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’, pp. 391–419 (p. 399). 26  Cited in ‘Registers of the English Poor Clare Nuns at Gravelines’, ed. by Martin and Gillow, p. 115. 22 

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tion of indiscreet words with women, but they also point to the close connection between gossip and rumour. Rumour in the sense of ‘general talk or hearsay, not based on definite knowledge’ can be traced to the late fourteenth century, and its English definition as ‘an unverified or unconfirmed statement or report circulating in a community’ dates from roughly the same period.27 Yet, as Chris Wickham has revealed, the concept was common in medieval legal suits, which predate the OED examples. In twelfth-century Tuscan courts, hearsay was specified as a form of knowledge. However, unlike publica fama (public fame) or common knowledge, and knowledge per visum (eyewitness knowledge), knowledge obtained per auditum (hearsay) was deemed unreliable. While the collective nature of publica fama, which ‘was what everybody knew’, rendered it trustworthy, interrogation records which close with ‘he knows nothing more except hearsay’ reveal a distinction which rendered unsubstantiated rumour not worthy of recording.28 Yet rumours might be taken very seriously when they pertained to the monarch or state affairs.29 In 1275 Edward I’s Statute of Westminster made it an offence to spread reports which might drive a wedge between the king and his subjects. According to an Elizabethan statute, people who spread ‘false seditious or slanderous news, rumours, sayings or tales’ touching upon the queen could expect the pillory, disfigurement, or imprisonment.30 In extreme circumstances a rumour might be judged seditious and treasonable, and cost its transmitter his or her life. However, most rumour-mongers engaged in spreading tales about private individuals, which might land them in court, subject to a humiliating punishment and a damaged reputation, but with their lives intact. Margaret Knowsley was publicly whipped and subjected to communal scorn and infamy in a two-hour ordeal in the cage in Nantwich market for slandering the preacher, but gossip about a clergyman was not as subversive as spreading rumours about the monarch. This distinction 27 

OED online, s.v. ‘rumour’. Wickham, ‘Fama and the Law in Twelfth-Century Tuscany’, pp. 16–17. Laura Stern considers ‘public fame’ as ‘the major mechanism through which the community participated in the judicial system’ in late Medieval and Renaissance Italian city-states; see Stern, ‘Public Fame in the Fifteenth Century’. For a discussion of how objects and information become ‘evidence’ and the intersection between ‘literature’ and ‘law’ in justices of the peaces’ handbooks, see Kerr, ‘“Romancing the Handbook”’, pp. 173–92 (pp. 180–83). 29  For an excellent discussion of the political ramifications of rumour in establishing or questioning royal legitimacy, see Evans, ‘Rumor, the Breath of Kings, and the Body of Law in 2 Henry IV’, esp. pp. 8–16. 30  Cressy, Dangerous Talk, p. 37. 28 

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highlights the blurred boundary between gossip and rumour, which many writers conflate and use interchangeably. As Elizabeth Horodowich has observed, ‘gossip and rumor by nature remain evanescent subjects’.31 For many scholars the two remain notoriously difficult to define as distinct oral practices. Gossip has been described as an intimate form of communication in private spaces, which occurs between individuals but might circulate within a wider group.32 Chris Wickham famously defined it as ‘talking about other people behind their backs’.33 Hans-Joachim Neubauer has suggested that ‘a rumour is that about which it is said that everyone is saying it’.34 In his interpretation rumours are distinguished from gossip in that they are anonymous and, importantly, that they are ‘quotations with a loophole’; the story’s originator and its transmitters are unknown. Conversely, gossip is transmitted between a gossiper and gossipee who commonly can be identified and pass the story directly one to the other. Neubauer notes that ‘gossip can take the form of rumour, but does not necessarily constitute it’.35 Similarly, gossip exchanged between known associates might eventually escape community confines and spread in the realm of rumour. Yet Keith Botelho has warned against regarding rumour as gossip on a larger scale, contrasting them thus: Whereas gossip concerns itself with small groups or individuals, rumor is oriented to large groups or societies; whereas gossip is intimate chatter with a local purpose, rumor is unverified and ambiguous information with deliberate designs affecting a larger social group; whereas gossip is concerned with the moral reputation of those being talked about, rumor usually transcends the focus of individual reputation to posit an ambiguity about people or events.36

Despite the apparent contradictions in this endeavour to differentiate the two genres of transgressive speech, Botelho consistently confines gossip to ‘a smaller community’ while citing rumour’s capacity to ‘destabilize and to bolster an individual, a community or a nation’, pointing to its greater impact on the wider stage of public fame.37 A rumour reflects the cultural values and anxieties of its day. 31 

Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, p. 133. Spacks, Gossip, pp. 4, 6–7. 33  Wickham, ‘Gossip and Resistance among the Medieval Peasantry’, p. 11. 34  Nebauer, The Rumour, p. 3. 35  Neubauer, The Rumour, pp. 3–4. 36  Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses, p. 10. 37  Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses, pp. 10, 13. See Stewart and Strathern, Witchcraft, 32 

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James C. Scott notes that ‘as a rumour travels it is altered in a fashion that brings it more closely into line with the hopes, fears, and worldview of those who hear it and retell it’.38 Other scholarship suggests that the intimacy of gossip and wider cultural import of rumour are not always easy to distinguish, because it is possible for them to overlap and operate together, not only in smaller locales, like families and neighbourhoods, but also on the wider public stage. Although they distinguish between gossip which is mutual, occurring in groups or networks, and rumour, which is unsubstantiated information circulating in wider networks, Pamela Stewart and Andrew Strathern have noted that ‘gossip may proceed into circuits of rumor, and rumor may get into gossip networks’.39 Thus, gossip can become rumour and vice versa, and each has the potential to support or subvert ‘an individual, a community or a nation’. Rumour also overlapped with Fama’s other siblings: news, tidings, malicious reports, tradition, story and public opinion.40 Although the emergence and consolidation of print culture in the early modern period gave rise to pamphlets, broadsheets and newspapers, as Richard Cust notes, ‘the commonest method of passing on news remained word of mouth’ well into the late seventeenth century.41 Adam Fox has claimed that the ‘circulation of national and political news should be seen as no different from the spread of domestic and personal gossip which is known to have been so rife in communities’.42 Thus, just as the impoverished Alice Bennet ‘goeth abroad to sell sope and candels from towne to towne’ in Oxfordshire, and in the course of her business ‘useth to carrie tales between neighboures’, so chapmen, professional carriers, and travelling tradespeople disseminated information about affairs of local, national, and foreign import.43 According to John Florio in 1591, Englishmen always enquired after the news in a form of greeting.44 In this way, legitimate accounts mixed with false rumours, and potentially libellous and seditious stories criss-crossed the country, occasionally sparking fears and panics or landing the newsmonger in court; but most Sorcery, Rumors and Gossip, pp. 38–39 for a similar definition: ‘Rumor is unsubstantiated information, true or untrue, that passes by word of mouth, often in wider networks than gossip’. 38  Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, p. 145. 39  Stewart and Strathern, Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors and Gossip, pp. 38–39. 40  Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v. ‘fama’. 41  Cust, ‘News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, p. 65. 42  Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700, p. 342. 43  Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700, p. 341. 44  Florio, Florios Second Frutes, sig. A2.

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commonly this word of mouth satisfied a need for information, however unreliable, about people, places, and events, which might then be passed on verbally to one’s neighbours. As Fox notes, despite the government in 1621 instituting the weekly printed gazettes to satisfy the insatiable appetite for news and prevent false rumours, news travelled more rapidly orally and thus continued to thrive in its oral format.45 Just as Virgil’s Fama, who like ‘a piece of news […] travels faster than the wind’ finding ‘her tools in the eyes, ears and mouths of people’, so, the news networks in early modern Europe informed people of varying social status, in urban and provincial areas, about political events and social scandal nationally and internationally.46 Regardless of its questionable trustworthiness, popular newsmongering stimulated debate and shaped public opinion. As Meredith Evans suggests of Rumour personified, in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV, ‘rumor is not simply infectious […] it proves politically effective’.47 Yet whether it was gossip exchanged between intimates in a small community setting, or anonymously transmitted rumour circulating in conversation on the highways and in coffee houses, both had significant repercussions for the reputation of its subject. Preferring the word ‘talk’ to gossip, Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail note ‘how images could be fixed, information conveyed, and reputations made — or lost’ by its speedy transmission from mouth to ear.48 Writing about medieval court records, they demonstrate the ways by which talk created the fama which was so essential to the functioning of the legal system. The reputation or renown of defendants and witnesses legitimated their defence and testimony. Defined in the OED as ‘the general opinion or estimate of a person’s character or other qualities; the relative esteem in which a person or thing is held’, reputations were largely conferred by other people. There was also a degree of self-fashioning in the construction of an individual’s reputation. Jeffrey Sawyer notes that in seventeenth-century struggles for influence French political elites were attuned to the importance of ‘public display’, using splendid attire and jostling for prominent positions in public ceremonies to promote their stature in others’ perceptions.49 Likewise, Fenster and Smail suggest that maintaining good reputation required ‘careful attention to speech, behavior, demeanor and action’. They term this ‘managing one’s fama’ or, more specifically, ‘managing one’s own 45 

Fox, ‘Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion’, pp. 607–08, 612, 613, 616, 620. Neubauer, The Rumour, p. 43. 47  Evans, ‘Rumor, the Breath of Kings, and the Body of Law in 2 Henry IV’, p. 2. 48  Fenster and Smail, eds, ‘Introduction’, p. 1. 49  Sawyer, Printed Poison, p. 16. 46 

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behavior with exclusive attention to its mirroring in the public perception of it’.50 Thus reputation was largely contracted in the public domain through the talk of others. Sharon Kettering’s study of King Louis XIII’s court focuses on the reputation of the royal favourite, the duc de Luynes, considering the ways Luynes fashioned his image using propaganda and patronage. Yet, after his death Luynes’s reputation was tarnished by his successor, Cardinal Richelieu, who was jealous of his predecessor’s influence with Louis and accordingly undermined his rival’s posthumous image.51 This occurred through the new favourite’s manipulation of court gossip and its translation into the medium of print. Richelieu was intensely aware of the importance of a public figure’s good name. The Testament Politique, has him declare, ‘La reputation est d’autant plus nécessaire à un prince que celui duquel on a bonne opinion fait plus avec son seul nom que ceux qui ne sont pas estimés avec des armées’. (Reputation is so necessary to a prince that he of whom one has a good opinion does more with his name alone than those who are not well regarded do with armies.)52 Richelieu and his contemporaries across Europe understood only too well the power of gossip and rumour and their fundamental role in defining fama. Defamation, or attacking a person’s ‘good fame’ and bestowing ‘ill repute’ or dishonour upon them, was a common consequence of transgressive talk and the subject of many complaints and court cases. The research of Laura Gowing, Martin Ingram, David Garrioch, Trevor Dean, and Elizabeth Horodowich has revealed how neighbourhood tensions resulting in gendered gossip about sexuality, dishonesty, and credit (in other words, reputation), often ended up in litigation.53 A popular genre for early modern defamation was the libel. Most usually in the form of an anonymous ‘handwritten epigram, statement or verse’, libels commonly were ‘scandalous, defamatory poems surreptitiously circulating criticism of courtiers, councilors, and royal policies’.54 It took on other unwritten or non-verbal forms too, but was most often circulated in print or spread by word of mouth. Mocking figures in public office was the stock intent of the libel, and it has been suggested that the surge in libelling between 1580 and 1630 in England 50 

Fenster and Smail, eds, ‘Introduction’, p. 4. Kettering, Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII. 52  Plessis, Testament Politique, ed. by André, p. 373; Sawyer, Printed Poison, p. 16. 53  Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England; Ingram, ‘Law, Litigrants and the Construction of “Honour”’, pp. 134–60; Garrioch, ‘Verbal Insults in Eighteenth-Century Paris’, pp. 104–19; Dean, ‘Gender and Insult in an Italian City’, pp. 217–31; Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, chap. 3. 54  Cressy, Dangerous Talk, p. 33; Bellany, ‘Railing Rhymes Revisited’, p. 1136. 51 

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was commensurate with ‘a court politics characterized by favorites and scandal’.55 Alastair Bellany has extended this understanding by linking the flourishing circulation of libels with the rapid expansion of news production and consumption, arguing that ‘libels flourished […] in part because of the growing hunger for political commentary and information of all kinds’.56 Over time, as print culture intensified and diversified into innumerable printed essays, newspapers, and satirical prints in the eighteenth century, the relationship between scandalous gossip and its publication became more complex. Jason Kelly’s work on the Dilettanti and Medmenham monks in the 1750s and 1760s reveals how rumour and gossip functioned to inform popular understanding of social and political affairs. Such common knowledge might then be employed in political causes célèbres, like John Wilkes’s prosecution for seditious libel in 1763. Kelly argues that the earl of Sandwich, Wilkes’s political opponent and fellow ‘monk of the Order of St Francis’, miscalculated the ‘extent of public knowledge about Medmenham’, but Wilkes ‘knew his public’, who had fed voraciously upon his stories about the libertine activities of government ministers, like Sandwich, at Medmenham, and he was able to triumph in the court of public opinion. As Kelly affirms, ‘The rumors and gossip surrounding the Monks of Medmenham Abbey, which had been such an important element of gentlemanly libertinism in the 1750s, now served to boost the popular cause of “Wilkes and Liberty!” and, in effect, to undermine the reputations of Dashwood, Sandwich, and their associates’.57 The seemingly unquenchable thirst for news and its close association with gossip and rumour, both in content and transmission, thus encouraged the proliferation of new guises which Fama and her sisters might assume.

The Meanings of Fama The omnipresence of Fama in early modern European public and private spaces, and the forms she assumed in speech, manuscript, print, and on the stage, suggests that gossip and rumour functioned well beyond their morally bankrupt status as simply ‘idle talk’. Indeed, scholarship has revealed that far from comprising the pointless if somewhat sinful and dangerous chatter posited by the clergy and moralists, gossip and rumour performed diverse and often contradictory roles in 55 

Bellany, ‘Railing Rhymes Revisited’, p. 1144. Bellany, ‘Railing Rhymes Revisited’, pp. 1143–44; McRae, Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State, pp. 29–30. 57  Kelly, ‘Riots, Revelries and Rumor’, pp. 779, 792. 56 

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early modern society. Talk about other people and affairs of local and national import constituted a fundamental element of social discourse. In 1695 Mary Clarke thanked her MP husband, Edward, for his news from London, describing it as ‘Great Entertainment and deversion [sic] for us’, while she maintained the household in his absence.58 As Bernard Capp explains, ‘the exchange of news, stories, or jokes helped to relieve the monotony of everyday toil’.59 In 1681 Thomas Baskerville noted how the women in Winchcombe knitted and conversed together while their bread cooked in the bakehouse.60 The eighteenth-century plebeian poet, Mary Collier, suggested that harvest field conversation eased the tedium of the labour.61 Such sociability might be shared with the gentry and elites. Samuel Pepys reported often engaging in ‘some merry discourse in the kitchen with my wife and maids’.62 The process of gossiping created bonds of intimacy between those who participated in it. Patricia Spacks has commented that ‘with gossip, where speaking takes place out loud, the sharing of small things establishes bonding, verbal experience declares possibilities of the intimate’.63 Capp concurs, noting that at one level ‘idle talk’ might be deemed simply functional and part of everyday social and economic commerce among neighbours and communities, but it was also crucial to bonding and feelings of belonging.64 As economic and political tension mounted in Somerset in 1696, Mary Clarke sought to divert Edward’s anxiety about his family’s safety with the story of a rift between their servant, John Spreat, and his wife, Grace, including the scandalous local gossip that Grace had poisoned her own child.65 Intimacy could be established and preserved using the very talk castigated as unproductive, even dangerous, by the moralizing clergy. Gossip might be functional in other ways too. Capp suggests that the social economy of many ‘ordinary’ people ‘depended on a network of reliable friends,

58 

Taunton, Somerset Heritage Centre, DD/SF 7/1/31, Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, 4 September 1695. 59  Capp, When Gossips Meet, p. 57. 60  Capp, When Gossips Meet, p. 52. 61  Collier, The Woman’s Labour, pp. 8–9. See Peter Denney’s essay for a more a detailed discussion. 62  Pepys, Diary, ed. by Latham and Matthews, iii, 113. 63  Spacks, Gossip, p. 89. 64  Capp, When Gossips Meet, pp. 55–60. 65  Taunton, Somerset Heritage Centre, DD/SF 7/1/31, fol. 78r-v, Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, 26 September 1696 and following letters.

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and a culture of good neighbourliness’.66 Favours ‘reinforced the bonds of friendship and trust’, cementing neighbourly networks which might assist when an individual fell upon difficult times.67 The exchange of information was a key factor in establishing such relationships. This was particularly significant for people seeking advancement. The pre-eminence of patronage in the political, social, and economic structure of early modern European societies, meant that those in receipt of useful information could benefit substantially. James Daybell has suggested that gossip exchanged in letters regarding the monarch’s taste in gifts should be considered significant information which could be used to advance the correspondents’ interests at court.68 He argues that women often maintained epistolary contact with government officials and other figures of authority, interspersing letters expressing gratitude and accompanying small gifts with the transmission of news. Such correspondence oiled the wheels of patronage for those who sought preferment for kin and associates.69 During the 1650s, English nuns exiled in the southern Netherlands provided news gleaned from associates in England and abroad to royalist conspirators in a bid to forge a close alliance between their religious institutions and the future King Charles II.70 In addition to intelligence about events in their homeland, the nuns imparted monastic gossip of potential interest to the royalists. In 1659 the Benedictine abbess in Ghent, Mary Knatchbull, sent Prince Charles’s secretary of state in exile, Sir Edward Nicholas, an account of Princess Louise Hollandine’s clothing ceremony.71 Knatchbull had received this information from the English Benedictine abbess at Pontoise, who had presumably obtained it from another religious cloister, suggesting that noteworthy news was transmitted between convents, perhaps for reasons of social and political economy, as much as for spiritual edification.72 It is clear from Mary Knatchbull’s letters that she considered the transmission of such information a significant element of the patronage relationship the nuns fostered with the royalists. 66 

Capp, When Gossips Meet, p. 56. Capp, When Gossips Meet, p. 57. 68  Daybell, ‘“Such newes as on the Quenes hye wayes we have mett”’, p. 125. 69  Daybell, ‘Gender, Politics and Diplomacy’, pp. 104–05. 70  Walker, ‘Crumbs of News’, pp. 644–46, 650; Walker, ‘Prayer, Patronage and Political Conspiracy’, pp. 10–11. 71  See Broomhall’s and Van Gent’s essay in this collection for a discussion of the princess’s scandalous flight from her family to the convent. 72  BL, MS Egerton 2536, fol. 337, Abbess Mary Knatchbull to Sir Edward Nicholas, 2 April 1659. 67 

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The importance of gossip in establishing intimacy, neighbourhood networks, and patron–client relationships reflects findings of anthropological research, which posits talk as a vital element in establishing group membership and identity.73 Chris Wickham maintains that gossip should be of interest to historians because ‘groups construct themselves by talking’.74 Bernard Capp explains that early modern individuals usually conceived of their ‘community’ in terms of both the immediacy of friendship and neighbourhood networks and, in a wider sense of the word, ‘conscious of shared interests, concerns, values that distinguished them from outsiders’.75 Concern for the common good was reflected in efforts to maintain the good reputation of the community, whether it was a village, town, parish or religious establishment.76 Susannah Lipscombe argues that the cases brought before the Montauban consistory regarding sexual impropriety demonstrate the identification of the Languedocian women concerned as the moral guardians of the community. Although the women who gossiped about the supposed lax sexual standards of neighbours and the birth of illegitimate children might themselves be accused before the consistory of disturbing the public peace through their indiscriminate words, they saw their role as policing one another’s behaviour and establishing the community’s moral ideals.77 A dispute in the English Benedictine abbey at Brussels in the 1620s and 1630s exemplifies how effective a process of exclusion and inclusion via talk might prove. Disaffection over governance and spiritual direction led the discontented nuns to release gossip about internal affairs in letters to their ecclesiastical superior, the Archbishop of Mechelen. By unleashing scandalous information, the disempowered nuns attempted to regain control over those aspects of monastic governance in which they could legitimately participate, such as the acceptance of permanent members of the religious community. From 1622 to 1625 several nuns reported their disquiet about women in the novitiate, citing a range of reasons why they should not take their final vows. Their unsuitability for the religious life provided the basis for most complaints. One novice, Margery Cotton, was accused of circulating stories that two former pupils in the convent school were witches, leading the complainant, Anne Ingleby, to suggest that Cotton showed so little ‘true vertu or devotion or zealle of her estat’ that Ingleby suspected she herself 73 

Gluckman, ‘Gossip and Scandal’, pp. 307–16. Wickham, ‘Gossip and Resistance’, p. 11. 75  Capp, When Gossips Meet, p. 268. 76  Capp, When Gossips Meet, pp. 268–69. See Elizabeth Horodowich’s essay in this col­ lection for a discussion about this communal function in early modern Venice. 77  Lipscombe, ‘Crossing Boundaries’, pp. 416, 421–22, 425–26. 74 

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‘hath had some intangilment with such artes’.78 Cotton was not professed in the cloister, indicating the power of gossip in this instance. The Benedictine example of judgemental gossip, like that of the Languedocian women studied by Lipscombe, reveals that what was castigated officially as spiritually or politically dangerous talk was a significant element in community formation and regulation. Talk was equally significant in defining social identity. Literary scholar, Patricia Spacks, argues that the ‘verbal speculation’ that is gossip ‘confirms the vision of its group’.79 Referring to the novels of Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, and George Eliot, she observes that ‘dominant classes (in Wharton, the wealthy; in Gaskell, the impoverished upper class; in Trollope and Eliot, the solid middle class) protect themselves against interlopers by talking about them’. Gossip ‘insistently declares the identification of individuals with their social groups’.80 Historians have also discussed the connection between talk and social identity. Jason Kelly has analysed competing accounts of the riot which ensued on 30 January 1735 at the Golden Eagle tavern during a supposed ‘Calves-Head Club’ celebration on the anniversary of Charles I’s execution. A group of fashionably dressed foppish gentlemen drinking claret clashed with a crowd of men drinking beer in the street. Newspapers appealed to popular concerns regarding class and gender in their portrayal of the riot. The gentlemen were portrayed in text and image as ‘aristocratic fops’ strongly influenced by continental tastes and accordingly feminized, in contrast to the staunchly masculine ‘John Bull’ men in the street crowd.81 Conversely, the gentlemen’s correspondence about the event articulated a constrasting elite understanding of masculinity. Kelly argues that they used gossip to strengthen their bonds of friendship and to ‘portray themselves as the ideal figures of aristocratic youth’.82 Thus, commentary about the riot in the papers, satirical prints, private correspondence and, presumably in the coffee houses and on the streets, defined and reinforced stereotypes but, in the process also functioned to instil understandings of elite and common identity. The correlation between talk and identity had wider social and political ramifications in early modern society. Elizabeth Horodowich discusses the significance 78 

Mechelen, AAM, Englese Benedictijnen, MS 654.12–1, Anne Ingleby to Jacob Boonen, [1625]. For a more detailed discussion of this case and the meaning of gossip in religious cloisters, see Walker, ‘Securing Souls or Telling Tales?’, pp. 237–44. 79  Spacks, Gossip, pp. 172, 173. 80  Spacks, Gossip, p. 172. 81  Kelly ‘Riots, Revelries and Rumor’, p. 776. 82  Kelly ‘Riots, Revelries and Rumor’, p. 776.

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of speech in defining the subversive culture of the sixteenth-century gondolier in Fabio Glissenti’s Discorsi Morali. The waterman described his power to extract money and favours from clients using an array of stand-over tactics, including insults and bad language. Horodowich observes, ‘with foul language, workers and servants carved out a space of resistance for popular culture’.83 Horodowich’s point in this instance, and other research on fama, confirms Patricia Spacks’s astute observation that ‘anyone can invoke the dangerous magic of language: a weapon for the otherwise powerless, a weapon […] usable from dark corners’.84 If in Venice ‘verbal aggression functioned as a substitute for political action’, gossip and rumour were similarly adopted by marginalized groups across Europe as a mode of resistance against the dominant culture.85 In 1724 Daniel Defoe suggested that the lower social orders were more prone to gossip and slander than their social superiors.86 While Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys indulged themselves in idle chatter with their maidservants (challenging Defoe’s opinion), they nonetheless worried that former domestic staff might divulge information about their household. In 1662 they dismissed a chambermaid, Sarah, who subsequently entered the service of Sir William Penn, with whom Samuel Pepys worked and socialized. Although unhappy with his wife’s insistence that Sarah be dismissed, Pepys later expressed disquiet ‘for some slight words that Sarah, now at Sir W. Penn’s, hath spoke of us’. Sarah’s gossip about the Pepys continued to trouble him to the extent that Samuel and Elizabeth resolved to eshew the Penns’ company.87 In this instance an otherwise powerless dismissed servant could influence her social superiors by her actual and feared potential to reveal information about their affairs. Capp cites the case of the London alewife, in 1579, who came home to find her landlord, who had come to collect the rent, upstairs in a bedchamber with a woman. Scandalized, the alewife and a friend stood below, wishing they had the courage to interrupt the noisy lovemaking, but both were wary of the landlord, a prosperous brewer. The friend articulated their dilemma, saying she ‘durst not go to them, but if it had been a meaner person, she would have gone up’. The two women’s subsequent

83 

Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, pp. 123–24. Spacks, Gossip, p. 30. 85  Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, p. 122; Spacks, Gossip, pp. 5, 15–16, 43–46. 86  Defoe, Tour Thro’ The Whole Island of Great Britain, i, Letter II, pp. 58–59. Thanks to Heather Kerr for this reference. 87  Pepys, Diary, ed. by Latham and Matthews, iii, 263, 274–75, 278, 295, 302, iv, 7. 84 

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gossip about the affair eventually led to the brewer’s prosecution, revealing how talk might be a potent, often the only, weapon available for the disempowered.88 Others used talk to challenge economic injustice and to express political dissatisfaction. In 1696 hardship caused by the government’s recoinage led to unrest in Somerset. Edward Clarke was one of the MPs responsible for the legislation. His wife, Mary, reported what was ‘wispered amonge the mob’ in correspondence to Edward. She had heard of a planned bull-baiting nearby, and the rable that was to come with and be gathered at that sport was to fall out and soon come and plunder and pull downe [the?] house and frighted [sic] your wife and children out of dores and pull you in peeces if [you?] had bin heare.89

The rumoured violence did not come to pass, but neighbourhood gossip was apparently intended to exert pressure on Edward Clarke. Other rumours of political import simply expressed popular fascination with the monarch, although they might land those who spread them in court on the charge of sedition. During Elizabeth I’s reign, there were endless rumours that the queen had borne children fathered by the Earl of Leicester.90 Adam Fox suggests that reports of the Queen’s bastards might appeal to her detractors and supporters alike.91 Yet such indiscriminate talk might draw the ire of the authorities, who sentenced the Essex husbandman, Robert Gardener, to stand in the pillory in 1590 for saying Elizabeth had four children by Leicester, one of whom had been burnt.92 Reports of the death of the monarch drew even harsher penalties. In the 1620s there were several stories circulating about the deaths of both James I and Charles I by the hand of the Duke of Buckingham.93 While much of this talk was nothing more than ‘hearsay’ or ‘news’, it might have serious consequences at moments of heightened political tension. During the Popish Plot, the indiscriminate words of William Stayley resulted in his trial and execution for treason. Although Lord Chief Justice Scroggs admonished the jury against reaching a verdict influenced by ‘the rumours or disorder of times’ when a man’s life was concerned, the fear on

88 

Capp, When Gossips Meet, p. 275. Taunton, Somerset Heritage Centre, DD/SF 7/1/31, fol. 71, Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, 6 September 1696. 90  Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, pp. 361–63; Cressy, Dangerous Talk, pp. 72–73. 91  Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, pp. 361–62. 92  Cressy, Dangerous Talk, p. 73. 93  Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, pp. 360–61; Cressy, Dangerous Talk, pp. 133–37. 89 

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the streets whipped up by ‘Plot’ rumour-mongering made it impossible to acquit anyone overheard discussing the king’s death in positive terms.94 Gossip and rumour were not always subversive in the political realm. They might play a more positive formative role and even be used by the ruling elites. Elizabeth Horodowich suggests that in Venetian politics ‘gossip was a significant component of the broglio’ during elections when lobbying for votes and political position entailed rumour-mongering, leaking information and social discourse. Although discouraged by the government in legislation designed to curtail the election gossip of the broglio from the fourteenth through to the seventeenth centuries, Horodowich argues that by the sixteenth century contemporary chroniclers were arguing for gossip as a less dangerous way of doing politics than violence or duelling, and ultimately the state accepted its place in elections.95 In 1688 gossip and rumour surrounding the legitimacy of the newborn English heir contributed to the overthrow of King James II by his daughter and Dutch son-inlaw, William of Orange. Rumours abounded about the prince before his birth, with many commentators sceptical about the reality of Queen Mary of Modena’s pregnancy. Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, wrote on 15 January that ‘it is strange to see, how the Queen’s great belly is every where ridiculed, as if scarce any body believed it to be true’.96 Despite many witnesses to the birth attesting otherwise, gossip persisted that the prince was an imposter, smuggled into the birthing chamber in a warming-pan. Gilbert Burnet repeated what he had heard, writing ‘the child was strong and vigorous, and did not look like a new-born child, as some that saw it [within] two days have assured me’.97 The degree of uncertainty engendered by such talk ultimately provided William of Orange a justification for invasion. William III’s ‘Declaration of Reasons’ credited the suspicions surrounding the legitimacy of the pregnancy and birth as one reason for liberating the English in the Glorious Revolution.98 This example of rumour, circulated orally, in manuscript correspondence, in printed pamphlets and in news-sheets, reveals the power of gossip in defining the body politic.

94 

The Tryal of William Stayley, p. 7. Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, pp. 158–61. 96  Hyde, The Correspondence of Henry Hyde, ed. by Singer, ii, 156. 97  Burnet, A Supplement to Burnet’s History of My Own Time, ed. by Foxcroft, p. 275. 98  William III, The Declaration, pp. 3, 4. 95 

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Gender and Fama The warming-pan scandal also shows how women might subvert the conventions of an expectant mother’s lying-in, and the traditional role of the ‘goddsibs’ who attended such an occasion, in order to achieve political goals. A central figure in the circulation of gossip about Mary of Modena’s ‘fictitious’ pregnancy and questionable delivery of a prince was her stepdaughter, Anne, Princess of Denmark. Anne supplied her sister in The Hague, Mary, Princess of Orange (the heir should her father and Mary of Modena remain childless) with endless titbits of talk about their stepmother’s pregnancy which questioned its reality. In March she wrote, ‘nobody will be convinced it is her child except it prove a daughter. For my part, I declare I shall not, except I see the child and she parted’.99Anne conveniently absented herself from London so that she did not have to witness and thereby verify the royal birth. She was accordingly able to remain party to the gossip and innuendo circulating orally and in print about the prince. In June 1688 she wrote ‘‘tis possible it may be her child; but where one believes it, an thousand do not. For my part, except they do give very plain demonstrations, which is almost impossible now, I shall ever be of the number of unbelievers’.100 Her letters to the Princess of Orange suggest that Mary was party to rumours about what had occurred in the delivery chamber and the baby’s postnatal health. In July Anne responded to Mary’s innumerable questions and, despite admitting that the details provided by one of the Queen’s women of the bedchamber seemed ‘very clear’, Anne nonetheless concluded ‘but one does not know what to think; for methinks it is wonderful if it is no cheat, that they never took no pains to convince me of it’.101 Although an eye-witness to her stepmother’s pregnancy and changing body, Anne insisted that because she had not been asked to feel Mary of Modena’s belly, she could never be certain that the Queen was with child. The Princess’s nonattendance at the birth, combined with the absence of tangible evidence which might have been provided by touch, enabled Anne to counter her brother’s legitimacy through gossip. A scandal surrounding childbirth provided the subject matter and the circumstances for gossip and rumour-mongering from domestic servants to aristocratic women, even princesses and queens.102 Women’s use of the medium in this instance 99 

The Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne, ed. by Curtis Brown, p. 35. The Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne, ed. by Curtis Brown, p. 37. 101  The Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne, ed. by Curtis Brown, pp. 39–43, quote at p. 42. 102  See essays in this volume by McIlvenna, Broomhall and Van Gent, Mansfield, and Barclay. 100 

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supports the arguments of scholars who suggest that gossip provided women a potent means for participating in arenas usually open only to men. Steve Hindle suggests that for seventeenth-century women talk provided a ‘female social space’ and it constituted a rare avenue for their participation in the public sphere, by employing gossip in the formation of public opinion. He argues that studying it enables historians to understand women’s concerns and values.103 Bernard Capp likewise notes that ‘women’s talk was stigmatized as gossip not because it differed in character from men’s, but because it was perceived as the subversive behaviour of subordinates’.104 Capp cites examples of male fear surrounding wives’ subversion of marital hierarchy by discussing their husbands’ failings, including their sexual performance — a consistent motif in literary representations of female gossips too.105 The challenge posed to masculine authority by women’s loose chatter featured in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s tale, in which the hapless knight seeks what it is that women most desire, in a bewildering quest that elicits multiple answers from numerous women. Karma Lochrie has suggested that the Wife of Bath uses her tale ‘to pose gossip as a rival interpretive community to that of conventional medieval auctoritas, an interpretive community authored and authorized by women’.106 Princess Anne’s subversive talk likewise demonstrates women’s adept exploitation of gossip as a mode of resistance. Nicola Parsons has observed that ‘Anne took up the possibilities that were suggested by the intersection of secrecy and publicity in the royal lying-in chamber by adopting the position of gossip’.107 By manipulating a form of discourse traditionally associated with women, Anne challenged the testimony of the male privy councillors attendant at the birth; she thus prevented a Catholic succession to the throne, in favour of her Protestant sister and brother-in-law and, ultimately, herself. Yet the royal birth of 1688 attracted as many, if not more, male gossipers as female, suggesting that this kind of talk was not just the province of women. In November 1687 Roger Morrice noted that the Queen was ‘with child’, observing that the physicans had confirmed evidence of the pregnancy, but ‘skilfull women’ warned that the signs might prove false.108 In December he recorded a rumour 103 

Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’, p. 393. Capp, When Gossips Meet, p. 63. For a further discussion of this point, see Spacks, Gossip, pp. 35–46, and Peter Denney’s essay in this volume. 105  Capp, When Gossips Meet, pp. 6, 3–4; Lochrie, Covert Operations, pp. 73–78; Matlock, ‘Secrets, Gossip and Gender’, pp. 210–12, 216–20. 106  Lochrie, Covert Operations, p. 59. 107  Parsons, Reading Gossip, p. 19. 108  Morrice, Entring Book, ed. by Goldie, iv, 151. 104 

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that the King’s marriage to his first wife was to be annulled and the Princesses Mary and Anne would be declared bastards.109 Upon the prince’s delivery in June 1688, Morrice recounted a friend hearing from someone who had felt the warm afterbirth ‘with his own hand’.110 He also described the lack of enthusiasm among congregations in ‘many Churches’ when thanksgiving prayers for the prince were read.111 Although Morrice accepted the legitimacy of the prince, the gossip he heard, and the comments of Hyde and Burnet cited earlier, suggest that men were not only privy to the rumours; rather, like Princess Anne, several played a leading role in disseminating stories which questioned the pregnancy and birth. Gossip was also by no means confined to seventeenth-century Englishmen. Elizabeth Horodowich notes that entries in inquisition registers confirm that ‘men gossiped as much if not more than their female counterparts’.112 Barbers were universally acknowledged gossips from ancient Greece to early modern Venice.113 Venetian pharmacies and apothecaries’ shops were recognized locales for the exchange of news and rumour. Filippo de Vivo argues that, like coffee houses, they provided a convivial space for the exchange of news. So much so that the eighteenth-century Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni portrayed apothecaries as ‘common, slightly ridiculous, gossips’, suggesting that they were more interested in exchanging news than in providing remedies.114 Daniel Defoe, writing of high society at Tunbridge, affirmed that women’s reputations were damaged more commonly by ‘the Malice, the Reflections, the Busy Meddling, the Censuring, the Tatling from Place to Place […] among the Men Gossips more than among their own Sex, and at the Coffee-Houses more than at the Tea-Table’.115 Keith Botelho has argued that, in the early modern theatre, men projected fears of their own loose tongues onto women, and much English Renaissance drama was focused on ‘combating disruptive female speech in order to maintain male informational authority’.116 Thus, men engaged in indiscriminate chatter just as frequently as women, and male gossip performed many of the same functions as women’s ‘indiscreet’ speech.

109 

Morrice, Entring Book, ed. by Goldie, iv, 196. Morrice, Entring Book, ed. by Goldie, iv, 278. 111  Morrice, Entring Book, ed. by Goldie, iv, 285. 112  Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, p. 147. 113  Nebauer, The Rumour, pp. 7–11; Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, p. 153. 114  de Vivo, ‘Pharmacies as Centres of Communication in Early Modern Venice’, pp. 520, 513. 115  Defoe, Tour Thro’ The Whole Island of Great Britain, i, Letter II, p. 58. 116  Bothelo, Renaissance Earwitnesses, p. 5. 110 

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The connection between women and gossip is clearly problematic and many scholars have endeavoured to disavow the gendering of loose talk as something specifically feminine.117 Nicola Parsons has observed that much of the scholarship associating indiscriminate words with women implies that gossip resides solely within the private sphere. As well as marginalizing women, this also devalues the form of linguistic exchange with which they were most closely linked. Parsons argues that, far from separating the public and private, gossip ‘enacts a complex negotiation’ between the two spheres, focusing on both the insider and the outsider; these latter groups, however, are unstable, expanding and contracting as gossip circulates.118 Parsons’s identification of gossip as a process which straddles the private and the public goes a long way towards providing an explanatory framework for the complex relationship between gossip, rumour, and fama. It explains how gossip might evolve from talk between intimates, whether in a household, neighbourhood, parish, royal court, or any other form of communal association, into the public domain of legal prosecution, politics, business, or newspapers. Indeed the concept of the ‘domestic sphere’ as a microcosm of the state was commonplace in early modern parlance and in subsequent scholarship. The household could never be ‘private’ in a culture where neighbours were encouraged to keep an eye on one another’s domestic affairs and to report marital disharmony or potential political subversion to the authorities.119 The porosity of the spaces in which early modern people transacted intimacy, business, politics, and piety suggests that these locales were analogous to Fama’s mysterious abode with ‘a thousand apertures’ from which ‘the subdued murmur of voices’ released the gossip, rumours, hearsay, news, and countless titbits of information which formed, modified, and destroyed reputations.

117 

Lochrie, Covert Operations, pp. 63–66; Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, p. 153. Parsons, Reading Gossip, p. 35. 119  Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties; Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in PostReformation England, pp. 6–9. 118 

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Works Cited Manuscript and Archival Documents London, British Library, MS Egerton 2536 Mechelen, Archdiocesan Archives of Mechelen-Brussels, Fonds Kloosters, Englese Bene­ dictijnen, MS 654.12 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng.th.e.156, Sermons, 1695–1722, Sermons Used by Bingham’s Son, Richard, 1726–63, fols 101–295 Taunton, Somerset Heritage Centre, DD/SF 7/1/31 Correspondence to Edward Clarke from his Wife, Mary Clarke (20 Aug 1675–22 May 1704)

Primary Sources Adams, Thomas, The Taming of the Tongue in The Sacrifice of Thankfulnesse […] By Tho. Adams […] Whereunto are Annexed Five Other of his Sermons […] Never Before Printed (London: [n. pub.], 1616) Burnet, Gilbert, A Supplement to Burnet’s History of My Own Time, ed. by H. C. Foxcroft (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902) Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) Collier, Mary, The Woman’s Labour: An Epistle to Mr Stephen Duck; in Answer to his Late Poem, Called The Threhser’s Labour (London: J. Roberts, 1739) Dekker, Thomas, The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus (London: [n. pub.], 1600) Defoe, Daniel, A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, Divided into Circuits or Journies, 3 vols (London: [n. pub.], 1724) Florio, John, Florios Second Frutes (London: [n. pub.], 1591) Gouge, William, Of Domesticall Duties (London: [n. pub.], 1622) Hyde, Henry, The Correspondence of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, ed. by Samuel W. Singer, 2 vols (London: Colburn, 1828) The Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne, ed. by Beatrice Curtis Brown (London: Cassell, 1935) Morrice, Roger, The Entring Book of Roger Morrice 1677–1691, ed. by Mark Goldie, 6 vols (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), iv, The Reign of James II, 1687–1689, ed. by Stephen Taylor Ovid, Ovid in Six Volumes: IV Metamorphoses, trans. by Frank Justus Miller, 2nd edn, rev. by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library, 43, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984) Pepys, Samuel, The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription, ed. by Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols (London: Bell, 1970) Plessis, Armand du, Cardinal de Richelieu, Testament Politique, ed. by Louis André, 7th edn (Paris: [n. pub.], 1947)

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‘Registers of the English Poor Clare Nuns at Gravelines, with Notes of Foundations at Aire, Dunkirk, and Rouen, 1608–1837’, contributed by William Martin Hunnybun and annotated by Joseph Gillow, in Miscellanea IX, Catholic Record Society, 14 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1914), pp. 25–173 Shakespeare, William, The Second Part of King Henry IV, ed. by A. R. Humphreys, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1966) The Tryal of William Stayley, Goldsmith; For Speaking Treasonable Words Against His Most Sacred Majesty; and Upon Full Evidence Found Guilty of High Treason (London: [n. pub.], 1678) Virgil, Aeneid, trans. by H. R. Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916; reprt. 1996) William  III (of Orange), The Declaration of his Highness William Henry, by the Grace of God Prince of Orange, &c. of the Reasons Inducing him to Appear in Armes in the Kingdom of England for the Reserving of the Protestant Religion and for the Restoring of the Lawes and Liberties of England, Scotland, and Ireland (The Hague: [n. pub.], 1688)

Secondary Studies Bellany, Alastair, ‘Railing Rhymes Revisited: Libels, Scandals, and Early Stuart Politics’, History Compass, 5 (2007), 1136–79 Botehlo, Keith, Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity (New York: Palgrave, 2009) Capp, Bernard, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Cressy, David, Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) Cust, Richard, ‘News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, Past and Pre­ sent, 112 (1986), 60–90 Daybell, James, ‘Gender, Politics and Diplomacy: Women, News and Intelligence Networks in Elizabethan England’, in Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture, ed. by Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 101–19 —— , ‘“Such newes as on the Quenes hye wayes we have mett”: The News and Intelligence Networks of Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (c. 1527–1608)’, in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, ed. by James Daybell (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 114–31 Dean, Trevor, ‘Gender and Insult in an Italian City: Bologna in the Later Middle Ages’, Social History, 29 (2004), 217–31 Evans, Meredith, ‘Rumor, the Breath of Kings, and the Body of the Law in 2 Henry IV’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 60 (2009), 1–24 Fenster, Thelma S., and Daniel Lord Smail, ‘Introduction’, in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. by Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 1–11

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Fox, Adam, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000) —— , ‘Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England’, Historical Journal, 40 (1997), 597–620 Garrioch, David, ‘Verbal Insults in Eighteenth-Century Paris’, in The Social History of Language, ed. by Peter Burke and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 104–19 Gluckman, Max, ‘Gossip and Scandal’, Current Anthropology, 4 (1963), 307–16 Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) Hardie, Philip, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?” Tracking Virgilian and Ovidian Fama’, Ordia Prima, 1 (2002), 67–80 Hindle, Steve, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley: Gossip, Gender and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change, 9 (1994), 391–419 Horodowich, Elizabeth, Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) Ingram, Martin, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) —— , ‘Law, Litigants and the Construction of “Honour”: Slander Suits in Early Modern England’, in The Moral World of the Law, ed. by Peter Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 134–60 Kelly, Jason M., ‘Riots, Revelries and Rumor: Libertinism, and Masculine Association in Enlightenment London’, Journal of British Studies, 45 (2006), 759–95 Kerr, Heather, ‘“Romancing the Handbook”: Scenes of Detection in Arden of Faversham’, in ‘This Earthly Stage’: World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. by Brett D. Hirsch and Christopher Wortham (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 173–92 Kettering, Sharon, Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII: The Career of Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes (1578–1621) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008) Lipscombe, Susannah, ‘Crossing Boundaries: Women’s Gossip, Insults and Violence in Sixteenth-Century France’, French History, 25 (2011), 408–26 Lochrie, Karma, Covert Operations: The Medieval Uses of Secrecy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) Matlock, Wendy A., ‘Secrets, Gossip and Gender in William Dunbar’s The Tretis of the Tua Mariit Women and the Wedo’, Philological Quarterly, 83 (2004), 209–35 McRae, Andrew, Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Neubauer, Hans-Joachim, The Rumour: A Cultural History, trans. by Christian Braun (Lon­don: Free Association Books, 1999) Oxford English Dictionary, ed. by John S. Simpson and Edmund S. Weiner, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. by Alexander Souter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968–82) Orlin, Lena, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)

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Parsons, Nicola, Reading Gossip in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009) Phillips, Susan E., Transforming Talk: The Problem with Gossip in Late Medieval England (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 2007) Sawyer, Jeffrey K., Printed Poison: Pamphlet Propaganda, Faction Politics, and the Public Sphere in Early Seventeenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) Scott, James C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Gossip (New York: Knopf, 1985) Stern, Laura Ikins, ‘Public Fame in the Fifteenth Century’, The American Journal of Legal History, 44 (2000), 198–222 Stewart Pamela J., and Andrew J. Strathern, Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors and Gossip (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Vivo, Filippo de, ‘Pharmacies as Centres of Communication in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies, 21 (2007), 505–21 Walker, Claire, ‘Crumbs of News: Early Modern English Nuns and Royalist Intelligence Networks’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 42 (2012), 635–55 —— , ‘Prayer, Patronage and Political Conspiracy: English Nuns and the Restoration’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000), 1–23 —— , ‘Securing Souls or Telling Tales? The Politics of Cloistered Life in an English Convent’, in Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe: An Interdisciplinary View, ed. by Cordula van Wyhe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 227–44 Wickham, Chris, ‘Fama and the Law in Twelfth-Century Tuscany’, in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. by Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 15–26 —— , ‘Gossip and Resistance among the Medieval Peasantry’ Past and Present, 160 (1998), 3–24

Telling Tales: Negotiating ‘Fame’ in Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Christopher Marlowe’s Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage Lucy Potter Lucy Potter*

‘Poets are fascinated by literary history, above all by their own place in it’.

F

ame — in the sense of being much talked about — is one of the seven main meanings that fama has in the classical period.1 A profoundly ambiguous term, fama can also mean both good and bad reputation, glory and ill repute, news and hearsay, one’s good name and malicious report, and Rumour personified (Fama). A ‘dea foeda’ (foul goddess) according to Virgil’s Aeneid, Fama was born of Mother Earth out of anger against the Olympian gods and is sister to the Titans Coeus and Enceladus (4. 195, 178–80).2 Unlike her brothers, who are attested to in ritual practice, Fama is ‘attested to almost exclusively as a didactically or epically conceived allegory’.3 Also unlike her brothers, who are eternally confined in Tartarus by Jupiter, Fama is free to roam the earth, appearing in an ekphrastic *  I wish to record here my great thanks to Dr Heather Kerr for the insights and suggestions that have improved this essay. 1  Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. by Souter. 2  Virgil, Aeneid, trans. by Fairclough. All references are from this translation and are cited parenthetically in the text. I use ‘she’ and ‘her’ throughout to refer to Fama because the noun is emphatically feminine. 3  Scheuer, ‘Fama’, in Brill’s New Pauly, online. Lucy Potter ([email protected]) Senior Lecturer in English and Associate Dean Learning and Teaching, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Adelaide.

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description in Aeneid 4 to spread a mixture of ‘facta atque infecta’ (fact and falsehood) about Dido and Aeneas’s tryst in the cave (195, 190). Fama also appears in Book  12 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses where, as the purveyor of ‘mixtaque cum veris commenta’ (falsehoods mingled with the truth), she tells the Trojans of the imminent arrival of the Greek fleet (55. 64–66).4 The goddess’s primary function in both Virgil’s and Ovid’s epics is self-reflexive; as Philip Hardie notes, she is the ‘word of the poet asserting his uniqueness and authority within a poetic tradition’, the herald of a new version of an existing story that will bestow authorial fame on the aspiring poet.5 In this essay I examine Virgil’s and Ovid’s negotiations with Fama in their epics, and those of Christopher Marlowe in his Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage. My focus is Fama’s influence, explicitly or implicitly, on the Dido story that they all tell. I suggest that these various Dido stories are exempla in Fama’s long literary history which attest to the risks as well as the rewards of engaging the goddess as a means to authorial fame. As I aim to demonstrate, Virgil’s, Ovid’s, and Marlowe’s texts document a contest between Fama and the poet for control not only of the Dido story but also of the larger story the Aeneid tells, of which she is a part: Aeneas’s epic quest to win the site of the future Rome in Latium and thereby enable the birth of a ‘nascentis Troiae’ (infant Troy) to supersede the old one the Greeks destroyed (Aeneid 10. 27). That story, which centres on Aeneas as the mythological ancestor of the Emperor Augustus and necessitates the removal of Dido, is a providential narrative of empire building and consolidation that emanates from Fatum (Fate), ‘the Olympian word of Jupiter’.6 In the first section of this essay, ‘Losing the Plot’, I examine Virgil’s strategic use of Fama in Aeneid 4 to transform the so-called historical Dido into a sexualized figure, undone by desire for Aeneas. This portrait of Dido is one of a number of innovations Virgil employs to re-vision Homer’s account of the Trojan War and its aftermath from a Roman perspective, ostensibly to celebrate two crowning achievements of Fatum that are connected: the founding of Rome and the culmination of the Julian line in Augustus. I argue that after Virgil enlists Fama in the service of Fatum, he loses control of her. The result is an Aeneas who is perfidus (false) rather than pius (dutiful) not merely in his treatment of Dido but throughout the epic, in particular in the poem’s last action, the death of Turnus. I suggest 4 

Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by Miller. All references are from this translation and are cited parenthetically in the text. 5  Hardie, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?”’, p. 72. 6  Hardie, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?”’, p. 78.

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that Virgil struggles and ultimately fails to redeem his flawed hero, destabilizing the providential narrative he most likely meant Aeneas to embody. In the essay’s second section, ‘Mastering Fama’, I examine Ovid’s ekphrasis of the goddess in the Metamorphoses as evidence of his rivalry with Virgil. I argue that in his attempt to surpass Virgil’s literary fame Ovid asserts a mastery over Fama that magnifies his precursor’s loss of control over her. Ovid promotes his own literary credentials by inviting readers, especially Augustus, to reread the Aeneid in the light the Metamorphoses casts on Virgil’s failure to master Fama. He simultaneously reveals that the foundational narratives of all epics are fictions scripted by Fama rather than Fatum. As we shall see, Ovid claims for himself the eternal fame his poem purports to bestow upon Augustus, in a way that future texts can never undo. Paradoxically, however, he immortalizes Virgil’s literary fame in the process. In the essay’s third section, ‘The Playwright as Fama’, I discuss Marlowe’s Dido (c. 1584–87) in the context of the period’s interest in the translatio imperii studiique — the westward movement of both ‘empire’ and ‘studies’ — in which the Aeneid is the key text. As Heather James explains, the translatio imperii studiique is ‘the myth by which cultural authority migrates from Troy to imperial Rome to England and rival European states’.7 I argue that Dido stages the power Fama has to radically alter the Aeneid’s providential narrative, upon which the myth depended; working as Virgil’s ‘foul goddess’, Marlowe constructs a new, explicit version of what happens between Dido and Aeneas in the cave that irreversibly damages the Trojan’s epic reputation. His dramatic representation of a blatantly perfidus, pathetic Aeneas continues the practice established by Virgil and Ovid of mobilizing Fama to assert the poet’s ‘uniqueness within a poetic tradition’. In addition, Marlowe calls attention to his authorial mastery of Fama in the cave scene and its dramatic effects, a control over her that surpasses Ovid’s as it breathes dramatic life into the struggling hero Virgil never quite manages to redeem. By telling a new version of Virgil’s Dido and Aeneas story in a dramatic genre that is also his first play, Marlowe courts literary fame as a frontrunner in the development of early modern tragedy.8 7 

James, Shakespeare’s Troy, p. 8. Cf. Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, pp. 136–37. It seems appropriate to acknowledge here that I do not discuss Chaucer’s negotiations with Fama in the Hous of Fame in this essay. See pp. 23–24 of James’s Shakespeare’s Troy for an outline of Chaucer’s evocation of Fama in the context of the translatio imperii studiique. 8  Modern editors and most critics agree that Dido is Marlowe’s first play, written while he was at Cambridge sometime between 1584 and 1587. For a review of arguments about the play’s date, see Oliver, ‘Introduction’, pp. xxv–xxx. In 2008 Martin Wiggins challenged the dominant

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In establishing Fama’s classical contexts, I am indebted to Philip Hardie’s work on Virgil’s and Ovid’s representations of her. I enlist some of his acute observations for their intrinsic value to scholars of Fama/fama and to introduce the plethora of antecedent texts that the Aeneid animates. These make up what critics routinely call the Virgilian intertext, which is both intimately connected to Fama and central to the aesthetic innovations and authorial aspirations of Virgil, Ovid, and Marlowe. The discussion throughout is also informed by Hardie’s abiding interest in the ‘textual opposition between chthonic Fama’ and Fatum, which he sums up ‘as a conflict within epic texts between competing claims to tell a story, a power struggle for mastery of the narrative’.9 Hardie’s work informs my argument that Dido inherits the contest in Virgil’s and Ovid’s epics between the providential narrative of Fatum and the alternative plots Fama writes and, in turn, my intention in this essay to redress a Virgil/Ovid binary that is prevalent in criticism of Marlowe’s works. Patrick Cheney has set the terms of this binary in the context of Marlowe’s pursuit of authorial fame: beginning with Dido, Marlowe follows an Ovidian career model that is ‘distinctly counter-Virgilian in its form and goals’ in order to wrest the laurel of national poet from Edmund Spenser’s head and place it on his own (9–10. 4).10 Critics agree that Marlowe was ambitious but what is missing from Cheney’s assessment of the playwright’s career path and his apparent goal is the paradoxical end result in the Metamorphoses of Ovid’s rivalry with Virgil: the immortalization of Virgil’s literary fame. Tracking Fama enables us to see a more complex relationship between Virgil, Ovid, and Marlowe than Cheney envisages.11 Rather than understanding Ovid as a mere ‘strategy for rewriting’ the Aeneid in Dido, I suggest that Marlowe aimed to trump Ovid, not Virgil, by tak-

argument that Dido is Marlowe’s first play. He argues, counter-intuitively to my mind, that the Tamburlaine plays were Marlowe’s first (1587) and that Dido followed in 1588. ‘When Did Marlowe Write Dido, Queen of Carthage?’, p. 541. 9  Hardie, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?”’, p. 78. The struggle is clearly a gendered one, as Fatum is emphatically masculine. Hardie’s abiding interest in Fama has most recently manifested in Rumour and Renown (2012). In this essay, I refer to Hardie’s earlier discussions about the goddess, on which he draws in Chapters 3 and 5 of Rumour and Renown. 10  Cheney, Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession, pp. 9–10. The majority of critics interested in Ovid’s influence in Dido base their arguments on Heroides 7, in which the Carthaginian queen accuses Aeneas of betrayal, and the development of this version of the story in texts of the medieval period such as Lydgate’s Troy Book. See Chapter 3 of Sara Deats’s Sex, Gender, and Desire. 11  The Virgil/Ovid binary that informs Cheney’s work is a strand of criticism that began in 1962. See Douglas Cole, Suffering and Evil in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe, p. 85.

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ing the mastery of Fama to a new level in new genre.12 I further suggest that by trumping Ovid, Marlowe implicitly bests Virgil, in effect attempting to usurp the literary fame of both classical poets. Whatever the objective of Marlowe’s ambition might have been, there are implications here for current arguments about the effect of the classical influences in his poems as well as his plays.13 For example, Cheney has recently detected a nascent republicanism in the Marlovian corpus in what he calls a ‘preliminary study’ of the topic.14 My arguments about Dido question Cheney’s persistent claim that Marlowe is an ‘“Ovidian” author’ and add another dimension to our analyses of Marlowe’s works that includes rather than excludes Virgil.15 I am also indebted to Heather James’s discussion of the significance of Fama to the translatio imperii studiique. James argues that Fama is Virgil’s ‘personification for the interrogative mood of his epic’, and that he employs her ‘to raise questions about the vested interests that help shape events into facta, or useable fictions’.16 Nevertheless, although the goddess ‘erupts from a tear in the pro-Augustan fabric of the Aeneid’, Virgil contains the ‘havoc’ she wreaks ‘on the stable narrative frame of the epic’ in the poem’s formal design, which supports Augustan ideology, in James’s view.17 In my examination of Fama’s influence beyond Aeneid 4, I argue that the formal design of the Aeneid does not adequately repair the tear in the pro-Augustan fabric from which she erupts. This means that if the Metamorphoses ‘unravels the Aeneid at its [narrative and thematic] seams’, as James maintains it does, then the garment Ovid inherited from Virgil was poorly stitched in the first place.18 How else could Fama erupt from a tear in it? I suggest that Ovid’s epic intensifies the essentially Virgilian practice of unpicking Augustan Rome’s foundational narrative, a practice Marlowe continues in Elizabethan England.

12 

Cheney, Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession, p. 105. The Ovidian influence is becoming increasingly influential in the study of Marlowe’s poems as well as his plays. See, for example, Georgia Brown’s chapter on Marlowe’s ‘Hero and Leander’ in her Redefining Elizabethan Literature, pp. 102–77. 14  Cheney, Marlowe’s Republican Authorship, p. ix. 15  Cheney, Marlowe’s Republican Authorship, p. ix; and see his argument in Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession that Dido is an example of a lost genre, ‘Ovidian tragedy’, pp. 26, 99– 114. I have argued elsewhere that the Aeneid can explain what Cheney finds unVirgilian, and therefore Ovidian in his assessment, about Dido. See Potter, ‘Marlowe’s Dido’, passim. 16  James, Shakespeare’s Troy, pp. 26, 25. 17  James, Shakespeare’s Troy, pp. 24, 26, 27. 18  James, Shakespeare’s Troy, p. 28. 13 

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Losing the Plot In the Aeneid, Virgil re-visions Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as one poem to celebrate Augustus and his instigation of the pax Romana after the long and bloody civil wars. Virgil’s reversal of the Homeric sequence is a part of the re-visioning process that has led to the common critical division of the epic into two sections, Odyssean (Books 1–5) and Iliadic (Books 7–12).19 In the Odyssean section, Fama appears in Book 4 after Dido’s encounter with Aeneas in the cave: Extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes, Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum. mobilitate viget virisque adquirit eundo; parva metu primo, mox sese attollit in auras ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubile condit. illam Terra parens, ira inritata deorum, extremam, ut perhibent, Coeo Enceladoque sororem progenuit, pedibus celerem et pernicibus alis, monstrum horrendum, ingens, eui, quot sunt corpore plumae, tot vigils oculi subter (mirabili dictum), tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris. nocte volat caeli medio terraeque per umbram, stridens, nec dulci declinat lumina somno; luce sedet custos aut summi culmine tecti, turribus aut altis, et magnas territat urbes, tam ficti pravique tenax quam nuntia veri. haec tum multiplici populos sermone replebat gaudens, et partier facta atque infecta canebat: venisse Aenean, Troiano sanguine cretum, cui se pulchra viro dignetur iungere Dido; nunc hiemem inter se luxu, quam longa, fovere regnorum immemores turpique cupidine captos. haec passim dea foeda virum diffundit in ora. protinus ad regem cursus detorquet Iarban incenditque animum dictis atque aggerat iras. (173–97) (Forthwith Rumour runs through Libya’s great cities — Rumour of all evils most swift. Speed lends her strength, and she wins vigour as she goes; small at first through fear, soon she mounts up [towards] heaven, and walks the ground with 19 

In Book 6, Aeneas descends into the underworld tasked with duties related to the golden bough and in search of his father’s shade. This book marks Aeneas’ transition from Odyssean wanderings to an Iliadic resolve to stand and fight for the site of the future Rome.

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head hidden in the clouds. Her, ‘tis said, Mother Earth, provoked to anger against the gods, brought forth last, as sister to Coeus and Enceladus, swift of foot and fleet of wing, a monster awful and huge, who for the many feathers in her body has as many watchful eyes below — wondrous to tell — as many tongues, as many sounding mouths, as many pricked-up ears. By night, midway between heaven and earth, she flies through the gloom, screeching, nor droops her eyes in sweet sleep; by day she sits on guard on high roof-top or lofty turrets, and affrights great cities, clinging to the false and wrong, yet heralding truth. At this time, exalting with manifold gossip, she filled the nations and sang alike of fact and falsehood, how Aeneas is come, one born of Trojan blood, to whom in marriage fair Dido deigns to join herself; now they wile away the winter, all its length, in wanton ease together, heedless of their realms and enthralled by shameless passion. These tales the foul goddess spreads here and there upon the lips of men. Straightaway to King Iarbas she bends her course, and with her words fires his spirit and heaps high his wrath.)

Iarbas is Dido’s luckless suitor. Fama’s personal visit to him initiates action grounded in some of fama’s other classical meanings. Upon hearing the goddess’s news, Iarbas prays to Jupiter, questioning the supreme god’s reputation: ‘an te, genitor, cum fulmina torques, | nequiquam horremus, caecique in nubibus ignes | terrificant animos et inania murmura miscent?’ (Is it vainly, O father, that we shudder at thee, when thou hurlest thy bolts? And do aimless fires amid the clouds terrify our souls and stir murmurs void of purpose?) (4. 208–10).20 Jupiter answers by sending Mercury to Aeneas with a command to leave Dido for the sake of Aeneas’s and his son’s glory as founding fathers of Rome: si te nulla movet tantarum gloria rerum nec super ispe tua moliris laude laborem, Ascanium surgentem et spes heredis Iuli respice, cui regnum Italiae Romanaque tellus debenture. (4. 272–76) (If the glory of such a fortune stirs thee not, and for thine own fame’s sake thou shoulderest not the burden, have regard for growing Ascanius and the promise of Iulus thy heir, to whom the kingdom of Italy and the Roman land are due.)

Aeneas gets the message, wavers about how to tell Dido, decides not to tell her just yet, and secretly prepares to depart (4. 283–95). Meanwhile, Fama tells Dido the ‘furenti’ (maddening) news that Aeneas does not (4. 298–99). Inflamed, the queen rages through Carthage with a ‘bacchatur’ (Bacchic cry) that severs her 20 

Philip Hardie restates Iarbas’s questions as follows: is ‘Fama the only efficacious verbal power on earth, or does the traditional supreme god still have such power?’ Virgil’s Aeneid, p. 276.

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from epic and places her in classical Greek tragedy (4. 300–03). Dido’s tragic stature is later confirmed in her dreams, which replay the madness of Euripides’s Pentheus in the Bacchae and the flight of Aeschylus’s Orestes in the Eumenides (4. 465–73). Further encouraged to leave by Mercury in a dream of his own, Aeneas departs and the raging Dido, devastated by the loss of her good name, kills herself (4. 556–70, 320–23, 534–52, 596). Fama hears the Queen’s deathscream from the top of Dido’s palace and ‘concussam bacchatur per urbem’ (riots through the startled city) (4. 665–66). Virgil’s portrait of a Dido undone by her love for Aeneas is inconsistent with historical accounts of her. As Marilynn Desmond notes, the earliest account of the historical Dido ‘is preserved among the fragments attributed to the Greek historian Timaeus’.21 This preVirgilian Dido never met Aeneas, who had died some 300 years earlier. Desmond summarizes her story as follows: Dido fled to Libya with a group of her followers after her brother, Pygmalion, had killed her husband [Sychaeus]. When a Libyan king wished to marry her, she refused him; when she was compelled by her people to accept him, she pretended to stage a ceremony in order to release herself from her sacred promise to her husband. She built and lit a large funeral pyre next to her dwelling, and she threw herself into it from her house. Even in this synopsis, Dido is a heroic figure; her suicide is an act of defiance that testifies to the nobility of her nature.22

Until Fama’s intervention in Book 4, Virgil’s ‘formidable’ Dido is consistent with the historical figure: her ‘royal bearing, her wealth and generosity, the civilized city she has established, and the building campaign she directs all contribute to her significance and power’.23 It is via the tales the ‘foul goddess’ spreads that Virgil transforms the queen into ‘a woman tempted by amor to forsake both her oath to Sychaeus (which the historical Dido died to preserve) and her role as leader’, initiating the loss of her good name that leads to her suicide.24 After over-writing the historical Dido’s story, Fama moves on, not appearing again until Book 7 (104–06). An essential feature of Virgil’s Fama is that ‘she expands to fill space’.25 After Virgil unleashes her, she expands to fill three spaces that are all vital to his Dido story and the innovative aesthetic intentions the story announces, as I will discuss in a moment. The first space is created by the lack of information Virgil provides 21 

Desmond, Reading Dido, p. 24. Desmond, Reading Dido, p. 24. 23  Desmond, Reading Dido, p. 27. 24  Desmond, Reading Dido, p. 28. 25  Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 273. 22 

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about what happens in the cave, which results in a deliberate rather than a discrete ambiguity. The second space is created when Aeneas decides to put off telling Dido about his imminent departure, and enlists his comrades Mnestheus and Sergestus to ‘rebus sit causa novandis, | dissimulent’ (hide the cause of his altered plans) (4. 288–91). These decisions seriously threaten Aeneas’s epic status. The first decision feminizes Aeneas because delay is a strategy almost exclusively used by female characters in the first four books of the Aeneid.26 The second decision is even more damning because concealment is the tactic by which the Greeks overcame Troy. Aeneas’s response to the events caused by Fama’s intervention in the historical Dido’s story is clearly a low point in his moral history. The third space is created by the loss of Dido’s good reputation, her ‘pudor qua sola sidera adibam, | fama prior’ (the honour and former fame by which alone [she] was winning a title to the stars), which the historical Dido died to protect (4. 321–33). Fama’s expansion ‘is presented on both the horizontal and vertical axes’.27 Moving horizontally, to ‘fill nations’ with news that ‘affrights great cities’, she carries the political influence that distinguishes rumour from mere gossip.28 Moving vertically towards heaven and Jupiter via Iarbas’s wrath, she activates Mercury to form ‘the backdrop’ against which ‘the drama of Dido unfolds’.29 That drama is a complex one which involves Dido’s good reputation and its loss, Aeneas’s future glory as a founding father of Rome, and Virgil’s fame as the author of this new version of the Trojan War and its aftermath. Hardie’s distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ fama helps us here: the ‘hyperbolic picture of Fama is […] an evil segment of fama in the wider sense, which, understood favourably, is the source and vehicle of encomiastic hyperbole; one might add that fama is the privilege (but also the aspiration) of the poet himself ’.30 As Virgil makes clear, ‘good fama is of the greatest importance to Dido’, and when she finally abandons it ‘the full force of evil Fama’ is unleashed on Carthage. 31 In addition, in a ‘yet wider context, 26 

For instance, Dido ‘tenet’ (holds) Aeneas, ‘blandisque moratur | vocibus’ (staying him with soft words) in Book 1, 670–71 and in Book 4 she conspires with her sister, Anna, to ‘causa innecte morandi’ (weave pleas to delay) Aeneas (51). Venus and Juno also reach an uneasy agreement to keep Aeneas in Carthage, reflecting in the divine sphere the conspiracy between Dido and Anna to delay Aeneas (4. 102–27). In contrast, Mercury orders Aeneas to ‘rumpe moras’ (break off delay) (4. 569). 27  Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 273. 28  Cf. Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses, p. 10. 29  Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 279. 30  Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 275. 31  Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 275.

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the figurative reaching to the sky of fama is part of the more general theme of the journey to the stars that is the destiny of Aeneas and Rome’.32 That destiny is Aeneas’s ‘famae melioris’ (greatest fame), which is ‘notus’ (known) in heaven from Book 1 (4. 221; 1. 379). Fama is strikingly similar to Mercury for he too is a swift creature of the air described by Virgil in terms of a bird (4. 254–55). Both have Homeric precedents in the Iliad: Fama in the description of Eris (Strife) and Mercury in the form of Ossa, or the personification of popular report spread by Zeus.33 However, the two figures are significantly different in the following ways: Fama is a ‘divinity of perverted speech’ whereas the ancient allegorical tradition consistently identifies Mercury ‘as Logos, Ratio, the unperverted word’; her language is ‘involved and indirect’ whereas his is ‘direct and simple’; she uses her perverted speech to serve Mother Earth in her role as enemy of the Olympian gods, whereas he uses the unperverted word to serve Jupiter in his role as Fatum.34 Despite these differences, Fama threatens heaven as she does earth ‘through her middle position between the human and divine living space’, and Jupiter must hold her down so ‘she can only spread fear in the earthly region’.35 In Hardie’s view, Fama ultimately serves Fatum in the Aeneid: the ‘descent of Mercury […] represents a reversal of the ascent of Fama, the reimposition of Olympian order in a space which has been threatened by an evil chthonic power’.36 Herein lies an explanation of Fama’s enigmatic ability to ‘herald truth’ while ‘clinging to the false and wrong’. The news Fama spreads is also inflammatory, enraging Dido as it kindles Iarbas’s wrath and prefiguring the pyre rising ‘sub auras’ (heavenward) on which the Carthaginian queen kills herself (4. 505). And Fama is herself constructed out of rumours — ‘wondrous to tell’, ‘‘tis said’ — a mutable entity that changes shape depending on the stories she embodies. In line with Virgil’s new telling of an old tale, his evocation of Fama is what Alessandro Barchiesi calls a ‘typical’ one: the poet refers to her in order to ‘establish a polarity between [his] dependence on and innovation within a previous 32 

Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 275. Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, pp. 226, 241, 273, 276. For Eris and Ossa, see the Iliad, 4. 442 and 2. 94. Hardie connects Mercury to Ossa via the function of both as traditional messengers of Jupiter. Also see Scheuer, ‘Fama’, Brill’s New Pauly, online. 34  Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, pp. 276–78. 35  Scheuer, ‘Fama’, Brill’s New Pauly, online. I have slightly altered Fairclough’s translation of the Fama passage in the Aeneid — replacing ‘to’ heaven with ‘towards heaven’ — to convey the idea that Jupiter is holding the goddess down. 36  Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 278. 33 

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tradition’.37 This dependence and innovation are apparent in the ways in which Fama and Mercury function in the Aeneid, which are similar to yet different from their Homeric operations. A close adaptation of Homer’s Strife, Fama and the passages she elicits about Dido’s reputation and Aeneas’s glory are ‘modelled on Homeric descriptions of kleos’ — ‘immortal fame’ in this instance, but also ‘rumour’ or ‘renown’.38 Nevertheless, ‘where in Homer such things are isolated expressions’, in Virgil they are ‘attached to larger thematic structures’.39 Likewise, the Virgilian movement of fama upwards to the stars has no Homeric precedent. The classical example for Virgil here is Lucretius’s encomium of Epicurus in 6. 7f. of De rerum natura.40 Virgil’s independence from the Homeric epics he is re-visioning alerts readers to the presence of other antecedent texts in the Aeneid. These make up the Virgilian intertext that the epic animates. In addition to works by Homer and Lucretius, this intertext includes works by Catullus, Callimachus, Plato, and the Athenian tragedians.41 Virgil enlists even more antecedent texts in his transformation of the chaste historical Dido into the woman who loses her good name in the cave. Sources for Virgil’s Dido include Homer’s Circe, Calypso, and Nausicaa; Medea in Euripides, Apollonius and Varro Atacinus; Apollonius’s Hypsipele; Catullus’s Ariadne; Timaeus’s account of Elissa preserved by Polyaenus; as well as historical accounts of Cleopatra and even Scribonia (the wife whom Augustus divorced).42

The Virgilian intertext has a transformed Dido at its heart. When coupled with the Aeneid’s reversal of the Homeric sequence, it has far-reaching implications for Virgil’s authorial fame. First, the combination exposes the revisionist aim of the Aeneid, which, as Duncan Kennedy observes, discloses the Iliad in particular ‘as but one element’ in the ‘grander narrative’ that Virgil’s epic tells.43 Second, it enables Virgil to extend the function of epic as a foundational narrative to include the preservation of past literary texts within it. As M. Owen Lee puts it, the Aeneid is a ‘vast compendium of Greek and Roman literature of all ages, a kind of index to 37 

Barchiesi, ‘Narrative Technique and Narratology in the Metamorphoses’, p. 195. Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 275. 39  Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 275. 40  Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 275. 41  Lee, Fathers and Sons in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 11. 42  Laird, ‘Approaching Characterisation in Virgil’, p. 289. Also see Farrell, ‘The Virgilian Intertext’, pp. 222–38. 43  Kennedy, ‘Virgilian Epic’, p. 151. 38 

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the whole civilization of which Augustan Rome was the culmination’.44 By turning his epic into a kind of library, Virgil both guarantees the preservation of past literary greatness and sets his own course upwards to authorial fame among the stars. He also invites future authors like Ovid and Marlowe to partake of the glory of building a literary empire by linking their works to his. Virgil’s authorial fame relies on Dido in the first four books of the Aeneid, as the intertext that informs her characterization demonstrates. More specifically, it relies on his transformation of the chaste historical Dido who is ascribed to Timaeus’s account of Elissa into the sexualized figure who loses her ‘honour’ and ‘former fame’. Yet this transformation comes at a cost for Aeneas. As I mentioned earlier, Virgil does not say what actually happens in the cave, deliberately creating the space Fama needs to thrive and Virgil needs to transform Dido. Surely it is ‘no accident’ that Fama appears at this pivotal moment in Virgil’s revisionist project, when he is ‘most blatantly caught in the act of manipulating the legends, of fictionalizing’.45 Fama also questions the validity of Aeneas’s epic epithet, ‘pius’ (6. 232). After all, the ‘shameless passion’ of which she speaks is a shared one. So too is the ‘wanton ease’ that leads Aeneas as well as Dido to neglect their kingdoms. Furthermore, the situation is serious enough for Jupiter to intervene by sending Mercury, and Aeneas disgraces himself when he plans to leave Carthage without first telling Dido. Upon discovering Aeneas’s covert intentions, Dido accuses him of gross duplicity, indeed, of manufacturing an epic lineage: ‘perfide’ (false one!). According to the incensed Queen, his mother was no goddess, nor Dardanus the founder of his line (4. 305, 365–66). Critics have attributed the threat to Aeneas’s good name that his relationship with Dido exposes to his struggle with pietas, his battle to control his emotions and act in ways that befit a ‘pius’ hero. M. Owen Lee’s definition of pietas shows the close link between the quality and Aeneas’s epithet: pietas ‘is a three-fold devotion to family, country, and the gods’, one that ‘has nothing to do with emotional display and everything to do with clarity of vision and a sense of purpose’.46 Aeneas’s failures to meet the demands of pietas in the epic’s Odyssean section are well-documented, as is the climax of them in his treatment of Dido.47 It is these failures that rend the ‘tear in the pro-Augustan fabric of the Aeneid’ that 44 

Lee, Fathers and Sons in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, p. 11. Hardie, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?”’ p. 79. 46  Lee, Fathers and Sons in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, pp. 18, 22. Also see Monti, ‘The Dido Episode and the Aeneid’, p. 11 and Fichter, Poet’s Historical, p. 26. 47  Also see Slavitt, Virgil, pp. 110–11; Williams, Technique and Ideas in the ‘Aeneid’, p. 44. 45 

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James observes, from which Fama erupts. I suggest that the unflattering portrait of Aeneas that emerges from his struggles with pietas is indicative of Virgil’s own struggle to control the alternative plot that Fama is concurrently writing. For in what seems to me an ingenuous attempt to manage the threat to Aeneas’s good name that breaks out in the absence of information about what happens in the cave, Virgil has to intervene with Aeneas’s blunt denial that any marriage took place: ‘nec coniugis umquam | praetendi taedas aut haec in foedera veni’ (I never held out the bridegroom’s torch nor entered such a compact) (4. 338– 39). His denial belies the fact that ‘fulsere ignes et conscious Aether | conubiis’ (fires flashed in Heaven, the witness to their nuptials), which Dido records in her insistence, not once but three times, that a marriage took place (4. 166–67, 307, 316, 431). Earlier, Virgil attempted to cast Dido’s version of events as an untruth by using ‘bacchatur’ to refer to both her and Fama, but divine witness of the marriage contests that reading. So, working harder, Virgil uses the simile of an oak to liken Aeneas’s resolve to leave Dido to the perpetual, unwavering strength of Atlas ‘prop[ping] heaven on his peak’ (4. 438–49, 246–50). In his argument about the reimposition of Olympian order after the outbreak of Fama, Hardie relies on the Atlas passage.48 In disagreeing with Hardie on this point, I draw on W. Mackail’s remark that the Atlas description ‘bears evident traces of being a draft’.49 In my analysis, Aeneas’s artless denial that any marriage took place, and what Mackail calls the ‘feebleness’ of the last four lines of the Atlas description, are not merely evidence in Virgil’s poetry of the risks of engaging Fama, they are the poetic record of his loss of control over her. That loss resonates in Virgil’s attempt to resuscitate his hero’s epic reputation in Book 5 by over-using ‘pater Aeneas’ (father Aeneas) and the superlative adjectives ‘optimus’ (best) and ‘maximus’ (greatest) to describe him (358, 424, 461, 530, 700, 827). No other book matches the frequency of references to Aeneas in Book 5. The quantity and quality of the references in Book 5 designedly yet anxiously over-determine Aeneas as the embodiment of a providential narrative, that is, of Fatum. These references also accelerate Aeneas’s and the poem’s movement away from the ‘famam inanem’ (idle story) that Fama writes and Iarbas complains about (4. 218). But Virgil’s loss of control over Fama’s alternative plot is also apparent in the poem’s second half, especially when the bitter aftertaste of Aeneas’s unheroic treatment of Dido is refreshed in the climax of his crises of pietas in the closing moments of the Iliadic section — the wrath that leads him to 48  49 

Hardie, Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, pp. 280–81. Virgil, The Aeneid, ed. and trans. by W. Mackail, p. 142n.

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kill Turnus. Aeneas’s rage consumes him when he sees the belt that Turnus wears, which the Rutulian takes from Aeneas’s friend Pallas after killing him in Book 10 (479–500): ‘furiis accensus et ira | terribilis’ (fired with fury and terrible in his wrath), Aeneas ‘ferrum adverso sub pectore condit | fervidus’ (full in [Turnus’s] breast buries the sword with fiery zeal) (12. 950–51).50 The ‘clarity of vision and sense of purpose’ that are hallmarks of pietas are so disturbingly absent in Aeneas’s behaviour that even Virgil appears concerned, ending his epic not with a focus on its eponymous hero but on the flight of Turnus’s ‘vita […] indignata sub umbras’ (indignant life to the Shades below) (12. 952). The fact that Aeneas’s extreme emotional response is inflammatory is also disturbing, for it suggests Fama’s lurking influence in Virgil’s report of it. When Virgil kills Turnus, he kills Dido for a second time. Readers are left in no doubt about this because of the ‘painstakingly executed congruencies’ in the action leading up to the deaths of both characters.51 Turnus’s death thus returns readers to the Dido episode, with Fama at its core, and its importance for Virgil’s grander narrative and his own authorial fame. As the Aeneid ends, Fama, out of Virgil’s control, whispers perfidus Aeneas not pius Aeneas in readers’ ears. Aeneas’s treatment of Turnus has led a number of critics to argue that the Aeneid is not the celebration of Augustus that Virgil most likely intended, especially because Aeneas ignores Turnus’s appeal to the father and son relationship in his mercy plea (12. 931–38).52 Respect for that relationship underpins the civilization that culminates in Augustan Rome, as Virgil emphatically declares in the parade of souls in Book 6 (756–892). Therefore, these critics maintain, Virgil is critiquing the processes of empire (consciously or not), especially the human cost of Augustus’s pax Romana. In tension with the epic’s preservation and advancement of the literary record of western civilization, the troubled portrait of Aeneas renders it a politically unstable text. On his deathbed Virgil is rumoured to have ordered the destruction of the Aeneid. Perhaps he recognized that the havoc wreaked by Fama’s alternative plot stretched well beyond the Dido and Aeneas episode. To use James’s metaphor, perhaps he realized that the tear in his epic’s pro-Augustan fabric was larger than he intended and beyond repair. 50  Upon hearing of Pallas’s death, Aeneas goes berserk in another failure of pietas, taking hostages for a human sacrifice and killing those who beg for mercy in the very name of that moral quality, including a priest (10. 517–604). 51  Slavitt, Virgil, p. 152. Also see Lee, Fathers and Sons in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, pp. 94–95. For a list of the congruencies, see Virgil, Aeneid vii–xii, ed. by R. D. Williams, p. 499. 52  The seminal study is Johnson, Darkness Visible. Cf. Slavitt, Virgil, pp.  127–28 and Kallendorf, ‘Representing the Other’, p. 397.

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Mastering Fama In the Metamorphoses, Ovid registers and controls Virgil’s rampaging Fama as he seeks to surpass his precursor’s literary fame by subordinating the Aeneid to the erotic motifs of his poem. Of the 250 or so metamorphoses in Ovid’s poem, the first transformation, as David Slavitt points out, ‘is of the idea of epic itself ’; Ovid ‘transformed the epic, playing against its grain a lot of the time, and escaping its severe organizational and thematic demands by transforming it into something altogether different’.53 In this revolutionary epic, Ovid’s rivalry with Virgil is apparent in what Richard Tarrant calls his ‘self-assertive manoeuvres’, including the ‘shameless appropriation of Virgil’s language’ and the ‘quoting of signature lines of the Aeneid in shockingly discordant contexts’.54 These manoeuvres climax in the radical subordination of Fama’s appearance and power in the Aeneid to Ovid’s description of her house: Orbe locus medio est inter terrasque fretumque caelesteque plagas, triplicis confinia mundi; unde quod est usquam, quamvis regionibus absit, inspicitur, penetratque cavas vox omnis ad aures: Fama tenet summaque domum sibi legit in arce, innumerosque aditus ac mille foramina tectis addidit et nullis inclusit limina portis; nocte dieque patet: tota est ex aere sonanti, tota fremit vocesque refert iteratque quod audit; nulla quies intus nullaque silentia parte, nec tamen est clamor, sed parvae murmura vocis, qualia de pelagi, siquis procul audiat, undis esse solent, qualemve sonum, cum Iuppiter atras increpuit nubes, extrema tonitrua reddunt. atria turba tenet: veniunt, leve vulgas, euntque mixtaque cum veris passim commenta vagantur milia rumorum confusaque verba volutant; e quibus hi vacuas inplent sermonibus aures, hi narrata ferunt alio, mensuraque ficti crescit, et auditis aliquid novus adicit auctor. illic Credulitas, illic temerarius Error vanaque Laetitia est consternatique Timores Seditioque recens dubioque auctore Susurri; ipsa, quid in caelo rerum pelagoque geratur et tellure, videt totumque inquirit in orbem. (12. 39–63) 53  54 

Slavitt, ‘Preface’, p. x. Tarrant, ‘Ovid and Ancient Literary History’, pp. 24, 26.

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(There is a place in the middle of the world, ‘twixt land and sea and sky, the meeting-point of the three-fold universe. From this place, whatever is, however far away, is seen, and every word penetrates to these hollow ears. Rumour dwells here, having chosen her house upon a high mountain-top; and she gave the house countless entrances, a thousand apertures, but with no doors to close them. Night and day the house stands open. It is built all of echoing brass. The whole place resounds with confused noises, repeats all words and doubles what it hears. There is no quiet, no silence anywhere within. And yet there is no loud clamour, but only the subdued murmur of voices, like the murmur of the waves of the sea if you listen afar off, or like the last rumblings of thunder when Jove has made the dark clouds crash together. Crowds fill the hall, shifting throngs come and go, and everywhere wander thousands of rumours, falsehoods mingled with the truth, and confused reports flit about. Some of these fill their idle ears with talk, and others go and tell elsewhere what they have heard; while the story grows in size, and each new teller makes contribution to what he has heard. Here is Credulity, here is heedless Error, unfounded Joy and panic Fear; here sudden Sedition and unauthentic Whisperings. Rumour herself beholds all that is done in heaven, on sea and land, and searches throughout the world for news.)

Ovid’s ekphrasis of Virgil’s ‘foul goddess’ trumps that of his precursor in its use of five fewer words in the same number of lines. Ovid’s description also bests Virgil’s and other extant ekphrases of Fama because only Ovid directly tackles the problem of her latency by making her purely acoustic being indirectly visible in the structure of her bronze palace in a central place between heaven, sea and earth: Fama’s domus, whose countless openings are open to day and night in order to gather the voices of the world, represents all the characteristics of the incorporeal Fama herself. Her courtly state, composed of personified levels of intensity of public speech (rumores, confuse verba, susurri) and her mass psychological effects (credulitas, error, vana laetitia, consternati timores, seditio repens) represents a phenomenology of rumour in the forecourts of power.55

Yet Ovid’s politicized Fama retains the self-reflexive function of Virgil’s creature, introducing a new epic cycle in the last four books which stretches from the Trojan War down to Ovid and Augustus’s own day: ‘terra sum Augusto est’ (the earth is under Augustus’s sway) (15. 860). The Dido and Aeneas episode is severed from this version of a previous story, and mockingly dealt with in a mere four lines in Book 14: excipit Aenean illic animosque domoque non bene discidium Phrygii latura mariti 55 

Scheuer, ‘Fama’, in Brill’s New Pauly, online.

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Sidonis: inque pyra sacri sub imagine facta incubuit ferro deceptaque decipit omnes. (ll. 78–81) (There the Sidonian queen received Aeneas hospitably in heart and home, doomed ill to endure her Phrygian lord’s departure. On a pyre, built under pretence of sacred rites, she fell upon his sword; and so, herself disappointed, she disappointed all.)

Yet despite Ovid’s derision, his Dido and Aeneas story is indebted to Virgil’s epic rather than to Timaeus’s history. Not so Ovid’s Fama, who, in a striking contrast that further subordinates the Aeneid to the Metamorphoses, does the job of Virgil’s Mercury when she tells the Trojans a simple, unperverted truth before disappearing from the poem: the Greek fleet is about to arrive (12. 64–66). All that can be said about the news Fama spreads in this epic is that as a ‘sequel to the build-up’ to the Trojan War in the Aeneid ‘it is unexpectedly anticlimactic’, the result of a deliberate, ‘ludicrous mismatch between the power of Fama and what it is she actually does’.56 Ovid also has the subordination of the Aeneid’s grander narrative in his sights. The time frame of his epic is larger than Virgil’s. Beginning not in medias res, as the Aeneid does, the Metamorphoses begins with the formation of the world out of Chaos in Book 1, then twists and turns its way towards the final speech by Jupiter, which recaps in Book 15 (807–39) the prophecy of Augustan rule that Virgil announces in Aeneid 1 (257–79). But whereas Augustan Rome is an event that lies many centuries beyond both Aeneas’s and his son’s lifetimes in the Aeneid, Ovid has brought that event within the narrative of his poem. Having deified Augustus in the present by linking him to Jupiter — ‘pater est et rector uterque’ (each is both sire and ruler) — Ovid predicts his emperor’s future place among the stars (15. 860, 868–70). Yet the story Ovid tells is not really about Augustus’s immortal fame: it is about his own as author of a new version of that story. As Tarrant points out, Ovid is a kind of ‘anti-historian who delights in reshuffling the data and producing constantly new accounts’.57 In the new epic cycle that apparently deifies Augustus, Ovid, in the space created by Fama’s absence, distorts and digresses from the Homeric and then Virgilian subject matter that make up the poem’s last four books.58 These shifts again subordinate the Aeneid and its vast intertext to Ovid’s poem, enlarging the tear in the Aeneid’s pro-Augustan fabric left by Virgil. By 56 

Hardie, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?”’, pp. 70, 72. Tarrant, ‘Ovid and Ancient Literary History’, p. 13. 58  Hardie, ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?”’, p. 71. 57 

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intensifying the unpicking begun by his precursor, Ovid manages to subordinate Augustus’s fame to that of himself and his epic. His poem also demonstrates that the foundational narratives of all epics are fictions: they are scripted not by Fatum but by Fama, whom Ovid has replaced. The political danger here is that Ovid controls the ‘phenomenology of rumour in the forecourts of power’ that both makes his Fama unique and announces his innovation within a poetic tradition. As the creator of the fiction that is Augustus, Ovid-as-poet usurps his emperor’s immortal fame in an epic that having been written can never be undone (15. 871–72): parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum, quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam. (15. 873–79) (Still in my better part I shall be borne immortal far beyond the lofty stars and I shall have an undying name. Wherever Rome’s power extends over the conquered world, I shall have mention on men’s lips and, if the prophecies of bards have any truth, through all the ages shall I live in fame.)

It is well known that these lines rework Horace’s ode on his own colossal fame (Odes 3. 30). Thus Ovid crowns what critics agree is an unprecedented range of antecedent Greek and Roman texts, surpassing Virgil’s achievement by internalizing the Aeneid and its intertext in his poem, and simultaneously expanding that intertext to bursting point. This deliberate ‘over-fullness’, as Barchiesi puts it, is ‘difficult to master’, a defining characteristic I suggest the Metamorphoses shares with Virgil’s Fama.59 The main effect of the struggle for mastery is ‘to stress the reader’s dependence on the author as the only force able to control the background noise’.60 Putting it another way, as the ultimate narrator Ovid is ‘in fact our only protection against the deafening effect of the echo-chamber of Fama’, that is, against the noise generated by the countless literary works that reverberate in the Metamorphoses.61 Ovid’s poem, then, is its own house of literary fame, one ruled not by Virgil’s chthonic shape-shifter but by the poet himself. In this last swipe at the Aeneid, Ovid registers the dangers of Virgil’s Fama as he asserts his authorial superiority as master over her. That mastery is appropriately figured as 59 

Barchiesi, ‘Narrative Technique and Narratology in the Metamorphoses’, p. 196. Barchiesi, ‘Narrative Technique and Narratology in the Metamorphoses’, p. 195. 61  Barchiesi, ‘Narrative Technique and Narratology in the Metamorphoses’, p. 195. 60 

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Ovid’s authorial fame — not the ‘tales’ of Virgil’s ‘foul goddess’ — spreading on ‘the lips of men’. This is to say that what Ovid does to epic by controlling Fama depends on Virgil, whose epic Ovid may have unravelled but whose literary fame he cannot help but immortalize along with his own.

The Playwright as Fama When Marlowe began his dramatic career with a tragedy about Dido, he responded first to Virgil, who had severed the Carthaginian queen from epic. His play is one of some forty or so Dido dramas written at the time in England and the continent.62 While almost all of these are now lost, the number suggests that the Dido and Aeneas story was a site of cultural activity, and that Marlowe’s version competed with others for attention. The play was first published in 1594, a year after Marlowe’s death. According to the title page, the play was performed by the Children of Her Majesty’s Chapel — hence the accepted view that Dido was intended for a ‘private’, educated audience ‘either at Blackfriars or at court’ — although there is no record of any performance by the Chapel Children.63 Marlowe’s England was buzzing with the Aeneid. Three English verse translations of parts of Virgil’s epic, all of which include Books 1 to 4, appeared in the 1550s: by the Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard (1557), Thomas Phaer (1558), and Richard Stanyhurst (c. 1558, published 1582). In addition, what J. W. H. Atkins calls ‘Virgil worship’ dominated the emerging discourse of English literary theory that was to climax in Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry (c. 1581–83, published 1595).64 There were also two Dido plays in Latin written by English playwrights, the first by Edward Halliwell (1564), which is now lost, and the second by William Gager (1583), which has survived. Both plays were performed for Elizabeth I, Halliwell’s at Cambridge in 1564 and Gager’s at Oxford in 1583. Elizabeth herself invested in the cultural authority of the Aeneid, as Halliwell’s and Gager’s plays suggest. Notably, in her involvement in the translatio imperii studiique she used Brutus, Aeneas’s grandson and the mythological founder of London, to claim Trojan origins for herself and proclaim London the new Troy (Troynovant). Marlowe’s Dido undermines the myth of cultural authority 62 

Desmond, Reading Dido, p. 20. Oliver, ‘Introduction’, p. xxx. Oliver tracks Dido’s performance history in the period in his ‘Introduction’, pp. xxx–xxxiii. 64  Atkins, English Literary Criticism, p. 32. For an example of his ‘Virgil worship’, see Sidney, AnApology for Poetry, ed. by Shepherd, pp. 119–20. 63 

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Elizabeth invested in by representing a blatantly perfidus Aeneas. His version of the Dido and Aeneas story resolves the ambiguity that shrouds the cave scene in Virgil’s epic, continuing the Ovidian practice of picking at the seams of the Aeneid’s pro-Augustan fabric by drawing attention to Fama’s role in destabilizing the Aeneid as a providential narrative. I suggest that Marlowe attempts to surpass Ovid’s literary fame in both his rendition of the cave scene and its effect on the action that follows. As we have seen, Ovid’s mocking account of Virgil’s version of the Dido and Aeneas story is indebted to the Aeneid rather than Timaeus’s history. The same cannot be said of Marlowe’s tale, in which Aeneas shoulders the responsibility for Dido’s downfall. I am not arguing that Marlowe represents the historical Dido; rather, I am suggesting that this significant difference from the essentially Virgilian version of the story in the Metamorphoses is a signifier of Marlowe’s superior mastery of Fama, and the basis of his claim to Ovid’s literary fame. Dido opens with Jupiter dandling Ganymede on his knee, threatening to hand over control of fate, time, and the gods to that ‘female wanton boy’ (1. 1. 28–30).65 The Jupiter/Ganymede exchange is famous in criticism of Dido as the first of a number of scandalous, Ovidian departures from the Aeneid.66 Nevertheless, Marlowe moves swiftly to repair any damage done to Virgil with a paraphrase of the epic Jupiter’s assurance to Venus of Aeneas’s immutable role in an empire without end, and with the equally swift arrival of the Trojans in Libya, for which Venus ‘honours’ her father (1. 1. 137). The play’s opening scene is thus a see-sawing affair in which Dido radically departs from Virgil’s narrative, belying Ovid’s influence, only to return to it. This movement establishes the polarity Barchiesi notes between the poet’s dependence on and innovation within a tradition. In other words, the playwright is doing the self-reflexive job that typically, Fama does. Nowhere is this more clearly on display than in Act 3, in which Marlowe devotes an entire scene to staging precisely what happens between Aeneas and Dido in the cave. Their dialogue culminates in the following promise Aeneas makes to the Queen: With this hand I give to you my heart, And vow, by all the Gods of hospitality, By heaven and earth, and my fair brother’s bow, By Paphos, Capys, and the purple sea From whence my radiant mother did descend, 65  Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage and The Massacre at Paris, ed. by Oliver. All references are from this edition and cited parenthetically in the text. 66  Cf. Bowers, ‘Hysterics, High Camp, and Dido Queene of Carthage’, pp. 95–106.

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And by this sword that sav’d me from the Greeks, Never to leave these new-upreared walls Whiles Dido lives and rules in Juno’s town— Never to like or love any but her! (3. 4. 42–50)

Dido responds by giving Aeneas the ‘wedding-ring, | Wherewith [Sichaeus] woo’d [her] yet a maid’, and ‘by [her] gift’ makes him ‘King of Libya’ in the final line of the act (3. 4. 61–63). A marriage has clearly taken place and it occurs in the middle of the play, where conventionally the conflicts of tragedy peak. At this climactic moment, Marlowe’s Aeneas, in no uncertain terms, chooses love of Dido over a Virgilian ‘greater fame’. The timing of his choice is important because it occurs when Marlowe is most blatantly manipulating the Aeneid, and Ovid’s derisive reliance on it, in effect staging the manner in which Virgil’s Fama overwrites the historical Dido. In a literary return of serve, Marlowe twists into an outright lie the feeble protestation of Virgil’s Aeneas that no marriage ever took place. Worse is to come, as Iarbas confirms early in the next act when he sees the couple exit the cave: ‘Come forth the cave! Can heaven endure this sight?’ (4. 1. 17). In the Aeneid, Virgil is careful to blame only Dido for both the marriage and its repercussions. Only she ‘coniugium vocat hoc nomine’ (calls [what happens in the cave] by the name of marriage), and thereby ‘praetexit culpam’ (veils her sin) in bringing about a day of calamitous significance: ‘ille dies primus leti primusque malorum | causa fuit’ (That day was the first day of death, that first the cause of woe) (4. 172, 169–70). The dramatic Iarbas’s melodramatic concern shows that he knows the cave scene in the Aeneid well enough to deflate its high seriousness. What he does not know, but an educated original audience would have, is what Marlowe’s play has done to Virgil’s hero by staging events in the cave. For not only is the epic Aeneas now cast as a liar, he is also the willing accomplice in — if not the instigator of — the fallen Dido’s sin and its disastrous consequences. Together with the strategic timing of the marriage, Aeneas’s complicity in the union and its consequences leads me to argue that Marlowe has assumed control of the self-reflexive power of Virgil’s ‘foul goddess’, who is noticeable by her absence from this unambiguous story of what happens in the cave. Putting it another way, Marlowe has internalized within himself-as-author the mastery of Fama that Ovid externalizes in the poetic record of the Metamorphoses, thus laying claim to a legendary literary fame that future texts can never undo. With its return of Jupiter from his dalliance with Ganymede to attend to Aeneas’s ‘wand’ring fate’ (1. 1. 83), the play’s opening scene portends the success of other repair work on Virgil’s Aeneid, and suggests that the dramatic Aeneas may yet be saved from the abyss of epic dishonour. But hope of salvaging a pius Aeneas after the cave scene quickly fades. Flaunting his power as and over Fama,

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Marlowe writes an alternative plot that performs the inflammatory report the goddess spreads in the Aeneid about Aeneas and Dido’s ‘shameless passion’ and disregard for their kingdoms. I am more concerned here with what the playwright does with Aeneas than with Dido because she is Virgil’s transformed queen from the moment she enters the play and makes Aeneas recognizable by dressing him in her dead husband’s clothes (2. 1. 74–80). But Marlowe’s Aeneas is clearly not Virgil’s. His hero is dominated by Dido, from whom he accepts the sceptre and ‘imperial crown of Libya’ (4. 4. 34–35). Compelled by ‘beauty’ to stay in Carthage, Aeneas also submits to Dido as ‘patroness’ of his and his men’s lives, and agrees to ‘ride | As Dido’s husband through the Punic streets’ (4. 3. 46; 4. 4. 55, 66–67). And in an outrage to Virgil’s hero and the providential narrative he ostensibly embodies, Marlowe’s Aeneas intends ‘in [himself ]’ the ‘flourishing’ of ‘Priam’s race’ in Carthage rather than in Rome (4. 4. 87). To cap things off, Marlowe’s Aeneas is incompetent as well as dominated, as the audience learn when he tries to leave but needs Iarbas’s help because Dido has confiscated his tackling (5. 1. 55–77). In a glimmer of hope for Aeneas’s good name, Mercury appears twice in Marlowe’s alternative plot to demand the hero’s immediate departure but the order in which he appears reverses Virgil’s: Mercury appears first in a dream and then in his divine shape, carrying Iulus, to pressure Aeneas towards his place in ‘fame’s immortal house’ through the prophecy of his son (4. 3. 1–14; 5. 1. 27–41). As Virgilian as these visits from Mercury might appear, Marlowe is manipulating both the god and Virgil as mediums of the unperverted word of Fatum. The unVirgilian fact that Mercury has to bring Iulus with him is further evidence of the power of Fama that Marlowe exerts over Virgil’s providential narrative. This is because Aeneas’s epic reputation is damaged beyond repair when he prepares to leave without the character that he himself, his men, and Dido are in no doubt is his son, Cupid disguised as Iulus (4. 3. 1–56). The perfidus Aeneas that Virgil struggles to redeem struts Marlowe’s stage, and is recognized by Dido in an almost word-for-word translation of her Virgilian counterpart’s attack on his epic lineage (5. 1. 156–59). The difference between the Aeneid and Dido is that the accusation rings more true in the light of Marlowe’s disgraceful Aeneas than it does in the light of Virgil’s struggling one. In the end, it is not the word of Fatum that compels Marlowe’s Aeneas to leave but the word of Virgil. Resorting somewhat desperately to the most famous halfline in the Aeneid (4. 361) — ‘Italiam non sponte sequor’ (I do not seek Italy of my own accord) — the epic Aeneas whom Marlowe has ruined finally sets sail for Italy (5. 1. 140). In his wake, Dido is left to a reasonably Virgilian death on her funeral pyre, which Marlowe, working as Fama to the very end of the play, trumps

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with his own invention: Anna and Iarbas, the man Anna loves in Dido but not the Aeneid, also commit suicide (5. 1. 314–28). By performing a new version of what happens in the cave scene, Dido shows us the ways in which Fama can undo the Fatum written in the Aeneid. Together with the pathetic, perfidus Aeneas it represents, the play bears witness to the instability of Virgil’s epic as a providential narrative. And by taking on the mantle of Fama, who has erupted yet again from the tear in the Aeneid’s pro-Augustan fabric to spread a new incendiary rumour, Marlowe shows off his control of the creature responsible for that instability. To claim a seat in Fame’s immortal house, Dido argues, one must control Fama. Furthermore, in Marlowe’s control of her, Dido can be seen to assert that tragedy is superior to both of the play’s epic sources. In these ways, Marlowe covets Ovid’s literary fame in a new genre that partakes of and expands still further the intertext embedded in the Aeneid and enlarged in the Metamorphoses. In his attempt to trump Ovid by internalizing the power of Fama within himself-as-tragedian, Marlowe cannot help but immortalize Virgil’s literary fame, as Ovid had done before him. Dido appears to defame Elizabeth, casting her as genealogically related to a contemptible Aeneas. This unflattering portrait may well have scuttled any chance of performance in the venues of the educated and the powerful, and help explain why there is no record of a performance by the Chapel Children. And yet Elizabeth herself was apparently not bothered enough about Dido to impede its publication. If she did know the play, in whatever form, perhaps she considered it alongside Virgil’s and Ovid’s epics as a contemporary exemplum of Fama’s power over both narratives and reputations. After all, the play is a reminder to those in the period who sought political legitimacy in the Aeneid that the key to one’s good name is in Fama’s hands, not Fatum’s. Did Marlowe’s fame spread on the ‘lips of men’ with Dido? As a tragedy rather than an epic, the play testifies to Rumour’s ability to shape the events of Fate’s providential narratives into the facta, or useable fictions, of the emerging drama of the early modern period. Nevertheless, it is most likely that the play was a ‘boxoffice flop’.67 Perhaps, as Roma Gill has argued, Marlowe ‘aim[ed] too high’ in Dido and was not ‘wholly successful’.68 This is not to say that Marlowe did not achieve authorial fame in his lifetime, just that he probably didn’t achieve the kind he aimed at in Dido. Marlowe’s next play, Tamburlaine the Great, was a boxoffice smash but the fame it achieved for Marlowe was success in the public play-

67  68 

Wilson, ‘Tragedy, Patronage, and Power’, p. 209. Gill, ‘Marlowe’s Virgil’, p. 145.

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house, not the private one of educated spectators such as Elizabeth.69 And yet Shakespeare’s Hamlet remembers Dido when he asks a visiting player for a ‘passionate speech’ as ‘a test of [his] quality’ as an actor (2. 2. 431–32): I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it Was never acted, or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleas’d not the million, ‘twas caviary to the general, but it was — as I receiv’d it, and others, whose judgements in such matters cried in the top of mine — an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savory, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affection, but call’d it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in’t I chiefly lov’d, ‘twas Aeneas’s [tale] to Dido, and therabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam’s slaughter. … (2. 2. 434–48; interpolation in edition)

Oliver calls this passage an ‘almost certain allusion’ to Aeneas’s long narrative to Dido about the fall of Troy in Marlowe’s play (2. 1. 121–288), and based on it Robert Logan has argued that Shakespeare had read Dido.70 Hamlet’s apparent admiration tells us a good deal about the authorial fame Marlowe sought with Dido. His aesthetic endorsement lays the blame for Dido’s poor reception on an audience who mostly failed to understand what Marlowe was trying to achieve. The exceptions are of course Hamlet/Shakespeare, and a few others with superior judgement. This praise may be sarcastic; however, it does not change the fact that Dido and its author are enshrined in Shakespeare’s play. Hamlet confirms the capriciousness of Hardie’s ‘evil’ fama when it is understood favourably as ‘the privilege (but also the aspiration) of the poet himself ’: well after Marlowe is dead, Shakespeare spreads a rumour that his competitor achieved the kind of authorial fame he aimed at in Dido but that only an exceptional few — including Hamlet/Shakespeare — understood this at the time. It is Hamlet rather than Dido that confers authorial fame on Marlowe, only to usurp it. Such is the price Fama extracts for enlisting her power in telling tales. 69  There is copious evidence that both Tamburlaine plays were well received in the period. See Levin, ‘The Contemporary Perception of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine’, passim. 70  Oliver, ‘Introduction’, p. xxxii; Logan, Shakespeare’s Marlowe, p. 170.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Homer, Iliad, trans. by Richard Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951; repr. 1973) Horace, Odes III, trans. by David West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) Lucretius, De rerum natura, trans. by W. H. D. Rouse (London: Heinemann, 1953) Marlowe, Christopher, Dido, Queen of Carthage and The Massacre at Paris, ed. by H. J. Oliver (London: Methuen, 1968) Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by F. J. Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916; repr. 1984) Shakespeare, William, The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. by G. Blakemore Evans with the assistance of J. J. M. Tobin, 2nd edn (Boston: Houghton and Mifflin, 1997) Sidney, Philip, An Apology for Poetry, ed. by Geoffrey Shepherd (London: Nelson, 1965; orig. pub. 1595) Virgil, Aeneid, trans. by H. R. Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916; repr. 1996) —— , Aeneid, ed. and trans. by W. Mackail (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930) —— , Aeneid vii–xii, ed. by R. D. Williams (Basingstoke: St Martin’s Press, 1973; repr. 1985)

Secondary Studies Atkins, J. W. H., English Literary Criticism: The Renascence (London: Methuen, 1951) Barchiesi, Alessandro, ‘Narrative Technique and Narratology in the Metamorphoses’, in The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, ed. by Philip Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 180–99 Botelho, Keith, Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity (New York: Palgrave, 2009) Bowers, Rick, ‘Hysterics, High Camp, and Dido Queene of Carthage, in Marlowe’s Empery: Expanding his Critical Contexts, ed. by Sara Munson Deats and Robert Logan (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), pp. 95–106 Brown, Georgia, Redefining Elizabethan Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Cheney, Patrick, Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession: Ovid, Spenser, Counter-Nationhood (Tor­onto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) —— , Marlowe’s Republican Authorship: Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009) Cole, Douglas, Suffering and Evil in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe (Princeton: Prince­ ton University Press, 1962) Deats, Sara Munson. Sex, Gender and Desire in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997)

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Desmond, Marilynn, Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality, and the Medieval ‘Aeneid’ (Min­ nea­polis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994) Dinshaw, Caroline, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989) Farrell, Joseph, ‘The Virgilian Intertext’, in The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. by Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 222–38 Fichter, Andrew, Poet’s Historical: Dynastic Epic in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982) Gill, Roma, ‘Marlowe’s Virgil: Dido Queene of Carthage’, Review of English Studies, 28 (1977), 141–55 Hardie, Philip, Rumour and Renown: Representations of Fama in Western Literature (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) —— , Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986) —— , ‘“Why Is Rumour Here?” Tracking Virgilian and Ovidian Fama’, Ordia Prima, 1 (2002), 67–80 James, Heather, Shakespeare’s Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Johnson, W. R., Darkness Visible: A Study of Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ (Berkeley: University of Cambridge Press, 1976) Kallendorf, Craig, ‘Representing the Other: Ercilla’s La Araucana, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the New World Encounter’, Comparative Literature Studies, 40 (2003), 394–414 Kennedy, Duncan, ‘Virgilian Epic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. by Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 145–54 Laird, Andrew, ‘Approaching Characterisation in Virgil’, in The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. by Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 282–93 Lee, M. Owen, Fathers and Sons in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’: Tum genitor natum (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979) Levin, Richard, ‘The Contemporary Perception of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 1 (1984), 51–70 Logan, Robert, Shakespeare’s Marlowe: The Influence of Christopher Marlowe on Shakes­ peare’s Artistry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) Monti, Richard, ‘The Dido Episode and the Aeneid: Roman Social and Political Values in the Epic’, Mnemosyne, 66 (1981), 1–114 Oliver, H. J., ‘Introduction’, in Dido, Queen of Carthage and The Massacre at Paris, ed. by H. J. Oliver (London: Methuen, 1968), pp. xix–xxvi Orgel, Stephen, ‘Gendering the Crown’, in Stephen Orgel, The Authentic Shakespeare: And Other Problems of the Early Modern Stage (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 107–28 Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. by Alexander Souter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968–82) Potter, Lucy, ‘Marlowe’s Dido: Virgilian or Ovidian?’, Notes and Queries, 56 (2009), 540–44 Scheuer, Hans Jürgen (Göttingen), ‘Fama’, Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity Volumes, ed. by Hubert Cancik and Helmut Schneider, Brill Online (2012) [accessed 8 October 2012]

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Slavitt, David, ‘Preface’, in The Metamorphoses of Ovid, trans. by David Slavitt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. ix–xii —— , Virgil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) Stump, Donald, ‘Marlowe’s Travesty of Virgil: Dido and Elizabethan Dreams of Empire’, Comparative Drama, 34 (2000), 79–95 Tarrant, Richard, ‘Ovid and Ancient Literary History’, in The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, ed. by Philip Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 13–33 Wiggins, Martin, ‘When did Marlowe Write Dido, Queen of Carthage?’, Review of English Studies, 59. 241 (2008), 521–41 Williams, Gordon, Technique and Ideas in the Aeneid (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983) Wilson, Richard, ‘Tragedy, Patronage, and Power’, in The Cambridge Companion to Chris­ topher Marlowe, ed. by Patrick Cheney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 207–30

Witchcraft and Rumour in Renaissance Venice Elizabeth Horodowich

I

n July and August of 1518, the Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo included a series of letters in his chronicle that concerned the practice of witchcraft in the Val Calmonica, an Alpine valley north of Brescia that was subject to Venetian rule. The letters were often from Giovanni Badoer, the podestà of Brescia who described how nearly eighty men and women were burned alive by the local inquisitor for having participated in an elaborate witches’ sabbath that included having carnal relations and dancing with the devil, rubbing a stick with a special ointment to transform it into an animal that would carry the participants anywhere, as well as the procuring of a lethal powder from the devil that was used to kill children. On 11 August 1518, Sanudo noted that ‘di queste strige per la terra si parla’ (people were talking about these witches around town).1 In a letter of 1 August 1518, an inhabitant of the Val Calmonica, Joseph da I Urzi Nuovi, described the nature and reputation of these alpine people. The Val Calmonica was: luogo però più montano che pianura, luogo più sterile che fructuoso, et abitato da gente per la mazor parte più ignorante che altramente, gente gozuta, quasi tutta deforme al possible senza alcuna regola del vivere civile. De costumi più presto rusticani et silvestri, dove rari sono che sappiano, non dirò che servano il comandamente de Idio […]. Dove fama è che zà qualche anno stati strioni et strie. (a place that was more mountainous than plain, more sterile than fertile, and inhabited by people who are for the most part ignorant more than anything else, afflicted with goiter and the worst deformations and entirely lacking in the forms 1 

Sanudo, I diarii di Marino Sanudo, ed. by Fulin and others, xxv, col. 584.

Elizabeth Horodowich ([email protected]) Professor of History, New Mexico State University.

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of civilization. Their customs are mostly rustic and wild, and rarely do they observe the commandments of the Lord […]. Rumour holds that for many years, witches and warlocks have practised there).2

Joseph then recounted how people said that the witches went up mountain paths on oiled sticks on Thursdays and turned into cats and sucked the blood of children. According to local talk, these witches and their initiates stomped on the cross, disavowed their baptisms, and were made to have sexual relations with one another. ‘Dicono che là pareno esser tute le richeze del mondo, et essendo stà donata a una di queste per uno suo amante diabolico una taza de arzento’. (They say that there seem to be all the riches of the world there, and one of the women received a silver cup from her diabolical lover.)3 In the subsequent transcript of the trial itself, the inquisitor regularly asked the inhabitants of the valley what they had heard about these events and the people involved, as well as about the reputations of those accused. For instance, on 19 June, the witness Benvenuto ‘dimandato che fama ha dita dona Benvegnuda, responde aver aldito da molte persone degne di fede, lei essere striga et aver strigado molte persone’ (asked about Benvenuto’s reputation, he replied that he had heard from many trustworthy people that she was a witch and had bewitched many people). Subsequent witnesses also claimed that ‘per tutto se dice lei essere vera striga’ (everywhere people say that she is a real witch).4 In his lengthy and detailed chronicle of life in Venice between 1495 and 1533, Sanudo rarely discussed witchcraft, a fact that is not surprising since witchcraft did not begin to concern Venetian authorities until much later in the sixteenth century. It is significant then that in one of his only discussions of witchcraft, gossip, rumour, public talk, and reputation all had a bearing on what people knew and thought about witches. The local people were regarded as uneducated and backwards, suggesting that deviancy and witchcraft were only to be expected of them. Individuals received detailed information about the witches’ sabbaths primarily through local talk, and the inquisitor himself, in turn, was interested first and foremost in the kind of evidence of witchcraft he could extract from local chatter. Hence, gossip and rumour played a crucial role in this community’s understanding of the practice of witchcraft, and local authorities were evidently willing to tap into this oral network of knowledge. 2 

Sanudo, I diarii di Marino Sanudo, ed. by Fulin and others, xxv, col. 602. Sanudo, I diarii di Marino Sanudo, ed. by Fulin and others, xxv, col. 606. 4  Sanudo, I diarii di Marino Sanudo, ed. by Fulin and others, xxv, cols 633–35. For Sanudo’s complete coverage of these trials in the Val Camonica, see cols 537, 541, 545–48, 572–75, 584–88, 602–09, 632–50. 3 

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Gossip and rumour served many purposes in the early modern world, functioning as entertainment and a form of sociability, a tool of education, and a source of news and information. In addition, they often served as a localized form of power and a means to political ends, whether in the formal politics that took place in the halls of state or in the more informal political realm of supervising community behaviour.5 Gossip, in effect, often functioned as a means of popular justice. This was often the case in the trials of witches, where gossip helped shore up community defences against the perceived practitioners of magic and sorcery. While the forces of gossip and rumour served to bring a wide range of crimes to the attention of civic authorities, gossip played a consistently important role in the trials of witches before the Office of the Inquisition in Venice. People’s attitudes towards gossip, however, were far from consistent. Legal experts accepted and sought out the knowledge found in local gossip in locating and trying heretics, but at times also feared its unreliability. In practice, gossip often played a role in bringing witches to the eyes and ears of authorities, but such cases were often left unresolved or were dropped for lack of evidence. This suggests that an accusation alone, and the forces of gossip that surrounded such accusations, were not enough to prove guilt but were nevertheless powerful enough grounds to discipline community misbehaviour. Gossip was, in fact, a fundamental component in early modern trials of witches: it was a mistrusted but still crucial element in the locating and prosecuting of those accused as well as in the more unofficial community censure of the practices of witches. Almost every major study of early modern European witchcraft has hinted at, but not explored, the role of gossip and rumour in the trials of witches. Many scholars have indicated in particular the importance of public reputation or fama — established in large part by gossip and word of mouth — in determining whether someone was a witch. To cite just a few examples, in his canonical Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas perhaps was the first to point out how witchcraft tribunals took the nature of an accused witch’s publicly established character very seriously. A bad reputation alone, he argued, often justified the prosecution of a witch. In their studies of witchcraft in early modern Germany, France, and Switzerland, H. C. Erik Midelfort and William Monter also suggested that rumour and reputation played a large role in determining who practised witchcraft. Lyndal Roper posited that it was ‘in this collective world of gossip and advice that […] rumours of witchcraft first began’. More recently, Jonathan Durrant has described how women involved in witchcraft tri5 

Horodowich, Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice, pp. 126–64.

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als in seventeenth-century Eichstätt were ‘gossips who had shared […] ordinary experiences which they were [then] forced to diabolize’. Witchcraft narratives, he claims, ‘were given substance by the local knowledge and gossip from which they were constructed’. In the only study that directly explores the relationship between gossip and witchcraft, Esther Eidinow has shown how in the case of fourth-century bce Athens, gossip validated community feelings ‘of suspicion and envy, creating explanations of misfortune, and generating a notion of deviance relating to certain activities’ such as witchcraft.6 Historians have made similar connections for the specific case of Venice. In her overview of witchcraft and the Venetian Inquisition, Ruth Martin has shown how inquisitors repeatedly sought to establish defendants’ reputations, since again in Venice, reputation and fama played a key role in the determination of witchcraft. Marisa Milani has also pointed out how ‘Il Sant’uffizio era anche pronto ad accogliere voci e dicerie’ (the Holy Office was more than ready to collect voices and rumours) from Venetian neighbourhoods in its quest to locate and prosecute heretics and witches.7 Studies of witchcraft mention gossip, rumour, and fama in a consistent but cursory manner. Such regular but passing remarks suggest the important relationship between gossip and the practice of witchcraft, and indicate how gossip actually worked in the arenas where witchcraft had occurred or became historically evident — whether in legal literature, on the street or in the neighbourhood, or in the courtroom itself. How exactly did the forces of gossip lead the forces of civic justice, as well as those seeking witches’ services, to locate them? How did the authors of legal texts and the authors of inquisitorial manuals, in particular, understand the relationship between gossip, fama, and witchcraft? How did members of Venetian communities use the forces of gossip, not only to find witches when they needed their services, but also to curb or prevent the practice of witchcraft when it was perceived as threatening or heretical? Witchcraft in Venice tended to fall into several general categories: divination or the prediction of the future, love magic, and maleficio (magic aimed at harming 6 

Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 528; Midelfort, Witch Hunting in South­ western Germany 1562–1684, p. 101; Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland, pp. 135–36; Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, p. 207; Durrant, Witchcraft, Gender and Society in Early Modern Germany, pp. 109, 129, 149–51; Eidinow, ‘Patterns of Persecution’, pp. 34–35. The historio­ graphy of early modern witchcraft is vast; here I have cited only a handful of the best-known studies. On gossip and witchcraft in the American colonies, see Norton, ‘Witchcraft in the Anglo-American Colonies’, p. 7; Norton, Founding Mothers & Fathers; Kamensky, Governing the Tongue. 7  Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650, pp. 25, 30, 234–38; Milani, Piccole storie di stregoneria nella Venezia del ‘500, p. 25.

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another individual). For instance, to identify a thief, one might seek out a witch who knew the inghistara; the witch would employ a group of children to observe a candle through a glass of water, from which the witch would eventually perceive who was guilty. In order to entice someone to fall in or out of love, Venetians practised the arts of buttar fava or cera (casting beans or wax) or the cordella (reciting incantations while tying knots in a rope). Witches procured holy oil with which one could anoint their beloved and thereby generate attraction; they similarly used candles, the host, bones, and a variety of herbs with which to enact cures for a wide range of maladies, illnesses, and love-sickness.8 Unlike in many other parts of Europe, especially the north, witchcraft in Venice was considered a crime of religion; it represented a form of heresy, since the magic associated with stregoneria (witchcraft) interfered with the authority of the church. For this reason, the Holy Office, or the branch of the Roman Inquisition in Venice oversaw this crime. For the second half of the sixteenth century, when fears about Protestantism subsided to a certain degree and witchcraft attracted more attention, there exist approximately 1500 trials in the archives of the Holy Office, 200 of which were for witchcraft and magic.9 While in other parts of Europe witches regularly experienced dramatic forms of corporal punishment, Venetian justice relating to witchcraft was remarkably lenient. Of these 200 witchcraft and magic trials, thirty were condemned in some way, fifteen with punishments such as exile, public humiliation, or fines, and three were tortured.10 The vast majority of these trials take up just a few pages — an aspect of the history of witchcraft that has long intrigued scholars and that will be considered more below. Before we delve into the specific texts about and cases of witchcraft in Venice, however, it is crucial to note that witchcraft in Venice was not just part of popular culture or the world of the lower classes; Venetians of all occupations and classes clearly believed in witchcraft, from the poor wife who wanted to know if her husband had been cheating, to courtesans who wanted to know their future 8 

The specific practices of witchcraft in Venice were wide-ranging and have been studied at length. See, for instance, Milani, Streghe, morti ed esseri fantastici nel Veneto. 9  Ruth Martin instead counted 500 trials for witchcraft between 1542 and1650. In this period, according to Martin’s count, witch trials represented one-third of all trials facing the Inquisition. See Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650, pp. 6, 216–18. 10  Milani, Piccole storie di stregoneria nella Venezia del ‘500, p. 19. For a general overview of the history, institution, and workings of the Roman Inquisition and its Venetian branch, see Del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia: Dal xii al xxi secolo; Del Col, ‘Organizzazione, composizione e giurisdizione dei tribunali dell’Inquisizione romana nella Repubblica di Venezia (1500–1550)’, pp. 244–94; Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650, pp. 9–33, Milani, Piccole storie di stregoneria nella Venezia del ‘500, pp. 7–26.

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marital prospects, to nobles like Mattio Soranzo who, in 1589, denounced his courtesan ex-lover for making his wife sick.11 Though perhaps an exaggeration, Marisa Milani estimated that the number of people directly or indirectly involved in witchcraft and its trials — including inquisitors and judges, the accused, those who testified, relatives and friends of the accused, those who heard and commented, and those who lined up to consult witches themselves — were at least two-tenths of the population in the second half of the sixteenth century, no small number in a city populated by only 150,000 to 170,000 inhabitants.12 As we shall see, the presence of witchcraft in the city both caused and was caused by an elaborate network of talk that surrounded, supported, or threatened its practice. Witchcraft was in some ways essentially inseparable from the workings of gossip, which fuelled its existence as well as its prosecution. Inquisitorial handbooks shed some light on the theoretical role of hearsay and public reputation in the Holy Office. Public vox et fama (public opinion and reputation) has a long history in Western law.13 When Venetian inquisitors tried cases of witchcraft, they drew on this tradition.14 For instance, Nicolau Eymeric’s Directorium inquisitorum (1376) — one of the chief theological and procedural reference books for inquisitors and the text that served as the foundation for most subsequent handbooks — gives witchcraft itself only a passing mention, but clearly states that public reputation played a major role in identifying heretics. Eymeric claimed that it was common for the trials of heretics to begin, not with an accusation or a spontaneous confession of guilt, but when city talk reached the ears of the inquisitor.

11 

Archivio di Stato di Venezia (hereafter ASV), Sant’Uffizio, b. 64, ‘Livia Azzalina’. See Milani, Piccole storie di stregoneria nella Venezia del ‘500, p. 22. On the population of Venice, see Beltrami, Storia della popolazione di Venezia, p. 59. 13  See Fenster and Smail, eds, ‘Introduction’, in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, pp. 1–11. On fama in the Venetian legal tradition, see Horodowich, Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice, pp. 130–34. 14  Many inquisitorial guidebooks circulated in sixteenth-century Italy, and there is much disagreement among scholars about which specific texts were used in Venice and when. See Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650, pp. 34–79, 70; Seitz, ‘“The Root is Hidden and the Material Uncertain”: The Challenges of Prosecuting Witchcraft in Early Modern Venice’, p. 115; Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy, pp. 213–15. Different editions of various inquisitorial manuals came to incorporate the ideas of texts before them, and it remains unclear whether any single text officially or regularly guided Venetian inquisitorial procedure. Local tribunals like the Venetian one most likely consulted ideas from a variety of manuals and ended up working out procedural questions on their own. 12 

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Tertius modus procedendi, et processum incipiendi in causa fidei est per modum inquisitionis, et est quando non est aliquis accusator, nec denunciator, sed fama laborat in aliqua civitate vel loco, quod aliquis dixit vel fecit aliqua contra fidem, et clamor ad aures inquisitoris pervenit pluries publica fama deferente, et clamosa insinuatione producente […]. Et hic est etiam communis et usitatus modus prodedendi. Et cum talis clamor frequens pervenit ad aures Inquisitoris praesertim per personas graves et honestas, et fidei zelatores, habito notario et duabus personis religiosis, seu alias (ut dictum est supra) honestis, incipiat processum per modum, qui sequitur. (The third way to proceed and to begin a trial in matters of faith is through an investigation when there is no accuser or denouncer, but when reputation works its way around a place that someone has said or done something heretical and the rumour comes to the ears of the inquisitor through the circulation of public talk. As a result of public insinuation, the inquisitor then has to investigate […]. This is also a commonly used way of proceeding, and in the case that the rumour reaches the inquisitor’s ears frequently, in particular from reputable and trustworthy people who are zealous in their faith, in the presence of a notary and of two clerics or otherwise as stated above, two reputable and honest people, the trial begins the following way).15

Eymeric clearly suggested here that public reputation — established in talk on the street — was crucial in establishing who was potentially a heretic (or a witch) and also who could suggest that such a crime had occurred. In this way information about heretics welled up to eventually reach the ears of the inquisitor and then to be recorded by scribes and notaries.16 In his Sacro Arsenale overo Prattica dell’Officio della Santa Inquisitione (Genoa, 1625), a handbook that summed up common inquisitorial practice in Italy by the seventeenth century, Eliseo Masini repeated almost word for word Eymeric’s idea that public talk often alerted the inquisitor to the presence of heretical activity.17 Crimes often came to the attention of the tribunal through gossip and rumour, 15 

Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum, pp. 416–17. See also pp. 423, 595–98. The Malleus maleficarum similarly stated that for denunciations, ‘If [a witness] says that he did not see [the crime], but heard of it, [the judge] shall ask him from whom he heard it, where, when and how often, and in whose presence […].And the notary or scribe shall set down a record of them immediately’, The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, trans. by Summers, p. 207. See also p. 211. While the Malleus was used primarily in Northern Europe and there is no direct evidence that Venetian inquisitors made use of the text, it represented an inexhaustible fount for the determination of witches in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe and might have been known to ecclesiastical authorities in Venice. 17  Masini, Sacro Arsenale, p. 17. 16 

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and witnesses could offer testimony either de visu del delitto (if they had seen the crime) or de auditu del delitto (if they had heard about the crime).18 Masini added that ‘quando anche saranno piu testimonii, si comincera sempre prima ad interrogare quelli, da quali si spera haver la verità piu facilmente’ (when there are multiple testimonies, the judge should always begin by first interrogating those who will produce the truth the most easily), suggesting perhaps that eyewitnesses were more reliable.19 Masini added to Eymeric’s ideas a discussion about the trial of witches, which Masini claimed was a difficult and complex process requiring special attention. According to Masini, it was extremely difficult to determine who witches were, since false accusations, both knowing and unknowing ones, were common. A person’s (usually a woman’s) bad reputation or reputation as a witch was often a sign of witchcraft, but not always proof. As Masini recounted: Non siano facili I Giudici à procedere contro ad alcuna donna per la mala fama d’essa in material di maleficio; perche, se bene l’indicio della mala fama per altro è di gran momento, nondimeno in questa materia per l’odio, che si ha communemente contro alle streghe, facilmente si leva cotal fama contro à qualche donna, massimamente quando è vecchia, e brutta. Laonde poco fondamento deve farsi sopra tal fama; ò se pure, alcuna consideratione se n’hà ad havere, deve il Giudice con diligenza interrogare i testimoni, da quanto tempo in qua sia nata simil fama, da chi, e con che occasione: perche indi per aventura si raccoglierà, che debole indicio è quello di cotal fama. ( Judges should be careful in prosecuting women just because they have the reputation of being a witch, since even though in the case of other crimes, a bad reputation offers significant evidence, in the case of witchcraft, since there is a common hatred of witches, it is easy to raise such suspicions against a woman, especially when she is old and ugly. Therefore, a judge cannot take such a reputation seriously, or on consideration, the judge has to interrogate the witnesses very carefully to understand when the bad reputation arose, from whom and why, since in this way the judge will understand when the evidence from reputation is bad evidence).20

Eymeric, Masini, and a host of other authors of inquisitorial and legal texts regularly referred to fama, and fama, certainly, is not the same as pettegolezzo (gossip). Fama was more formal and official and carried legal weight in arbitration and litigation. That is to say, fama represented more than gossip, as it also referred to the legal status of people and groups, as well as their wealth, power, and general prestige. The relationship between the two is always somewhat ambiguous. 18 

Masini, Sacro Arsenale, p. 13. See also pp. 18–22. Masini, Sacro Arsenale, pp. 13–14. 20  Masini, Sacro Arsenale, 1653 edn, p. 199. See pp. 195–200 on witchcraft in general. 19 

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Nevertheless, the two almost always overlap, and Venetian cases do at the very least offer a sense of the intimate connections between community and law and of the subtle play of legal purposes on the one side and social actions on the other. People talked about other people in social (and often very informal) settings, and such talk underwent a kind of legal transformation when it entered the realm of the courtroom. The record-keeping of notaries and scribes in the courtroom converted gossip into a representation of individuals’ legal status. In other words, in this moment of legal transubstantiation, the pens of official functionaries seemingly magically transformed neighbourhood chatter into concrete evidence.21 Fama did not offer the most trustworthy information and did not tend to function as proof of guilt, but judges and inquisitors specifically sought it out — both in theory and in practice — when looking for information about the practice of witchcraft. Venice has long been described as a city that is particularly prone to gossip.22 While the assertion that any one city gossiped more than any other surely cannot be sustained, Venetians most certainly gossiped extensively about witches. Testimony before the Holy Office reveals that if they were in need of love magic or magical healing, Venetians knew about how and where to find a witch or a sorcerer through networks of gossip. For instance, on 7 October 1589, Antonio Corona appeared before the inquisitor to clear his conscience. He admitted to having paid a witch on several occasions to recite a series of incantations in order to induce a certain woman to fall in love with him. He told the tribunal that someone had told him to go and see a certain witch named Angela, though he could not remember who had given him this information. In addition, he had heard that another man named Santo dale Madeglie practised witchcraft. He stated, ‘non ho conosciuto in fazza, se non per fama publica, egli esser eccellente in far incanti […] ma io non m’aricordo chi ciò mi dicesse’ (I never met [him] face to face, but knew from his public reputation to be excellent at incantations […] though I do not remember who told me this).23 It is not surprising that people heard about witches, either to procure their services or to avoid them, through talk on the street. Individuals could hear about a good tailor, an Anabaptist neighbour, or the marriage of a friend in same way. Thus, even though it was deemed heretical to practise witchcraft, because people were keen to utilize witchcraft’s services, gossip was a key means of marketing the work of witches behind the scenes. 21 

See Kuehn, ‘Fama as a Legal Status in Renaissance Florence’, p. 34. The Venetian editor Franco Filippi notes that ‘gossip, backbiting, and at times defamation are still well-rooted habits in the city’. Filippi, Anche questa è Venezia, p. 133. 23  Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 65, ‘Angela da Venezia’, 7 October 1589. 22 

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Once a trial began, written denunciations frequently referred to the accused’s public reputation and the shared, verbal knowledge about a person’s activities as a means of asserting the gravity of the crime at hand. When Francesco Lionino accused Paula Briani of witchcraft in 1581, he made a specific point of inserting into his letter of denunciation that Paola ‘ha fatto diverse herbaria et strigarie et altri incantesii, et opere diaboliche contra la santissima fede, et Christiana religione […] come a tutti della contra e notorio’ (had practised different kinds of magical cures and witchcraft and other enchantments and diabolical works against the holy faith and the Christian religion […] [for which] she is notorious among everyone in the neighbourhood).24 Similarly, in his denunciation of Lorenza Furlana in 1584 for witchcraft and casting beans, Lorenzo de Lisandro made sure to add that ‘di questo fatto è publica voce et fama come per testimonii sarà iustificato’ (about this, public opinion and [her] reputation will be proved by testimony).25 In prosecuting witchcraft, inquisitors frequently unveiled complex and far-flung webs of gossip in Venetian neighbourhoods, revealing vast networks of people who knew about the presence of witches and their activities from public talk. For instance, on 20 April 1574, Giacomo ‘the rower’ accused a certain Antonia of practising witchcraft and casting wax as a means of divination. Following this accusation, no less than six individuals called before the tribunal spoke about Antonia’s reputation and what people said about her. Francesco ‘the rower’ claimed that he had actually seen her cast wax, and in addition, ‘per àldita de tutto el mondo questa Antonia è la mazor herbera, incantatrice et ruffian ache se possi trovar’ (according to what the whole world says, Antonia is the greatest witch, enchantress, and procuress that one can find).26 Giovanni Francesco Valier stated that ‘la conosco per fama; […] se dise che la è un’herbera dal vulgo e da ogniuno’ (I know her reputation; […] everyone commonly says that she is a witch).27 The inquisitor asked Madalena, the wife of a carpenter at the arsenale, what work Antonia did, and Madalena responded, ‘l’ho sentia per bocca d’altri che la butta cera, et che la è una striga […]. Io non l’ho mai vista a far ste cose, et l’ho inteso da più persone, che’l nome non so’ (I have heard from the mouths of others that she casts wax and that she is a witch […]. I have never seen her do these things, but I’ve heard it from many people, whose names I do not know).28 Other witnesses, named Geronimo and Caterina, echoed 24 

Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 47, ‘Paola Briani’, 1581, letter of denunciation, n.d. Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 52, ‘Lorenza Furlana’, 8 November 1584. 26  Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 38, ‘Contra Antoniam Herbariam’, 12 August 1574. 27  Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 38, ‘Contra Antoniam Herbariam’, 14 August 1574. 28  Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 38, ‘Contra Antoniam Herbariam’, 14 August 1574. 25 

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these ideas, and the witness Marco Antonio Taraboto added that ‘ho poi inteso che la è cativa donna, et per questo mi non ge ho volesto mai ben’ (I heard that she is a bad woman, and for this reason I have never liked her).29 When called to testify, Antonia denied everything and was released, but her brief trial clearly reveals the degree to which Venetians heard about the presence of witches through word of mouth. Similarly, in the 1586 trial of Diana Passarina, every witness pointed to a common, public, and shared verbal knowledge of Passarina’s practice of witchcraft.30 Witchcraft trials often ended abruptly and with no apparent conclusion or sentencing, but their community meanings may have existed outside of official parameters. For example, in 1584 a certain Elena, who lived in the neighbourhood of Santa Margherita, was first accused of witchcraft by a neighbour, Franceschina, who had heard from those who lived in Elena’s house that Elena had pierced an eel with needles and roasted it under ashes as a practice of witchcraft. In particular, Franceschina claimed to have heard this from three widows named Orsola, Isabetta, and Andriana, all denizens of the house. Franceschina admitted to being Elena’s enemy as a result of a family squabble; however, although they had argued, she had never filed any formal complaint. The second witness called to testify, Orsola, presented similar information, stating that she too had heard from the widow Andriana that Elena had roasted eels. Orsola added, ‘io non ho inteso dir altro et non so se questa Andriana l’habia detto per la verita o per odio per che havevano cridato insieme’ (I did not hear anything else, and I do not know if Andriana said this because it is the truth or out of hatred, because the two of them argued together). The third and final witness, Andriana, testified that she had not seen or heard that Elena practised conjuring. ‘Io non ho visto ne inteso che detta Helena habia fatto herbarie o strigarie ne butar fave, ma per la contra si diseva che la feva herbarie; ma non ve so dir che le fusse queste che hano detto queste cose’ (I did not see or hear that the stated Helena practised conjuring or witchcraft or casting beans, but in the neighbourhood they say that she practised conjuring; however, I do not know who it was that said these things).31 The trial at this point abruptly ends. Witchcraft trials like Elena’s abound in the records of the Holy Office in Venice. Though a mere fragment of a much larger untold story, Elena’s trial, like many others, illustrates the functions of neighbourhood talk. Hearsay among Elena’s neighbours worked to construct Elena as a heretic and a witch, first in the eyes 29 

Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 38, ‘Contra Antoniam Herbariam’, 11 September 1574. See also 21 August 1574. 30  Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 47, ‘Contra Dianam Passarinam’. This case is located inside the case labelled ‘Margarita di Rossi’. 31  Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 52, ‘Elena’, 2 August 1584.

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of her neighbours and then before the inquisitor. One cannot know any certain ‘truth’ about cases like this, especially when the trials consist of just a few pages of documentation and no outcome. Amidst the maze of conflicting testimonies and motivations, we can never know whether Elena or Antonia actually committed the acts of which they were accused. Individuals often appeared to employ gossip as a means of revenge and community control, either over a ‘real’ witch, or over neighbourhood misbehaviour, and indeed this group of women seemed to have argued for other reasons. Both those who gossiped and those who were gossiped about were aware of the potential powers of gossip and verbal networks, suggesting that those who wanted to win their court cases knew that the ability to manipulate gossip in the courtroom was very useful. These examples of individuals sharing community information and then revealing this shared knowledge to the inquisitor would suggest that people in their neighbourhoods — often women, especially where witchcraft was concerned — controlled specific forms of socialization and functioned as repositories of aural knowledge.32 To a certain degree, this afforded those who gossiped a degree of power unavailable to them in the larger city space. Those who gossiped helped to shape the rules of everyday living, of civility, hierarchy, and orthodoxy, to which all members of Venetian society were expected to conform. While cases like that of Elena suggest how gossip may have functioned as social criticism and censure, the case of Emilia Catena demonstrates even more clearly how hearsay and rumour effectively expressed community disapproval of the practice of witchcraft, so much so as to prevent this witch from continuing her practice. Emilia Catena was a courtesan who lived in the calle del forno near the church of Santi Apostoli. By 1586 her career was on the decline and as younger courtesans gradually came to eclipse her beauty and talents she turned to various forms of witchcraft in an attempt to encourage her favourite noble clients, such as Giovanni Grifalconi, Alessandro Contarini, and Salvador Michiel, to return. Her witchcraft, for example her undertaking of the martello del tarocco (the tarot card spell) — an elaborate ceremony involving the recitation of prayers in lamplight before a stolen tarot card representing the devil — went unnoticed by the Inquisition for many years. However, a certain Paolo, a jeweller who had a quarrel with Emilia over a 32 

On the one hand, scholars have long studied how and why witchcraft was a gendered phenomenon, involving many more women than men. In the specific case of Venice, the word erbera (those who used herbs for magical purposes), synonymous for witch, has no masculine equivalent, and witches in Venice were primarily women. On the other hand, trials before the Venetian Inquisitor show that men heard and participated in gossip just as much as women did, even in cases focused on witchcraft. See Horodowich, Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice, pp. 142–54.

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diamond ring, most likely denounced her to the Office of the Inquisition in March of 1586. Several of her servants testified to having witnessed Emilia practise various acts of stregoneria (witchcraft), and on 16 July 1586 Emilia herself immediately admitted to these crimes. She was sentenced, together with another witch named Santa Schiavona, to being publicly whipped while walking from San Marco to the Rialto along the Merceria, to being held in the stocks for an hour, and then to banishment from Venice for five years. This spectacular and memorable punishment for witchcraft was one that the city surely talked about for years.33 We do not know where Emilia went when she left the city, but after having completed half of her time in exile, she hired a lawyer to request that the rest of her sentence be reduced or done away with. Her request was granted on 15 December 1588, and just a few days later Emilia was back in her house in the Calle del Forno. Her arrival, however, did not pass unnoticed; gossip and rumours immediately ran wild in her neighbourhood as individuals recalled both the old accusations against her and appeared to add or even invent new stories that had never been heard before. Her neighbours now claimed that during her previous trial Emilia’s servant Maddalena had told of a man from Padua that Emilia had had killed in her house, though neighbours were not certain about this since the dead body was never seen or found. More convincing, however, was talk that Emilia had used the body of a dead foetus in her love magic. Both men and women ran from door to door repeating this latest news about Emilia; her street became like a buzzing hive of gossip, and the incessant, uncontrollable chatter in Emilia’s neighbourhood eventually came to fruition in a predictable way. An anonymous denunciation about these potential crimes made its way to the Holy Office, the inquisitor reopened Emilia’s case, and the inhabitants of the Calle del Forno repeated these rumours to the inquisitor. As per traditional inquisitorial practice, the inquisitor used these rumours as an entry point into the newly reopened case. The inquisitor began by asking Emilia’s neighbours about this latest gossip, inquiring first of the weaver Pietro Campra ‘se […] habbi inteso che vi sia una donna che habbi arrostito un fantolino tra uno o doi crucifissi […] acciò che portino amore’ (If he […] had heard that a woman had roasted a foetus between one or two crosses […] in order to bring her love). Campra replied that, si diceva lì per la calle che una donna Emilia Cathena, che stava lì per mezo casa mia, che havendo parturito una donna et fatta un aborto, cioè un fantolino morto longo

33 

Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 58, ‘Contra Emiliam Cathenam’, 16 July 1586.

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un palmo, che detta Emilia se lo haveva fatto dare, ma quello che se ne havesse poi fatto non vi so dire’. (people in the calle are saying that a woman named Emilia Catena, who lives near me, helped another woman abort her child – the foetus was about as long as a palm’s length – and this Emilia made the woman give it to her, but I cannot tell you what she did with it).

Campra added that ‘dicevano che l’haveva detto una massara di detta Emilia, che si chiamava Maddalena’ (people are saying that they heard this from a servant of Emilia’s named Maddalena), perhaps illuminating the source of this gossip.34 Testimony was conflicting. Another neighbour, the cloth merchant Alessio, confusingly stated that questa Emilia fu presa per questo Santo Offitio, et cusì intesi dir molte cose di lei de strigarie, ma patricularmente non ve so dir che detta Emilia habbi arrostito creatura alcuna. Io non lo so né mai ho inteso dir tal cosa. (this Emilia was taken in by the Holy Office, and then one heard a lot about her and her witchcraft, particularly — I do not know what to tell you — that Emilia had roasted a certain foetus. I do not know nor did I ever hear this).

He added, ‘ho inteso dir, non me riccordo da chi, che lei faceva delle strigarie, ma non so de che sorte de strigarie […] In tempo che io ho pratticato in casa sua, l’ho cognosciuta per una santa’ (I heard, I do not remember from whom, that she practised witchcraft, but I do not know what kind […]. In the time that I knew her, to me she seemed like a saint). On 14 January 1589, the inquisitor once again called Emilia’s servant Maddalena to appear before the tribunal. When asked if she had been interrogated about Emilia roasting a child during her previous testimony before the Holy Office in 1586, Maddalena responded that she had not. She knew that Emilia had indeed learned from another witch that one could encourage a man to fall in love by roasting a wax statue and reciting a child’s name, but she did not know if Emilia had ever actually done this. She had never seen her roast a real foetus, nor did she believe it, ‘perché veramente non era donna da far simil cose, perché era troppo dolce de cuore’ (because it was not like her to do something like that since she was too sweet of heart). She stated that she had never said to anyone that Emilia had roasted a child, nor that she had sought to obtain one. Maddalena recounted that one day Pietro’s wife Angela had said that Emilia had burned two crosses with a foetus between them, and that Angela 34 

Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 58, ‘Contra Emiliam Cathenam’, 12 January 1589.

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‘diceva che gli era stato detto da una donna et che io lo doveva saper come massara’ (was told this by a woman and that as her servant, I should know about it).35 But Maddalena ended her testimony and Emilia’s trial by stating that she had not known anything about it, and she did not know anything now. Maddalena appears to have cleared Emilia’s name, at least of the most recent gossip and accusations levied against her. The inquisitor seems to have assumed that these new rumours had no basis in reality and closed the case once and for all. Emilia was never involved in this second and final phase of her trial, but we can assume that she surely heard about this gossip in one way or another. Emilia’s neighbours, distressed about a convicted witch returning to live among them, spontaneously generated new and unfounded rumours about her as a means of taking matters into their own hands. By aggressively drumming up local gossip about her, they hoped to assert clearly that her witchcraft was not welcome there. We never hear from Emilia again, and cannot know how she reacted or if she eventually may have left her neighbourhood to look for a more peaceful existence elsewhere. What we can know from Emilia’s case, however, is that gossip clearly functioned as a means of popular criticism and justice. As one final example, rumour played a similar role in the well-known case of Andriana Savorgnan, tried for witchcraft in 1581. Andriana was a courtesan who, to the great scandal of the city, married the Venetian nobleman, Marco Dandolo. When news of the marriage spread, gossip started up that Andriana had employed a great variety of spells and love magic, including casting beans and concocting a pignatello (witch’s brew) with a dead person’s head, in order to force Dandolo to marry her. Rumours that she had bewitched him — most likely begun by Dandolo’s family — swelled to such a degree that his family asked for an annulment. Their request was based on two fundamental points: on her generally bad reputation as a public woman, and on her supposed use of love magic to trap an innocent young man. The trial was lengthy and detailed and historians have studied it closely.36 Judges in Rome eventually decided that the accusations against Andriana were unfounded and the marriage between Savorgnan and Dandolo remained intact until Dandolo’s death in 1616. In this case, the criticism spread by gossip did not destroy the marriage; nevertheless, it highlights that backbiting and gossip —and even accusations of witchcraft — functioned as an expression of deep social criticism about a union between a patrician and a courtesan. 35 

Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 58, ‘Contra Emiliam Cathenam’, 14 January 1589. Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 47, ‘Andriana Savorgnan’. Like that of Diana Passarina, this case is also located in the middle of the case labelled ‘Margarita di Rossi’. See Ruggiero, Binding Passions, pp. 24–56; Milani, Piccole storie di stregoneria nella Venezia del ‘500, pp. 95–114. 36 

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Cases like these raise the question of whether or not gossip had the disciplinary or prescriptive effect of deterring future misbehaviour. On the one hand, it is clear that the Holy Office had punished many individuals for witchcraft before Emilia and shared, verbal knowledge of these cases did not prevent Emilia from casting beans or enacting magical cures.37 On the other hand, intensifying gossip about her may have dissuaded her from resuming her witchcraft practices when she returned to the city. Her neighbours used gossip and rumour as a means of communicating their disapproval of Emilia and of protecting their neighbourhood, by pre-emptively preventing her from practising again. Her trial ends after this final flurry of gossip about her practising witchcraft with a dead foetus, and we hear no more about her in the criminal records. It remains, of course, difficult to measure the results or effects of gossip in any calculable way but the evidence does suggest that sometimes gossip could act to discourage future misconduct. Actual sentencing or official prosecution was perhaps secondary in many cases, since gossip alone had enough force to convey a community’s criticism and undermine the accused’s public reputation: ultimately, community censure would be enough to deter future misconduct. Clearly, savvy individuals knew how the courts worked; they knew that gossip, rumour, and fama or public opinion weighed heavily as evidence, but more importantly, that courts could turn up the volume of courtroom rumours to reach a wider civic audience. Though witnesses were admonished to keep quiet about what was said in the court of the Inquisition, we can be quite sure that whether or not defendants were ever punished, what was said before the inquisitor reverberated in the city at large. Gossip and rumour played a role in revealing many types of crimes in Venice, and it is not clear that hearsay and public talk played a greater role in the trials for witchcraft than in trials for other crimes. It is certain, however, that a wide variety of individuals, including inquisitors, legal theorists, chroniclers, family members, and members of Venetian communities were quick to make connections between gossip and the identification of witches.38 This is perhaps not acci-

37  For instance, the Holy Office had famously punished Giovanna Semolina, Maddalena Bradamonte, Perina Merighi, and Lucia da Este for witchcraft. These four women all suffered public humiliation between the columns of San Marco on 6 July 1584, where they were forced to stand on a platform with mitres declaring them guilty of witchcraft: a punishment that surely the whole city was well aware of. 38  For additional trials before the Holy Office in Venice where gossip played a significant role in the prosecution of witches, see for instance Venice, ASV, Sant’Uffizio, b. 53, ‘Giovanna Semolina’; b. 58, ‘Margarita’; b. 61, ‘Elenam Cumana’ and ‘Viena Castella’.

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dental, since witchcraft was, at its core, a crime of language.39 That is to say, while witches’ rituals were diverse in practice and involved a range of material objects, almost all acts of witchcraft necessarily employed incantations and spoken spells to make the magic work. In a broader sense, therefore, the prosecution of witches revealed a civic competition over the control of magical speech — a competition that often played itself out in the speech of gossip and rumour itself. In addition, witches’ trials show how gossip stood at the dynamic intersection of the public and the private. In the courtroom, as much as gossip may have been mistrusted as evidence, what was often ‘private’ chatter from the street became part of the public record. Conversely, individuals could use public, civic, and religious institutions for private ends: to defame a competitor, reclaim a wayward husband, or to remove an unpopular figure from their neighbourhood. In the trials of witches before the court of the Venetian Inquisition, gossip functioned as much more than mere background noise, and understanding its practice is therefore central to understanding group interaction in the early modern world.

39 

Horodowich, Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice, pp. 184–86.

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Works Cited Manuscript and Archival Documents Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Sant’Uffizio

Primary Sources Eymeric, Nicolau, Directorium inquisitorum (Venice: Marcum Antonium Zalterium, 1607) The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, trans. by Montague Summers (New York: Dover, 1971) Masini, Eliseo, Sacro Arsenale overo Prattica dell’Officio della S. Inquisitione (Rome: Camera Apostolica, 1705) Sanudo, Marin, I diarii di Marino Sanudo, ed. by Rinaldo Fulin and others, 58 vols (Venice: Fratelli Visentini, 1879–1903)

Secondary Studies Beltrami, Daniele, Storia della popolazione di Venezia dalla fine del secolo xvi alla caduta della repubblica (Padua: CEDAM, 1954) Del Col, Andrea, L’Inquisizione in Italia: Dal xii al xxi secolo (Milan: Mondadori, 2006) —— , ‘Organizzazione, composizione e giurisdizione dei tribunal dell’Inquisizione romana nella Repubblica di Venezia (1500–1550)’, Studi storici, 25 (1988), 244–94 Durrant, Jonathan B., Witchcraft, Gender and Society in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2007) Eidinow, Esther, ‘Patterns of Persecution: “Witchcraft” Trials in Classical Athens’, Past and Present, 208 (2010), 9–35 Fenster, Thelma S., and Daniel Lord Smail, eds, Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003) Filippi, Franco, Anche questa è Venezia (Venice: Filippi Editore, 2005) Horodowich, Elizabeth, Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) Kamensky, Jane, Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) Kuehn, Thomas J., ‘Fama as a Legal Status in Renaissance Florence’ in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. by Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 27–46 Martin, Ruth, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989) Midelfort, H. C. Erik, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972) Milani, Marisa, Piccole storie di stregoneria nella Venezia del ‘500 (Verona: Essedue, 1989) —— , Streghe, morti ed esseri fantastici nel Veneto (Padua: Esedra, 1994)

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Monter, William, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Refor­ mation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976) Norton, Mary Beth, Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York: Knopf, 1996) —— , ‘Witchcraft in the Anglo-American Colonies’, OAH Magazine of History, 17 (2003), 5–10 Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994) Ruggiero, Guido, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) Seitz, Jonathan, ‘“The Root is Hidden and the Material Uncertain”: The Challenges of Prosecuting Witchcraft in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly, 62 (2009), 102–33 Tedeschi, John, The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991) Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)

Rumour and Reputation in the Early Modern English Family Amanda L. Capern

I

n his recent book on the pursuit of fulfilment through friendship, sociability, honour, and reputation, Keith Thomas has commented that in early modern England ‘harmony was prized, whereas lawsuits, which set neighbour against neighbour, were […] widely deplored as unChristian breaches of charity’.1 Bernard Capp, Craig Muldrew, and Steve Hindle have all arrived at the same conclusion.2 Steve Hindle put it this way: ‘The ethos of community was one of charity, neighbourliness and reciprocal obligation’.3 However, there are hints that despite all prescription and rhetoric in early modern society, harmony, while desired, was not always achieved.4 This article explores the role of rumour, or the hearsay and gossip that circulated in a community, in eroding or maintaining reputations within and across families; it considers the nature of gossip, including the way it carried gender connotations, and the social dynamics involved in the passage of rumour from local community to the central law courts. Early modern people regularly entered into bitter disputes over wills, money and inheritance, title to land, boundaries, animal thefts, and a myriad of other small annoyances of daily life. Rumour operated in the space between the social interaction of neighbourly exchange and the litigiousness which formu1 

Thomas, The Ends of Life, p. 189. See, Capp, When Gossips Meet; Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation’; Hindle, ‘A Sense of Place?’ 3  Hindle, ‘A Sense of Place?’, p. 108. 4  Capp, When Gossips Meet, p. 185. 2 

Amanda L. Capern ([email protected]) Lecturer in Early Modern Women’s History, University of Hull.

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lated and attempted to mediate — and mitigate — local gossip. The courts were widely expected to be peacekeepers, restoring social order by arriving at judgements about legal rights and fairness. Deciding whether or not they deserve their contemporary reputation as peacemakers in rumour-ridden local communities is important. Did the courts really succeed as peacekeepers? Indeed, did the strategies of dispute resolution employed by the courts respond to collective cultural norms and local perceptions of equity and fairness in Chancery cases? These are some of the questions this article seeks to answer. Gossip, rumour, talk, words, fama: what do these things mean for the early modern family and its community? Things seen, remembered, and then spoken about formed the prosaic gossip that arose during the multiple social transactions of daily life, though these speech acts could be (and were) transformed into more formal, performed, and hierarchical acts of spoken and then transcribed recall when moved into the forum of a court. Through this process, destructive gossip could be neutralized into what was perceived as justice, as the law settled differences over land and bond, deed, and matters of promises made verbally. Historians of medieval and early modern Europe have become more interested recently in the operational tactics — as well as the spatial locations — of talk, and the link between this and the construction of the social identities of groups.5 That people gossiped and spread rumours is not under question here. In 1591 John Florio remarked that the question ‘what news?’ was the first asked by any Englishman.6 Although Florio gendered this as a masculine trait, ‘what news?’ was exactly the question that Agnes Filer asked Edward Loxton when he walked into a tavern in 1539, only to be astonished when he replied that there might be war.7 Gossip took place in the fields and woods, across hedges, by the hearth, in the streets, and in front of church authorities. Indeed, it took place increasingly in newspapers and, from the 1690s, in the ‘secret histories’ that acted to circulate gossip in and around the royal court of the later Stuarts.8 Tale-tellers and their listeners made a 5  Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’, pp. 176–80 citing, for example, Rysman, ‘How the “Gossip” Became a Woman’; Schofield, ‘Peasants and the Manor Court’, pp. 3–42 (pp. 6–9) citing Bonfield, ‘The Nature of Customary Law in the Manor Courts of Medieval England’ and Beckerman, ‘Towards a Theory of Medieval Manorial Adjudication’. 6  Fox, ‘News and Popular Political Opinion’, p. 601, quoting John Florio, Florios Second frutes (1591), sig. A2. 7  Shagan, ‘Rumours and Popular Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII’, p. 53 citing Kew, The National Archives (henceforth TNA), E36/120, fol. 55r. 8  Parsons, Reading Gossip in Early Eighteenth-Century England, and review of this book by Rebecca Bullard: doi:10.1093/res/hgq034.

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clear distinction between potentially seditious news, like Loxton’s, and the news that indicated trouble within families. Spreading rumours that the monarch was dead was dangerous and deeply shocking, but news that led to disorder in family life was also seen to threaten the stability of households and ultimately, therefore, the commonweal. ‘Sins of the tongue’ — or the ‘boneless member’ as the tongue was sometimes called — were committed by those troublesome people in society whose defamatory words against their neighbours gained criminal recognition in the civil and ecclesiastical courts in the same way as the utterance by individuals of seditious words amounted to criminal speech acts of treason.9 Rumour should not be reified; it was not a thing, but rather a journey of oral communication which left in its wake a scatter-pattern of interpersonal transactions between people whose relative power as orator or listener depended on their companion and position or place in every exchange. Stories that transferred to a legal setting needed to be sufficiently damaging to another’s reputation, while also being plausible, if a complainant or defendant hoped to succeed. Really damaging rumours tended to leave the ostensibly safe confines of families and local communities, migrating first to regional centres, like York, where they were transformed into the ‘evidences’ of witness statements which were repeated in neutral spaces. The depositions in the 1676 case brought by James Danby against Charles Laton over land in Foxton Manor were taken in the house of Jane Flower in Northallerton, in North Yorkshire, before the complaint travelled to London.10 Privacies overheard needed to be backed up by spatial descriptions that seemed likely. The internal space of a gallery was far too open for secrets, whereas gardens allowed sound to dissipate and in their ‘spatial range […] confidences could be exchanged exclusively, in motion, rather than captured in stasis’.11 Sometimes the actual transfer from community to the law court of a relatively straightforward case generated rumours spontaneously. What Adam Fox has called the ‘environment of chatter and rumour-mongering’ linked kin networks with the wider world and could be entirely harmless or could become corrosive.12 When Dorothy Mann brought her former ward, Helen Ripley, to Chancery (along with Helen’s husband and several of her kin) to reclaim debts incurred in Helen’s upkeep, the defendant chose that moment to record that as a child she had not been properly fed, clothed or educated. Dorothy Mann was a widow of good 9 

Cressy, Dangerous Talk, especially chaps 1–3. TNA, C22/93/8, Danby v. Laton, 14 July 1676. 11  Cf. Cowen Orlin, Locating Privacy in Tudor London, pp. 231–33. 12  Fox, ‘Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion’, pp. 601–02. 10 

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repute, so the rumour was at first deflected to the reputation of a co-conspirator, a second guardian called William Leathley. It was alleged that Leathley’s son had been ‘weak in estate’ and that Helen had needed to escape because he ‘could not maintain her’.13 It still left the out-of-pocket Dorothy Mann exposed at home to accusations of neglecting a child in her care. What Tim Stretton has called the ‘elusive commodity’ that was ‘truth’ suffered a tactical rearrangement which left the community divided.14 It is possible to make a distinction between gossip, or the informal exchange of news or hearsay between one person and a select audience, and the rumour that turns into scandal or gossip about someone or a group of people or events that has become ubiquitous and ‘everyone knows that everyone knows’.15 Merry WiesnerHanks has argued that one of the few channels of power open to women was ‘the spreading of rumours’, which raises questions about female agency in igniting vexatious gossip.16 However, caution needs to be exercised when associating the power of rumour with one sex or the other. Steve Hindle has demonstrated through the case of Margaret Knowsley that, having told tales of sexual harassment privately to female friends and confidantes, Knowsley’s ‘conversations were only the stone thrown into the pool’ before ‘the ever-widening ripples’ turned into street confrontations between neighbours and, ultimately, full-blown scandal which focused on Knowsley herself.17 The spreaders of rumours thus acquired their own reputations — which were often gender- and status-determined — as they and their words of gossip moved from place to place. Knowsley talked only from a position of ‘dependency and subordination’, bringing shame on herself and not the perpetrator.18 Those who spread rumours might be ‘leaving tales and newes’ or they might be labelled as ‘sowers of discord’, gossiped about themselves, so that they themselves became embedded in the operation of rumour or became one strand of the end-product in the act of telling.19 Equally, the places where 13 

TNA, C6/130/124, Mann v. Ripley and others, c. 1652–55. Stretton, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England, p. 14. 15  Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’, p.  392, citing the distinction made between gossip and scandal by Sally Engle Merry, ‘Rethinking Gossip and Scandal’, p. 275. Hindle suggests this is a crude taxonomy and points further to Spacks, Gossip, for discussions of the continua of meanings for gossip that might be best applied. 16  Wiesner-Hanks, Gender in History, p. 138. 17  Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’, esp. pp. 395–408, quoting p. 407. 18  Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’, p. 392. 19  Fox, ‘Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion’, pp. 601–02. 14 

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rumours either began or were fostered could lend more or less veracity to scandal as it emerged. When Mary Meggs was brought as a witness to a nuncupative will, the case was deeply undermined by rumours repeated in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury that she ‘is a person of an infamous and base reputation […] a very incontinent woman […] of such imprudence that she danced naked before several lords or persons of quality’.20 Gossip is not a negative force per se. Chris Wickham and Phillipp Schofield, amongst others, have followed the lead of anthropologists in arguing that the sort of gossip that established fama (reputation) produced common versions of a past based on the values and morality of a social (or talking) group.21 Taking up Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, Wickham, for example, argues that gossip is critical to the formation of group identity, including expected behaviours from group members based on gender, because gossip ‘articulates and bounds identity, group memory and legitimate group social practices’.22 In the seemingly endless feud between Rowland Callow of Monmouthshire and Walter Heane of Gloucestershire, the two men always fought in front of several other members of the gentry, who were later able to testify that Heane’s sword had sliced off Callow’s finger and Callow had bitten off some of Heane’s ear. The behaviour of both men was anathema in the eyes of the witnesses and both were spoken of in withering terms.23 Equally, when half-a-dozen women in the parish of Christ Church in London supported Elizabeth Brand and rounded on a single woman, Elizabeth Wyatt, for frequenting ‘suspicious places’ at ‘unlawful hours’, it was their unity of judgement that mattered.24 So too did the spatial location of the rumoured story of illicit sex and allegations about Wyatt’s alcohol consumption. Her honesty was questioned because witnesses observed her ‘divers and sundry times […] very much overcome with drink’.25 The social dynamics of rumour-mongering ensured 20 

Bonfield, ‘Testamentary Causes’, citing Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Probate 18/18/3, Hicks and Meggs v. Singleton. 21  See, Wickham, ‘Gossip and Resistance among the Medieval Peasantry’; Schofield, ‘Peasants and the Manor Court: Gossip and Litigation in a Suffolk Village at the Close of the Thirteenth Century’. 22  Wickham, ‘Gossip and Resistance among the Medieval Peasantry’, pp. 12, 23, quotation from p. 23 and see Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice. 23  Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634–1640, ed. by Cust and Hopper, pp. 38–39, Callow v. Heane. 24  Cressy, ‘Another Midwife’s Tale: Alcohol, Patriarchy, and Childbirth in Early Modern London’, p. 85. 25  Cressy, ‘Another Midwife’s Tale’, p. 85.

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that while Wyatt may have begun the social process as ‘spinster’ she came out of the church courts labelled a ‘whore’.26 Social conflict within communities could arise for many reasons: marital disharmony, domestic violence, drunkenness, sexual assault, theft, adultery, disagreements over children, and rivalries over wealth and assets. Conflict resolution was sought through arbitration by kin and friends, by the church, by guilds, and was, indeed, urged as a necessity by all members of the community, including those whose relationship with others was horizontal, such as justices of the peace and clergymen. When disputes moved to the arena of the law court, both plaintiff and defendant knew the persuasive power of the reference to blood and kin. However, while the equity and civil courts usually found in favour of the plaintiff, statutory law was sluggish in responding to emotive calls to protect family lineage.27 When cases did come to parliament, they depended as heavily on the recycling of hearsay as any other inheritance suit. During James Percy’s claim to the title of earl of Northumberland, from 1671, Percy raised affidavits claiming not only ‘ejectments for lands’, but also ‘scandalous words’ spoken of him by Lady Elizabeth Percy and her friends.28 When his case was thrown out in 1689 the House of Lords declared it ‘groundless, false and scandalous’, even though he had proof of colateral descent down a male line.29 Ultimately, the assaults upon Percy’s character, and the multiple suits brought against him by the late earl’s widow (on behalf of her daughter’s inheritance), scuppered his chance of proving that he was ‘the true and lawful Heir-male’.30 Along the way, Percy blamed rumour-mongering, combined with bribery by Lady Elizabeth; he claimed he had been told that one lawyer he employed had been offered a hundred guineas to ‘lose’ critical written evidence in the case, leaving him with only hearsay evidence about his descent from the third son of the fifth earl.31 So dependent was Percy on complex genealogical proofs

26 

See, Gowing, Domestic Dangers, passim; Capp, When Gossips Meet. For the interaction between social labels — in this instance ‘spinster’ — and the behaviour of individuals in mutually informing ways towards evolution of the language of social taxonomy, see Spicksley, ‘A Dynamic Model of Social Relations’. 27  Cf. Bonfield, ‘Seeking Connections between Kinship and the Law’, p. 77. One example was the slow change in the law in response to adultery cases to allow remarriage to protect the inheritance of legitimate heirs, for example, in the case of the Earl of Rutland from the 1670s. 28  Percy, The Case of James Percy (1680), p. 2 and attached affidavits 18 January 1680. 29  Percy, The Case of James Percy (1680), p. 3 and attached affidavits 18 January 1680. 30  Percy, The Case of James Percy (1680), p. 5 and attached affidavits 18 January 1680. 31  See, Stater, ‘Percy, James’, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21947.

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that talk of him being a bastard and an imposter was enough to win the day for his enemies, and he was left bemoaning the ‘hard usage he hath found at Law’.32 Rumour, which followed from gossip in a cumulative process, defined social expectations, but could also destroy peaceful relations. The insights of cultural anthropologists, such as Max Gluckman and Clifford Geertz, establish rumour as something fluid and transactional and lying on a sliding scale between the privata fama of the local gossip group (which may be feminized as women who were loquacious) and the publica fama of the law courts (which was often highly masculinized, could borrow institutional legitimacy and which could put more weight on the earwitnessing of men than women). The gossip of a local community became at once accusatorial or defensive within a court setting; it was constructed anew and could change from hearsay to evidence, or a basis for proving a case. The common knowledge that moved from community to court comprised narratives of events combined with the language of insult and/or praise, all of which was designed to establish character and public reputation.33 The social credit that came with a good reputation was so important that relatively humble people would go to court (expensively) to protect their good name. There was extensive popular knowledge of law, as reflected in the multiple reprints of Thomas Phayer’s Book of Presidents [precedents] after its first appearance in 1543.34 Young single women, as well as men, would sue not only over their good name, but over their economic rights and both sexes truly believed in the equitable correction that could result from a story of injustice being sent to Chancery.35 The ideal of equity, normative gender expectation, and the way in which rumour and gossip operated in the interstices between oral communication in the community and the spoken word as it was recorded for Chancery, can all be seen at work in the small village of Clapham in Yorkshire in the year 1638. Rumours began to circulate in that year about the terrible death of a yeoman farmer called Miles Proctor. Proctor had been ‘troubled with the falling sickness’

32 

Percy, The Case of James Percy (1680), p. 5 and attached affidavits 18 January 1680. See, Gluckman, ‘Papers in Honor of Melville J. Herskovits’, pp. 307–16; Geertz, ‘Local Knowledge; Fenster and Smail, eds, Fama, passim; Kuehn, ‘Fama as Legal Status in Re­ naissance Florence’, p.  29. For the gender distinction drawn between women’s gossip and men’s ‘earwitnessing’, see Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses, and review by Jennifer C. Vaught, doi:10.1253/cdr.2010.0004. 34  Thomas Phayer’s Newe Boke of Presidents (1543) went through multiple editions and was the standard legal handbook for all transactions over land and financial settlement. 35  Fortier, The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England, pp. 59, 142. 33 

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and had collapsed into the kitchen hearth, suffering horrendous burns.36 Gossip about Miles Proctor’s death and subsequent events moved from Clapham to Chancery in a complaint lodged by his niece, Katherine Proctor, who reported that ‘by practice and combinacion [sic] among them’, Robert Twistleton, a group of his named ‘conspirators’, and others whose names she was ‘trying to discover’ had fraudulently taken possession of her uncle’s land when she was ‘the right heir and next of blood’.37 Twistleton claimed that the dying Proctor had referred to him as ‘my brother’ in a nuncupative will from which he was to benefit, even though he was not blood-related.38 The village of Clapham lies in the western foothills of the Yorkshire Dales, and the rich meadows and pastures on which Miles Proctor grazed his sheep in the winter were fed by the stream that ran down from Clapham Beck. As the men who seized the Proctor lands lived in villages nestled high in the fells, they had much to gain from taking over the lower-lying properties. However, locally Twistleton’s story was not believed because he would never have been alone with the dying man to hear any final will. Indeed, at the last, Miles Proctor would have been surrounded by family and friends, helping him to a good passing and witnessing his last wishes at law.39 In the village it was widely rumoured that Miles Proctor had been in extremis after his fall, unable ‘to give directions’ because he had no ‘disposing memory for the making of the supposed will’.40 Neighbours also knew that his wife had tied his sagging jaw with a bandage and secured his tongue, effectively gagging him, so that she could feed him. The local gossip about how her uncle was both insensible and inaudible provided Katherine Proctor with the basis of proof she needed to defeat the disinheritance brought about by a group of men who were counting on possession proving nine-tenths of the law. All group identities and divisions in communities were defined and mediated by moral languages that were used to make social judgements. A person’s good name was most commonly slandered using gender imputation, although in the moral economy of trust, religion was a powerful signifier too.41 Work on slander 36 

TNA, C6/107/110, Proctor v. Twistleton, Spalton, Nailer, Dickenson, and Howson, 1641. TNA, C6/107/110, Proctor v. Twistleton, Spalton, Nailer, Dickenson, and Howson, 1641. 38  TNA, C6/107/110, Proctor v. Twistleton, Spalton, Nailer, Dickenson, and Howson, 1641. 39  Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family, pp. 90–91; Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, pp. 329, 390–91. 40  TNA, C6/107/110, Proctor v. Twistleton, Spalton, Nailer, Dickenson, and Howson, 1641. 41  Cf. Shepard, ‘Honesty, Worth and Gender’, p. 88. For religion, see Cogan, ‘Reputation, Credit and Patronage’. 37 

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has shown that gender was inflected in the language of conflict and insult and it is defamation cases that have provided the richest evidence of the gender-specific terms of abuse that peppered all gossip.42 ‘Goodwife’ and ‘gentleman’ had their respective inverse terms in ‘whore’ and ‘knave’. Words such as ‘whore’, ‘jade’, ‘trull’, ‘baggage’, ‘quean’, and ‘bawd’ were all used to denote sexual misdemeanour, lying, drunkenness, and husband-theft in women. Embellishments such as ‘pockey lousey hedge whore’ hinted not only at the extent of a sexual crime but also its potential locations.43 For men it was ‘knave’, ‘rogue’ and ‘rascal’ that featured in the court evidence of defamation of character, though Laura Gowing points out that men’s cuckoldry and dishonesty ‘seems to lack the potential of competition that is so fruitful for women’s insults’.44 Men were particularly prone to accusing one another of lying or being ill-bred or lowly-born. Compilations of words contained within them a package of meanings: ‘thou liest like a knave’, Francis Buller said of William Arundell, in front of witnesses.45 The narrative at the centre of gossip defined not only the key language tropes involved but also the fluctuating gender composition of gossip groups.46 Accusations of cowardice about men were a call to arms, as was the accusation that a man was of lesser status than his accuser. When John Woodman called Thomas Brome a liar over a debt, he embellished the accusation with ‘thou art not a gentleman, thou art a dungehill […] thou art a hogtrough and a base rascally fellow, and I am a better man then [sic] thou’.47 Thus, rumour was not just about stories circulating in a community; it also had a typology of contempt and depended upon audience and gender for its impact. It also, as David Cressy has pointed out, sometimes moved seamlessly from being seen as the swearing, lying, scolding, and berating of the ‘constant jangler and wrangler’ in a community to being understood as disturbance of ‘the king’s peace’.48 Equally, the ‘[g]endered defamatory language fell as commonly 42 

Cf. Muldrew, ‘Class and Credit’, pp. 148–49. For the awful inescapability of women’s social reputation and fate in life being tied up with what happened to them sexually, see Richardson, ‘“Who shall Restore my Lost Credit?’”. 43  Gowing, Domestic Dangers, chap. 3, quotation from p. 66. 44  Gowing, Domestic Dangers, p. 77. 45  Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634–1640, ed. by Cust and Hopper, p. 4, Arundell v. Buller, May–December 1640. 46  See, Capp, When Gossips Meet, chap. 5. 47  Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634–1640, ed. by Cust and Hopper, p. 29, Brome v. Woodman, February 1639/40–December 1640. 48  Cressy, Dangerous Talk, p. 20 citing Herefordshire RO, BG 11/5/35, Case of John Holt, 1641.

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from women’s tongues and men’s’, though how, where, and why it fell (and to which court audience) is crucial to understanding the context which generated the insults and the gossip.49 The broader conversational tropes that established friendship and enmity overlapped with the relationships that were established by public office. The person who was one’s friend could be someone to whom one was tied by real affection, someone who was on side (as opposed to being an enemy) or someone whose friendship was simply instrumental, supplying patronage, loans, and business in exchange for service. John Houghton, the publisher of multiple volumes of Collections for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade from 1691, dispensed advice to those who worked the land on how to build trust, particularly between landlords and tenants; he represented himself as ‘a broker of jobs, advowsons property and investments’.50 Rumours about who could (or could not) be trusted not only helped communities to function as social units, they were embedded in or part of a social process. Gossip about friend/enemy was, then, integrally tied to cultural stereotyping and linked inexorably to a gender dynamic within a gossip group. ‘Thou art a jack’ and a ‘stinkeinge beggarly base knave’, said John Oakes to John Aston in November 1637, adding that before he had done with him ‘he would make him knowne to be soe to all his neighbours’.51 Hugh Prust, a Devon attorney, threatened John Pincombe, a barrister, by saying ‘he would imblason my name to my shame and sound a trumpet of my discredit’, some of which he then blasted out at the dinner parties of other men to attack his opponent’s social status.52 Slanderers made their own gossip. According to Richard Cust and Andrew Hopper, once the Court of Chivalry became focused, from 1634, on cases of ‘scandalous words likely to provoke a duel’, its pleadings and witness statements were filled with the rumours spread by men.53 This male arena of public gossip was taken so seriously that in almost three-quarters of the cases the plaintiff was successful. Thus, gossip — about both enemies and friends — provided communities at once with the ingredients for social cohesion or a scandal that could result in community dis49 

Cressy, Dangerous Talk, p. 24. Glaisyer, ‘Readers, Correspondents and Communities’, p. 246. Glaisyer adapts her three categories of friend from Tadmor, ‘“Friend” and “Family” in Pamela’, pp. 298–99. 51  Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634–1640, ed. by Cust and Hopper, Aston v. Oakes, January–February 1637/38, p. 6. 52  Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634–1640, ed. by Cust and Hopper, Pincombe v. Prust, May 1639–July 1640, p. 220. 53  Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634–1640, ed. by Cust and Hopper, pp. xxvi–xxvii. 50 

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integration. The reputations women and men sought to uphold may have been different at times, but both sexes were embroiled in a social dynamic which placed friend and enemy simply on opposite sides of the same coin. Importantly, however, most cases that came to court were not defamation cases; the vast majority of cases involved squabbles over money, inheritance, and failures of loan repayment. Several Westminster courts exercised civil law jurisdiction in economic disputes and it was not unusual for wealthier members of society to invoke the jurisdiction of multiple courts. Over eighty per cent of the business in the Court of King’s Bench and no less than eighty-eight per cent of the suits in the Court of Common Pleas by 1640 concerned financial affairs.54 In a society that was dependent on the spoken word in personalized financial transactions over land usage and/or transfer, what might be termed one person’s unsubstantiated rumour about a past transaction was another person’s evidence of something long thought to be legal and binding. Nicola Whyte has demonstrated how important women’s memories of the ‘geography of tenure and custom’ were in regulating the land economy, largely because of the tactile and mobile nature of so much of their work as they gleaned, carted cheese, and moved animals around, tying corn for great tithes and walking between mill and dairy, woods and meadow.55 Their experience of the landscapes of economic usage established for them a language of authority when memory was needed to settle a matter.56 This was the case when some of Mary Raw’s neighbours in the tiny Yorkshire hamlet of Fryup called upon her to establish their rights in a strict settlement case involving division of land between several family members. After an ‘ill-designed person’ destroyed several indentures and then spread rumours about how other family members were keeping him from his rightful inheritance, Mary was able to counteract the loss of social credit by pointing out where hedges and walls needed to be erected.57 Her memory circumvented any future trouble and the conflict remained confined to the village. The memories of the elderly were often relied upon to establish histories of title and descent, and also to recall reputations for honesty amongst neighbours. For example, John Smith, who was sixty-six, was able to depose that Batts Close had always, in his memory, been in the manor of Foxton and he was able to give evidence of Vincent Parkin and his two sons farming the land under copyhold of the manor for twenty-two years. Thomas Hudson, who was even older at seventy54 

Muldrew, ‘Credit and the Courts’, pp. 24, 36. Whyte, ‘Custodians of Memory’, pp. 153, 155–56, 160–62. 56  See, Flather, Gender and Space in Early Modern England, passim. 57  Northallerton, North Yorkshire Record Office (henceforth NYRO), ZDS/I/1/38/12–17, 20, 27, Mortgages and Family Settlement Papers, Raw-Peirson, 17 October 1775. 55 

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eight, bore witness that while much of the land belonged in Foxton manor, he remembered his father actually gifting some of the grounds in the disputed woodland to the manor of Wynton where it had been transformed into parkland for game. The authority of his testimony was recorded with the words ‘all the time of his remembrance’.58 While it was the length of the remembrance that gave weight to the evidence, it was also the case that attribution of levels of honesty in witness statements was closely related to the age of the deponent.59 When a suit was brought to Chancery it was with good reason that exhibits proving the existence of covenants, descent of title, loans or mortgages were gathered alongside the pleadings and depositions. Memory and the surviving concrete evidence together established a case. Shutting down the rumours of wrong-doing became vital to those involved in disputes, not least because ‘local networks were fluid and overlapping, and a neighbour might well be on friendly terms with both parties’.60 Craig Muldrew has suggested that so powerful was this paradigm of proof that the concept of trust itself ‘was equated with justice’.61 People exhibited a touching faith in the power of legal documents to settle their differences and bring them justice. They pulled ‘writings’ out of wooden trunks, chests, cupboards, and tin boxes to show to bailiffs and officers of the law courts. Often locked, these private hiding places were used to prevent theft, but also to ensure that a family member or friend who was not trusted did not gain access to knowledge that they could use to ill purpose.62 When Mary Tunstall, from Scar Gill House in the Yorkshire Dales, drew up her will she placed it together with 1000 marks for her daughter’s portion in a wooden chest, which had two locks. She divided the keys between her unmarried daughter and her son-in-law (whom she appointed executor), so that neither of them could open the chest without the other being present. However, the person she did not trust was her eldest son and, because she was determined to avert any potential strife during her lifetime, she disclosed to him nothing at all.63 Thus, secrecy often surrounded the evidence of a person’s life and possessions in order to preserve family peace. However, the increased use of wills and inter vivos transfers of real and personal estate led to more individualized patterns of family inheritance; this increased the potential for family conflict, even though most people used 58 

TNA, C22/93/8, Danby v. Laton, 14 July 1676. Shepard, ‘Honesty, Worth and Gender’, p. 92. 60  Capp, When Gossips Meet, p. 185. 61  Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation’, p. 928. 62  Cowen Orlin, Locating Privacy in Tudor London, pp. 300–01. 63  NYRO, ZDS/II/1/3/6, Will of Mary Tunstall, n.d. 59 

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their wills to opt for common law inheritance practices.64 Indeed, Mary Tunstall retained her son as her heir, but to prevent ruin of her estates she left instructions that her son was to obey the management decisions of his brother-in-law. Remembrances of boundary lines and promissory bonds became legal proof once embedded in a lawsuit. In rural areas, ‘riding the boundary’ visibly and physically provided evidence from what people said and saw about who owned what land. In 1676 the Marchioness of Winchester wrote to the steward of the Wharton family (who were the occupying tenants of her land in Swaledale) asking him to question all of their tenants in an effort to quash a rival claim to the land. What she desired in oral testimony was to elicit their memories of ‘my father riding that very boundary’.65 In a sense, she turned rumour into law. Customary rights, which mostly related to common land, were highly exclusive and tightly controlled by local communities, who depended upon collective memory and Rogationtide ridings to keep out certain people, while establishing their own (inclusive) rights to be fishing in ponds, grazing sheep, running gaggles of geese, and so on.66 Different groups had agency in deciding who had customary rights within certain boundaries. Male oligarchies of parishes had the decision-making power to decide who belonged within the parish boundaries, and manorial boundaries were used to exclude people.67 Tenants in the manor of Snape and Well were angry when Mary Milbank encouraged her tenants to graze sheep on Causwick common and dig stone out of the marl pits on Watlass moor to cure for lime. She claimed the manorial rights of Watlass and they countered by saying she operated outside the boundary of Snape and Well where the marl pits lay.68 The boundaries really mattered. Lying one side of a boundary or another could make the difference between being able to hunt deer (or not), cut wood (or not), dig for minerals (or not) and the rumour of a pending boundary dispute instantly caused disruption and division within a community. Rumours from the past could also leak into present disputes, and the consequences of earlier legal cases could have an impact on a person’s reputation for honesty, almost by cross-gen64 

Bonfield, ‘Seeking Connections between Kinship and the Law’, pp. 52–53, 66. NYRO, R/Q/R9/118, Rental of the Wharton estates in Swaledale, 1676; NYRO, ZQH/7/1/17, Letters from the Marquess and Marchioness of Winchester to Thomas Wharton, 28–29 September 1676 reprinted in Documents Relating to the Swaledale Estates of Lord Wharton, ed. by Ashcraft, pp. 133–42. 66  Clark and Clark, ‘Common Rights to Land in England, 1475–1839’, pp. 1009–36. 67  Hindle, ‘A Sense of Place?’, pp. 102, 104, 108. 68  NYRO, ZAL/6/6 [MIC/1360], Cecil v. Milbank, Pleading in Chancery, 18 November 1718 and Answer of the Defendant, 5 December 1719. 65 

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erational infection. Mary Milbank’s reputation was threatened for several years because, although she claimed she was doing no more than defending a boundary her father had established long beforehand, her story could not be corroborated by boundary ridings because a woman called Margaret Danby (who we shall meet in a moment) had been so furious when she lost a Chancery case four decades earlier that she had destroyed the court rolls containing the copyhold record. Mary Milbank appealed to community memory of her father’s tenants digging for stone ‘by the side of the high road that leads to Watlass from the said moor […] where everyone that passeth by might very easily see them digging’.69 However, the bitterness of her neighbours still lingered as a consequence of the earlier dispute. The work that has been done on kin networks has revealed the intrinsic vitality of words in binding together families and communities in webs of mutual trust that could quickly break down once personal recall was transposed to the space of the law court. The gendered words of insult that turned rumour into scandal in society often just gave flavour to the stories that circulated about financial wrongdoing. A household’s collective credit was hugely important and individual reputations counted within the household collective.70 Honour and trust could be lost by a family or kin network through the destroyed reputation of just one person. Men’s economic assessment of other men led quickly to rumoured downfall and defensive litigation.71 By the 1630s Hester Temple of Stowe was acutely aware of what she called the ‘despret debts’ of her extended family and had calculated her husband’s debts alone at £6450, eighty per cent of which were owed in a tangled mesh of family bonds.72 She personally arranged a private loan of £1000 through a London agent and her own debts were considerable. However, it was her sons and sons-inlaw who wrote to her, fretting about how they might suffer ‘ruin’ or be ‘undone’ in the process by which the homo-sociality of the network of men (including their male servants) collapsed into disputes involving physical violence over matters of honour.73 Women might sometimes be perceived as counteracting the problem 69 

1719. 70 

NYRO, ZAL/6/6 [MIC/1360], Cecil v. Milbank, Answer of the Defendant, 5 December

Shepard, ‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy’, p. 83. See, Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England, pp. 34–35 and Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800, p. 127. 72  Capern, ‘Gender, Debt and Family Transaction’, citing BL, Temple Papers, MS Addit. 52,475A. 73  Capern, ‘Gender, Debt and Family Transaction’, citing Huntington Libr., Temple Papers, STT 1276, John Lenthall to Hester Temple, 22 November 1629. See also, Beaver, ‘Honor, Property, and the Symbolism of the Hunt in Stowe, 1590–1642’. 71 

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and restoring male reputations.74 Indeed, the concept of the goodwife (álà Thomas Tusser) had considerable cultural purchase at all levels of society. When William Stout’s brother was rumoured to be ‘somewhat outward’, his brother intervened by trying to find him a good wife.75 Equally, when rumours reached the ears of Ann Ogle in 1721 (via some gossipy tenants and an estate steward) that her nephew and heir might be mismanaging her estates, she wrote telling him that ‘I should be more satisfied to have a line or two from yourself to let me know that you were about gittinge a good wife’.76 However, it was not men alone whose reputations could be destroyed by rumours of mismanaged estates and finances, as will be seen. An increased use of wills and strict settlements resulted in a staggering climb in the number of suits from the late sixteenth century onwards, as Craig Muldrew has pointed out: ‘about 60,000 suits being initiated yearly before the central courts […] 400,000 suits being initiated in urban courts […] 500,000 private suits […] in the thousands of small rural courts’.77 This huge burden of litigation was evidence, not only of conflict, but also of the role of the courts in mediation and reconciliation on behalf of communities that were regularly torn apart by economic strife. Courts were accessible conduits for hearsay and gossip, which drifted from the local community into different court settings.78 Lloyd Bonfield has spoken of law in ‘multiple and overlapping layers’, its multiple jurisdictions, judgements, and precedents mediating relations between kin.79 Anne Richmond of Lancashire complained about (and utilized) this very thing in 1649. She defended herself in a suit brought in Chancery against her by Clement Toulson by saying that he had an identical suit out against her in one of the other central courts and that she should not be ‘questioned, sued or molested att one and the same tyme for one and the same thing’.80 It was a tactic only (it worked in her case), but it is important for demonstrating people’s perceptions of the damage that could be done to their reputations if local rumour about them translated into evidential talk scattered through several legal spatial locations. 74 

See also Muldrew, ‘“A Mutual Assent of her Mind”?’ The Autobiography of William Stout, ed. by Marshall, p. 116. 76  NYRO, ZQM/10/12 [MIC 2046/211], Ann Ogle to Henry Chaytor, 24 August 1721. 77  Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation’, p. 918 incorporating his statistical estimations from Brooks, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth, pp. 49–51, 56–57, 305 n. 21. 78  Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation’, pp. 915–18. 79  Bonfield, ‘Seeking Connections between Kinship and the Law’, pp. 49–51, quotation from p. 50. 80  TNA, C6/103/134, Toulson v. Richmond, 1649. 75 

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The huge increase in litigation from the late sixteenth century is explicable in terms of rapid economic growth and ‘the sheer complexity of innumerable reciprocal obligations’ of a personal nature that resulted.81 The systems that governed domestic and local economies could lead quickly and easily to a collapse in trust between individuals. In the absence of banks, money changed hands privately, either with verbal assurances of its future repayment or on a promissory note or bond. With verbal agreements about money and land transfer often being ratified simply by pulling in neighbours as witnesses (and as vital security for debts incurred), there was heavy reliance on that most imprecise form of human recall — memory. Hearsay meant more than gossip in early modern society, because it also meant that people had heard it said that agreements had been struck. Opportunities for misremembering and disagreeing over financial arrangements grew to staggering proportions because of the dozens of transactions, small and large, that multiplied in any one year in a community. Craig Muldrew has observed that ‘the memory of transactions’ became part of ‘the fabric of the community’.82 It was this collective memory that the people appointed by the six clerks of Chancery hoped that they could capture to settle a case. Kin networks were not just bound by affective ties and sociability; they also formed complex webs of debt and obligation that could lead to intense and entrenched dislikes forming between people whose lives were deeply (and often legally) interconnected. Although much work has been done on the language of insult in early modern England, further work still needs to be done to reveal the patterns of linguistic change when community gossip was generated by rumours and tension within families and between kin before it shifted to the law courts. The provocative keywords that acted as catalysts in turning rumour into serious social conflict and physical violence may not have operated in the same way in the court setting and, indeed, may have been defused by their transposition from the arena of village gossip to written pleadings and depositions. Early modern people trod a fine line when they combined a deep faith in the justice of the law with an intense desire to win their legal cases, because channelling vicious rumours into the courts could come at a price. Suits in Chancery were usually finalized within two years, unless they involved a seriously entangled set of estate debts, and the emphasis was on quick settlement to calm tensions at home.83 The interrogatories set by the plaintiff for the defendant/s and vice versa set the narrative and the process, but the 81 

Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation’, p. 925. Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation’, pp. 921–29, quotation from p. 927. 83  Horwitz and Polden, ‘Continuity or Change in the Court of Chancery?’ pp. 24, 53. 82 

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influence of local gossip can often most clearly be seen in the depositions of the witnesses called for each side. Some people were more susceptible to vented spite during witnessing procedures. Those filling the roles of sheriff, bailiff, and justice of the peace, not infrequently found themselves subject to rumours of misdoings and misrepresentation. In 1609 John Kyrle, serving as sheriff of Herefordshire, had to deny information which had been sent to the Earl of Shrewsbury during a court case ‘by an unknown person […] expressly to afflict me’.84 Accusations about being the cause of friction which travelled beyond the immediate locale could later return, exposing the accused to rumours of treachery. When Sarah Wilkinson found herself at odds with the paternal family of her dead daughter’s child in 1649, over her seizure of copyhold lands belonging to her granddaughter, she pointed out that she only took what ‘shee hopeth she lawfully may’ because of a wardship.85 However, witness statements transformed this into avariciousness and ‘sinister design’.86 In York, on 8 April 1650, she was, therefore, asked to defend herself against accusations of ‘causeless malice’. In fact, the deposition evidence about her ‘covetous disposition’ suggests rather that, as an elderly, independent, and wealthy widow, she was resented by her kin network.87 The feminization of covetousness reveals a gendered perception of what constituted honest financial dealings. Sarah Wilkinson was not only the defendant in a Chancery suit; she was also the plaintiff in a suit in the manor court of Wakefield over her dowry lands, prompting her relatives to complain of an ‘extremity of demand’ as if, no matter what the legalities, women ought to refrain from ostentatious shows of ownership.88 In 1619 the husband and wife partnership of Edward and Susan Alston accused Elizabeth Elsam of behaving ‘contrary to all right equity’ because she and her father were fraudulently plotting to keep all of her late husband’s estate ‘the benefitt thereof to themselves’.89 She was accused of being deceitful and dishonourable ‘to defeate and defraude the orators’ when ‘rumour had it Elizabeth had money with her father and others for her use liable and sufficient to satisfie and pay ye said Orators their severall debts, costs

84 

TNA, C115/85/13, Master Harvey’s Exhibits, John Kyrle to Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, 1609. 85  TNA, C6/106/115, Oldfield v. Wilkinson, 1649. 86  TNA, C6/106/115, Oldfield v. Wilkinson, 1649. 87  TNA, C6/106/115, Oldfield v. Wilkinson, 1649. 88  TNA, C6/106/115, Oldfield v. Wilkinson, 1649. 89  TNA, C6/106/115, Oldfield v. Wilkinson, 1649.

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and damages’.90 They said she ‘sett on foote some fraudulent […] deeds or gifts or conveyances pretended to have been made’ by her husband and that she had hidden the probate inventory of his goods so that they could not reckon his true wealth.91 What they called her ‘absolute refusal’ to reveal her true wealth became the proof of her greed, made the worse because Susan Alston had obtained an order in the Court of Common Pleas in 1606 for repayment of around twentyfive pounds of debt owed by Elizabeth’s late husband, Thomas, for three loans Susan had granted him when she herself had been a widow.92 Recent work on kinship reveals the importance of the social interconnectedness of communities. Family units were bound by economic reciprocities, but this was not separable from the wider functions of kin support that accompanied unwritten rules of family honour and sociability. The extraordinary enmeshing of kin in a complex web of lending, debt, and obligation (linking both town and country) in economic interdependence does support the idea that, at least in terms of diffused social support, kinship really mattered.93 Craig Muldrew has been most responsible for bringing analyses of economic drivers and social structure closer together. Muldrew argues that early modern markets were not driven by the individualism envisaged by Marxist historians, or the liberal paradigm of self-interest that follows Adam Smith, but rather by a ‘network of credit that was so extensive and intertwined’, and based on long-term private transactions, that the accumulation of reciprocal debts, while straining local economies of trust, also encouraged maintenance of trust and local loyalties.94 In an age before banks, it is hardly surprising that the economy, thus arranged, was dependent on kin connections and family trust that turned into contractual bonds. Of course, the other side of the equation was that families could also be driven into conflict by debt in ways that deeply disrupted wider community cohesion. The social cohesion that depended heavily on economic trust in families was arguably most keenly experienced in remote farming communities. The Danby family of North Yorkshire offers a window into the process of rumour escalation, and family disintegration involving the law courts, that could result from 90 

TNA, C6/106/115, Oldfield v. Wilkinson, 1649. TNA, C6/106/115, Oldfield v. Wilkinson, 1649. 92  TNA, C6/1/9, Alston and Alston v. Elsam, 1619. 93  See, Wall, ‘Economic Collaboration of Family Members’; Cressy, ‘Kinship and Kin Inter­ action in Early Modern England’; Muldrew, ‘Rural Credit, Market Areas and Legal Institutions’; Tadmor, ‘Early Modern English Kinship’. 94  Muldrew, ‘Interpreting the Market’, p. 169. 91 

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any breakdown of familial credit/debt systems.95 Surviving Chancery records and private family papers allow the trail of vicious stories to be followed from the Danby family to neighbours, to court, and back again. Fama-in-transit reveals the degree to which the law was ‘processual’, or responding to the concerns of the everyday in the lives of those involved.96 In common with so many other kin networks, disintegration in Danby family relationships began with a large network of debts. The process began when Thomas Danby met with a premature death in August 1667. He was the head of a family estate centred on Thorp Perrow and Masham, near Bedale. When he died the estate was encumbered with £15,910 of debt (an eye-watering £1.3 million in today’s currency).97 Like so many men of the landed gentry in the late seventeenth century, Thomas Danby had struggled for years after his father bequeathed such large portions to his three brothers ( John, Francis, and Christopher) and two sisters (Katherine, who was married to Henry Best, and Alice, who was married to John Read) that there was too much of a gap between his outgoings and his rental income for him to live comfortably. Despite a marriage that had brought a £2000 dowry, and an interest in two coal mines, Thomas Danby was unable to pay off his siblings and was, instead, at the time of his demise, suing his wife’s sister and brother-in-law for the right to receive the rent charged on a coal mine at Evenwood. Gossip in the town of Malton, where his brother-in-law was member of parliament, was that the two men hated each other and that Thomas Danby’s wife, Margaret, encouraged him to deny agreements made at the time of her sister’s marriage.98 Thomas Danby died in unpleasant circumstances. While on a trip to London with his wife and two infant sons, he got into a brawl with three strangers in a tavern and one of them drew a sword and thrust it into his throat, causing a ‘mortall wound […] five thumb widths deep by half a thumb widths wide’.99 Margaret Danby went into widow’s quarantine in London, being joined by her sister-inlaw, Anne, who was married to Thomas Danby’s youngest brother, Christopher. 95 

The summary of the Danby family case here selects some of the research findings of an article in preparation: Capern, ‘Femininity and Honour in Early Modern English Chancery Court Cases’. 96  Schofield, ‘Peasants and the Manor Court’, p. 6 citing Bossy, Disputes and Settlements; Comaroff and Roberts, Rules and Processes, and Geertz, Local Knowledge. 97  The debt calculations can be found in Chancery papers such as TNA, C22/780/8, Danby and Danby v. Danby, 1676 and family papers such as NYRO, ZS* Box, Danby v. Danby, 1680. Figure calculated using TNA currency converter. 98  TNA, C6/171/80, Palmes and Palmes v. Danby and Danby, 1664. 99  NYRO, ZS*, Box of legal cases 1667.

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Henry Best sent money from Yorkshire to support the two women ahead of them returning to Yorkshire with the body.100 Thomas Danby was eventually buried at Thorp Perrow on 23 September, after which Margaret Danby was able to exploit two changes to the law to take full possession of her eldest son’s estates.101 Firstly, the abolition of the Court of Wards made it easier for her to claim guardianship rights to her son, and, secondly, the Statute of Distributions allowed her to seize the goods of her child and claim legal representation of the heir to the estate.102 The death of her eldest son in 1671 left her in full control of the estates of her infant son. However, by then she was being sued by a number of people for return of several sums. Margaret Danby had been accustomed to running the estate, even when her husband was alive, and had also independently raised loans in the past from tenants. Witnesses stated that in 1665 the Danby estate steward, Robert Batt, pressed them for loans that were for the sole use of Margaret Danby, and that when they had told the steward she was ‘then under coverture’, Batt had continued to raise the loans, entering into a bond for £300 himself with one of the plaintiffs in the case.103 When asked what security Margaret Danby could give, Batt was reported as having said that the debt was secured ‘upon her honour’.104 A neighbour remembered that she ‘did expresse herself that none should loose [sic] a farthing by her husband’.105 Margaret Danby was a woman who constantly referenced her honour, as if it were an attribute reflective of her social station. Members of the family did report that after Thomas Danby’s death Margaret Danby had told them that she would ‘rectify her son to her husband in ye kindness she would show to her relations’.106 As the law suits multiplied and progressed, Margaret Danby’s reputation transformed from honourable widow into something less savoury as she tackled the family’s financial crisis. In a series of indentures between 1669 and 1671 she mortgaged the family estates to a series of people in exchange for several sums 100 

NYRO, ZS*, Danby v. Danby, Copy of deposition of John Danby, n.d. 1680. TNA, C104/262(I), Master Tinney’s Exhibits, Bundle 14, Title deeds and indentures deposited 17 July 1684 in case of Danby v. Danby. 102  Bonfield, ‘Seeking Connections between Kinship and the Law’, pp. 56–60, 72–75. 103  TNA, C22/785/32, Fenton v. Danby, 7 December 1670. 104  TNA, C22/785/32, Fenton v. Danby, 7 December 1670. 105  TNA, C22/785/32, Fenton v. Danby, 7 December 1670. 106  NYRO, OUTFAC 141, Copy of deposition Anne Danby 1683 (I would like to record my thanks to Leslie Tyson who shared with me this reference and alerted me to the litigation in the Danby family). 101 

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amounting to about £10,000. The land remained in trust in her name on promise of future payment of securities.107 On 19 April 1672 she sold her son’s inheritance to John Rushworth for ninety-nine years, and Rushworth sold it on again to Philip Lawson, a lawyer, whom Margaret Danby later made the beneficiary of her will.108 However, her inability to pay the securities led to claims of ownership to the land by the trustees, and by the mid-1670s she was in serious difficulties with the family over the unpaid portions, and for jeopardizing the estate. Rancorous disputes at home resulted in Chancery suits with every member of her husband’s family, turning them from solicitous in-laws into combative enemies who spread rumours designed to destroy her character. Between 1671 and 1672 she entered into direct confrontation with Alice and John Read by taking possession of land which had been granted to them for rent in lieu of Alice’s portion. John Read retaliated by sending his agents to break down the doors of a mill and cut down several hundred trees for wood. His men assaulted Margaret Danby’s tenants and she brought a Chancery case — naming herself as guardian of her son — against him for compensation. Statements to the court indicate that neighbouring gentry gossiped about family breakdown.109 Anne Danby, who had supported Margaret Danby in London, was (at least by her account) thrown out of a family property in Farnley with her husband and their young children. She told a melodramatic story of suffering, being placed in a small house with ‘floors all earthen as wet and moist as in ye open streets when it rained’.110 The children, she said, cohabited with rats, frogs, and newts in their beds and when Margaret Danby visited her, she ‘came to torment me […] with fingers and thumb, teeth and tongue’.111 The imagery hinted at the behaviour of a street whore. According to Anne Danby, Margaret Danby placed the family under a tyranny, before (allegedly) arriving one day to abduct her children. The gossip Anne Danby later spread about what happened on that day was that ‘when my poor children were all taken from me going to see them take horse as I passed through town […] many of ye people stood all at their doors with tears in their eyes bewailing my sad usage’.112 Margaret Danby’s 107 

TNA, C10/217/61, Tempest v. Danby, 1684. TNA, C104/262(I), Master Tinney’s Exhibits, Bundle 14, Indenture of 19 April 1672 deposited 2 October 1683; NYRO, ZS* [MIC/2087], Legal Papers, Will of Margaret Danby, 5 October 1683. 109  TNA, C22/773/40, Danby v. Read, 16 January 1673/4. 110  NYRO, OUTFAC 141, Copy of deposition, Anne Danby 1683. 111  NYRO, OUTFAC 141, Copy of deposition, Anne Danby 1683. 112  NYRO, OUTFAC 141, Copy of deposition, Anne Danby 1683. 108 

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defence was that she tried to look after the children rather than allow them to be raised by an alcoholic father — but witnesses never forgot the pitiful wailing of her sister-in-law and the gossip made it into court depositions. In 1675 Catherine and Henry Best acted decisively against Margaret Danby by claiming guardianship of her surviving son and suing her in Chancery, because her administration of Thomas Danby’s ‘goods, chattels, rights, credits and debts’, and conversion of the estate to her own use, meant that ‘the said debts are now swollen and do amount unto the sume of four and twenty thousand pounds at least’.113 Rumour had it that not only had her in-laws claimed the child, but two of the uncles, John and Francis Danby, had extended protection to the seized children of Anne Danby as well. Between 1676 and 1680 they all sued Margaret Danby in Chancery over her seizure of the estate, deposing that local gossip was that she said ‘she cared not what became of ye estate’ as long as it never descended to any of them.114 They complained that she was guilty of fraud and that her own son was likely to ‘be wholly ruined and undone unless some stop be upon [her …] proceedings’.115 Margaret Danby rallied her estate steward and servants to her defence. They testified that she had sheltered, fed, and clothed all her in-laws and their dependants and would have continued ‘in her kindness’ if they had not ‘by their will and unthankfull carriage and ill demeanour wilfully run themselves into the def[endants] displeasure’.116 The counter-gossip was that John and Francis Danby ‘did disturb the family’, sitting up drinking late into the night, plotting and shouting, ‘utter[ing] very opprobrious language’ to Margaret Danby and calling her servants ‘whores and rogues’.117 In 1681 Margaret Danby retaliated by taking out a writ against her own son, at which point the family-generated rumours worsened. Indeed, the neighbourhood heard that she may have killed her oldest son ten years before. Thus, when the younger boy died from a fall in 1683, some of the accounts that circulated were that Margaret Danby had killed him too. Furthermore, it was rumoured that at the time of the first boy’s death she had had an illegitimate child who she had, all along, intended as an imposter heir to the estate. Rumours are not discrete; they form rolling narratives. In this narrative Margaret Danby is transformed from worryingly covetous widow to whore and unnatural child-murdering mother. Anne Danby tried to give evidential weight to the emerging reputation by 113 

NYRO, ZS*, Copy of pleading, Danby v. Danby, 1675. NYRO, ZS*, Box of Family Papers, Pleadings in Danby v. Danby, 1675. 115  TNA, C22/780/8, Danby v. Danby, 1676–77. 116  TNA, C22/780/8, Danby v. Danby, 1676–77. 117  TNA, C22/780/8, Danby v. Danby, 1676–77. 114 

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claiming in later depositions that her sister-in-law might not even be human; her evidence was that after Thomas Danby’s death she ‘observed no tears flow from her eyes’ and that she ‘could not cry or take on like other women’.118 Anne’s son even reported that he thought his uncle Thomas Danby had been ‘murdered by villains of [Margaret’s] contrivance’.119 As he was heir to the estate by this stage, he had much to gain from destroying her reputation. David Cressy has pointed out the inherent difficulties faced by the historian encountering the fragmented ‘truth-telling and evidence, credulity and credibility, authenticity and verification’ found in the depositions and reported local gossip that went to central courts such as Chancery.120 However, the erosion of truth tells its own tale about the operation of rumour as it moved from family, to neighbourhood, to court — and, indeed, back again. Despite the evidence of her loyal tenants and servants, Margaret Danby came to be known in the neighbourhood as an inhumane pariah. Long after her death her neighbours were claiming to be ‘very great sufferers’ of a woman who had become an infamous and legendary figure, one who had wanted to ‘wage warre’ on her own family.121 However, Margaret Danby herself claimed that while the neighbourhood rumoured that she was ‘mad, a busy person, a dangerous person’, she was actually the victim destined to be ‘undowne’ by those who conspired against her locally when ‘no man ought to be deprived of his estate’.122 The latter is an enlightening co-option of the masculine by a woman who felt entitled to the property she had seized. The judgement made by the Lord Chancellor at this point is equally enlightening about the intersection of gender with the cultural norms of ‘concord, reconciliation, and peaceable relations’ that encouraged the courts to act according to ethical and charitable Christian behaviour.123 He declared her a vexatious litigant and dismissed her case. Thus, when Margaret Danby no longer had a living child, Chancery declined to take her side. The Lord Chancellor decided that further tit-for-tat litigiousness would just generate more family gossip about base and

118 

NYRO, OUTFAC 141, Copy of deposition, Anne Danby 1683. NYRO, ZS*, Box of legal papers, copy of deposition of Abstrupus Danby, 1680. 120  For example, the story of Agnes Bowker’s cat in Cressy, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England, p. 9. 121  TNA, C5/115/16, Danby v. Dale, Answer to Interrogatories of Robert Dale, 25 Nov­ ember 1695; NYRO, ZS*, Copies of pleadings and depositions in Danby v. Danby 1680–85. 122  NYRO, ZS*, Box of Family Papers, Affidavit of Margaret Danby, 1688. 123  Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation’, pp. 918–19. 119 

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wicked behaviour.124 In other words, further suits brought by the Danby family to Chancery no longer served a purpose, he thought, and so he brought the Danby battle — at least in its legal arena — to an abrupt and decisive end. One of the findings, then, of this essay is that when attention is shifted away from defamation cases — with the language of inflammatory insult that flourished in their dedicated court spaces — what is revealed is that damaging gossip about the reputations of individuals was, in fact, modified or deflected in the transformation into formal evidence presented in the most common legal cases, or those which concerned land and capital. The bandying of gossipy words about whores and rogues — which can undoubtedly be found sometimes in Chancery cases involving serious family crisis — is still far exceeded by the weight of words recalling property entitlement, ridings, bonds, and debt obligations. This does not mean that rumour-mongering was shut down in communities or that families did not find themselves embroiled in escalating scandal. However, it does mean that the law courts took their lead from the hegemonic cultural assumption that social harmony should prevail. When judges were unable to stop the tide of rumour peddled by a local gossip network they acted by declaring a litigant vexatious. Typological gossip in property cases tended to be oblique rather than immediate in its rhetoric. The privata fama was transformed and even neutralized in the linguistic journey made to publica fama in the courts. Therefore, not only can it be said that the law courts were quite successful at processing local property disputes in peace-keeping ways, it can also be concluded that the relative lack of interest shown in local gossip about feminine sexual reputation reveals a complexity and spatial-specificity to the employment of gendered words of abuse. The female/male honour dichotomy encapsulated by whore/knave was not considered socially-appropriate or even persuasive in all contexts. This raises important questions about the role of the defamation courts — perhaps they only existed for local communities to vent about essentially empty disputes. In a society that appears to have valued concord above all, it was those weighty matters of the assets and finances of families and kin networks that required the most weight of attention. When it came to Chancery cases, gendered slander was much more subtly employed and not so readily valued as evidence for one side or the other and, no matter how vicious the gossip was in family and community, the Lord Chancellor acted to shut down conflict.

124 

NYRO, ZS*, Accounts of Abstrupus Danby, 1680 and ZS, Danby Family Papers, Memoirs, Diaries and Accounts of Abstrupus Danby, 1688.

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Works Cited Manuscript and Archival Documents Kew, The National Archives, C5, Chancery Papers, Six Clerks Office: Pleadings before 1714 (Bridges) —— , C6, Chancery Papers, Six Clerks Office: Pleadings before 1714 (Collins) —— , C10, Chancery Papers, Six Clerks Office: Pleadings before 1714 (Whittington) —— , C22, Chancery Papers, Country Depositions, 1649–1714 —— , C104, Chancery Papers, Master Tinney’s Exhibits —— , C115, Chancery Papers, Master Harvey’s Exhibits Northallerton, North Yorkshire, Record Office, R/Q/R, Papers of the Society of Friends —— , ZAL, Papers of the Milbank Family of Thorpe Perrow and Barningham —— , ZDS, Papers of the Dawnay Family of Allerston Manor —— , ZQH, Papers of the Chaytor Family of Croft —— , ZQM, Papers of the Crompton and Cathcart Families of Wood End —— , ZS and ZS*, Papers of the Swinton Estate including the Danby Family Papers San Marino, California, The Henry E. Huntington Library, STT, Stowe, Temple Papers

Primary Sources Cases in the High Court of Chivalry, 1634–1640, ed. by Richard P. Cust and Andrew J. Hopper, Harleian Society n.s., 18 (London: Harleian Society, 2006) Documents Relating to the Swaledale Estates of Lord Wharton in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. by M. Y. Ashcraft (Northallerton: NYRO 36, 1984) Florio, John, Florios Second Frutes (London: [n. pub.], 1591) Percy, James, The Case of James Percy, the True Heir-Male and Claimant to the Earldom of Northumberland ([n. p.]: [n. pub.], 1680) Phayer, Thomas, Newe Boke of Presidents ([n. p.]: [n. pub.],1543) Stout, William, The Autobiography of William Stout of Lancaster 1665–1752, ed. by J. D. Marshall (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1867)

Secondary Studies Beaver, Daniel C., ‘Honor, Property, and the Symbolism of the Hunt in Stowe, 1590– 1642’, in Hunting and the Politics of Violence before the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 32–54 —— , Hunting and the Politics of Violence before the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) Beckerman, John S., ‘Towards a Theory of Medieval Manorial Adjudication: The Nature of Communal Judgements in a System of Customary Law’, Law and History Review, 13 (1995), 1–22

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Bonfield, Lloyd, ‘The Nature of Customary Law in the Manor Courts of Medieval England’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31 (1989), 514–34 —— , ‘Seeking Connections between Kinship and the Law in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change, 25 (2010), 49–82 —— , ‘Testamentary Causes in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1660–1696’, in Communities and Courts in Britain 1150–1900, ed. by Christopher Brooks and Michael Lobban (London: Hambledon, 1997), pp. 133–53 Bossy, John, ed., Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) Botelho, Keith M., Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity (New York: Palgrave, 2009) Bourdieu, Pierre, The Logic of Practice, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Brooks, C. W., Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The Lower Branch of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) Butler, Sara M., ‘The Law as a Weapon in Marital Disputes: Evidence from the Late Medieval Court of Chancery, 1424–1529’, The Journal of British Studies, 43 (2004), 291–316 Capern, Amanda L., ‘Femininity and Honour in Early Modern English Chancery Court Cases’ Unpublished paper, Berkshire Conference on Women’s History, Toronto, 22 May 2014 —— , ‘Gender, Debt and Family Transaction: Hester Temple of Stowe’ (article in preparation) Capp, Bernard, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Clark, Gregory, and Anthony Clark, ‘Common Rights to Land in England, 1475–1839’, The Journal of Economic History, 61 (2001), 1009–36 Cogan, Susan, ‘Reputation, Credit and Patronage: Throckmorton Men and Women, c. 1560–1620’, in Catholic Gentry in English Society: The Throckmortons of Coughton from Reformation to Emancipation, ed. by. Peter Marshall and Geoffrey Scott (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009) Comaroff, John L., and Simon Roberts, Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) Cowen Orlin, Lena, Locating Privacy in Tudor London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) Cressy, David, ‘Another Midwife’s Tale: Alcohol, Patriarchy, and Childbirth in Early Mod­ern London’, in Cressy, David, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 84–91 —— , Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) —— , Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) —— , ‘Kinship and Kin Interaction in Early Modern England’, Past & Present, 113 (1986), 38–69 —— , Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford Univer­ sity Press, 1999)

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Fenster, Thelma S., and Daniel Lord Smail, eds, Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003) Flather, Amanda, Gender and Space in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011) Fletcher, Anthony, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) Fortier, Mark, The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005) Fox, Adam, ‘Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England’, The Historical Journal, 40 (1997), 597–620 Foyster, Elizabeth, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (Harlow: Longman, 1999) French, Henry, and Barry, Jonathan, eds, Identity and Agency in England, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) Geertz, Clifford, ‘Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective’, in Local Know­ledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983) pp. 167–234 Glaisyer, Natasha, ‘Readers, Correspondents and Communities: John Houghton’s A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade (1692–1703)’ in Communities in Early Modern England, ed. by Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester: Manchester Uni­versity Press, 2000), pp. 235–51 Gluckman, Max, ‘Papers in Honor of Melville J. Herskovits: Gossip and Scandal’, Current Anthropology, 4 (1963), 307–16 Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) Harris, Tim, The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500–1850 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001) Hindle, Steve, ‘A Sense of Place? Becoming and Belonging in the Rural Parish, 1550–1650’, in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. by Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 96–114 —— , ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley: Gossip, Gender and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change, 9 (1994), 391–419 Horwitz, Henry, and Patrick Polden, ‘Continuity or Change in the Court of Chancery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries?’, Journal of British Studies, 35 (1996), 24–57 Houlbrooke, Ralph, Death, Religion and the Family in England 1480–1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) Kuehn, Thomas, ‘Fama as Legal Status in Renaissance Florence’, in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. by Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 27–46 Merry, Sally Engle, ‘Rethinking Gossip and Scandal’, in Toward a General Theory of Social Control, ed. by Donald Black, 2 vols (Orlando: Academic Press, 1984), i: Fundamentals, pp. 271–302 Muldrew, Craig, ‘Class and Credit: Social Identity, Wealth and Life Course in Early Modern England’, in Identity and Agency in England, 1500–1800, ed by Henry French and Jonathan Barry (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 147–77

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—— , ‘Credit and the Courts: Debt Litigation in a Seventeenth-Century Urban Com­ munity’, The Economic History Review, 46 (1993), 23–38 —— , ‘The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England’, The Historical Journal, 39 (1996), 915–42 —— , ‘Interpreting the Market: The Ethics of Credit and Community Relations in Early Modern England’, Social History, 18 (1993), 163–83 —— , ‘“A Mutual Assent of her Mind?”: Women, Debt, Litigation and Contract in Early Modern England’, History Workshop Journal, 55 (2003), 47–71 —— , ‘Rural Credit, Market Areas and Legal Institutions in the Countryside in England, 1550–1700’, in Communities and Courts in Britain 1150–1900 , ed by Christopher Brooks and Michael Lobban (London: Hambledon, 1997), pp. 155–77 Parsons, Nicola, Reading Gossip in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Richardson, Leslie, ‘“Who Shall Restore my Lost Credit?”: Rape, Reputation and the Marriage Market’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 32 (2003), 19–44 Rysman, Alexander, ‘How the “Gossip” became a Woman’, Journal of Communication, 27 (1977), 176–80 Schofield, Phillipp R., ‘Peasants and the Manor Court: Gossip and Litigation in a Suffolk Village at the Close of the Thirteenth Century’, Past and Present, 159 (1998), 3–42 Shagan, Ethan H., ‘Rumours and Popular Politics in the Reign of Henry  VIII’, in The Politics of the Excluded, c.  1500–1850, ed. by Tim Harris (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 30–66 Shepard, Alexandra, ‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England, c. 1580– 1640’, Past and Present, 167 (2000), 75–106 —— , ‘Honesty, Worth and Gender in Early Modern England, 1560–1640’, in Identity and Agency in England, 1500–1800, ed. by. Henry French and Jonathan Barry (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 87–105 —— , and Phil Withington, eds, Communities in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Gossip (New York: Knopf, 1985) Spicksley, Judith, ‘A Dynamic Model of Social Relations: Celibacy, Credit and the Identity of the “Spinster” in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Identity and Agency in England, ed. by Henry French and Jonathan Barry (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 106–46 Stater, Victor, ‘Percy, James (1619–c.  1690)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), online at Stretton, Tim, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1998) Tadmor, Naomi, ‘Early Modern English Kinship: Reflections on Continuity and Change’, Continuity and Change, 25 (2010), 15–48 —— , ‘“Friend” and “Family” in Pamela: A Case Study in the History of the Family in Eighteenth-Century England’, Social History, 14 (1989), 289–306 Thomas, Keith, The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

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Wall, Richard, ‘Economic Collaboration of Family Members within and beyond Households in English Society, 1600–2000’, Continuity and Change, 25 (2010), 83–108 Whyte, Nicola, ‘Custodians of Memory: Women and Custom in Rural England c. 1550– 1700’, Cultural and Social History, 8 (2011), 153–73 Wickham, Chris, ‘Gossip and Resistance among the Medieval Peasantry’, Past and Present, 160 (1998), 3–24 Wiesner-Hanks, Merry, Gender in History: Global Perspectives, 2nd edn (Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2011)

Face-to-Face with the ‘Flanders Mare’: Fama and Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of Anne of Cleves Lisa Mansfield

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etween 1537 and 1539, Henry VIII (r. 1509–47) entrusted the accomplished German Renaissance artist Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–98) with a challenging royal mission that conjoined portraiture and diplomacy. It required Holbein to travel to the continent (France, Flanders, and Germany) to make portraits of five possible contenders for the great Tudor King’s fourth wife. Only two portraits survive, including this likeness of the twenty-four-year-old German princess, Anne, Duchess of Cleves.1 Notoriously, having approved of her likeness in paint, Henry found Anne unattractive in the flesh; he could not consummate his brief marriage (6 January to 9 July 1540) with the so-called ‘Flanders Mare’. Contrary to popular accounts, this unflattering moniker was first attached to Anne of Cleves by the seventeenth-century historian, Bishop Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), not by Henry VIII or by his courtiers.2 However, this label has contributed to Anne of Cleves’s enduring reputation — or fama — as ‘a boorish […] philistine’ and ‘bumpkin’.3 This appraisal similarly shapes the modern viewer’s perception of Anne’s allegedly plain physical appearance in the portrait rendered by Holbein in 1539. 1 

Prevenier and Blockmans, The Burgundian Netherlands, p. 227. The parents of Anne of Cleves were John III of Cleves and Maria, heiress to Juliers. The duchies and dominions that formed part of Anne of Cleves’s ancestry were located in the Lower Rhine River Valley and were strategically important in terms of sixteenth-century geography, politics, and religion. 2  Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 256. 3  Bätschmann and Griener, Hans Holbein, p. 192; Holman, ‘The English Royal Violin Consort in the Sixteenth Century’, p. 39; Loades, Tudor Queens, p. 109. Lisa Mansfield ([email protected]) Lecturer in Art History, University of Adelaide.

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Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Anne of Cleves, Paris, Musée du Louvre. c. 1539. Reproduced with the permission of the Musée du Louvre.

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The Tudor–Cleves marital fiasco epitomizes a fascinating and complex interplay between early modern oral, written, and visual culture. It not only demonstrates how oral forms of communication, like gossip and rumour, were persuasive agents of change, but could also damage reputation or fama and, in turn, influence or bias the visual reception of portraits. According to Keith M. Botelho, gossip and rumour connoted different meanings and performed different social functions in early modern England: Whereas gossip concerns itself with small groups or individuals, rumour is oriented to large groups or societies; whereas gossip is intimate chatter with a local purpose, rumour is unverified and ambiguous information with deliberate designs affecting a larger social group; whereas gossip is concerned with the moral reputation of those being talked about, rumour usually transcends the focus of individual reputation to posit an ambiguity about people or events. Rumour, therefore, should not be viewed merely as gossip on a larger scale.4

This definition of gossip and rumour may be fruitfully applied to the multiple anecdotes, official dialogues, and commentaries about the politically charged and emotionally tense Tudor–Cleves negotiations and nuptials from 1539 to 1540. The humiliating episode appears to have been both fuelled and resolved by recourse to these powerful communicative channels. Moreover, if the formal and informal accounts of the diverse witnesses are to be believed, the pre- and postmarital negotiations, in both words and pictures, appear to have skirted the truth about the Duchess of Cleves’s questionable feminine virtues as well as the Tudor monarch’s problematic health and possible impotency.

Diplomatic Gossip: Constructing the Bride’s Fama in Letters, Dispatches, and Oral Reports Henry VIII’s pressing desire to crown a fourth queen-consort of England appears to have been centred on his goal to sire a second legitimate male heir to secure the Tudor lineage.5 Not long after the death of Jane Seymour (b. c. 1509) on 24 October 1537, twelve days after the birth of Edward VI (r. 1547–53), swift diplomatic negotiations were activated with the primary purpose of finding Henry VIII a replacement spouse.6 In choosing his fourth bride, Henry VIII was 4 

Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses, p. 10. Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 1–2, 5, 7–8. 6  Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 13–14. The seemingly indecent haste with which Henry VIII’s fourth marriage was conducted, according to modern judgement, was 5 

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forced to relinquish individual control over his own nuptial destiny because the institution of early modern royal marriage was an essentially collaborative, political enterprise that served multiple collective needs. This entailed the somewhat problematic procurement of objective eyewitness appraisals of potential royal brides-to-be made on behalf of the King. The task of courting a foreign bride was, for myriad reasons of royal protocol, left in the hands of others, namely the King’s most dependable servants. The so-called ‘proxy wooing process’ placed Henry VIII’s emissaries in an awkward position; they were expected to provide thorough written and oral descriptions of the physical appearance and behaviour of the women they scrutinized, with a view to discreetly promoting ‘the one’ who would best fit the King’s personal predilection and political agenda.7 In this respect, it was Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540), who exerted the most powerful level of influence over his master’s personal affairs in the service of his own pro-Reform religious agenda.8 However, when it came to managing Henry VIII’s fourth marriage, Cromwell was interfering ‘in matters about which the King was extremely touchy’.9 While diplomatic intelligence concerning the likelihood of Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne of Cleves fuelled local gossip networks, it was inflated into rumour outside England in the realm of international politics and intrigue, at the Valois and Habsburg courts, via the quills of ambassadors.10 The Imperial Ambassador, commensurate with early modern royal protocol in these matters. He was previously betrothed to his third wife, Jane Seymour, on 20 May 1536, the day after his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was executed. 7  Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 10; Rowlands, Holbein, p. 116. 8  Brooke and Crombie, Henry VIII Revealed, p. 13; Foister, Holbein in England, p. 142; Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 19; Wilson, Hans Holbein, p. 27. Cromwell was executed on trumped up charges of treason and heresy on 28 July 1540. 9  Wilson, Hans Holbein, p. 247. 10  Horodowich, ‘The Gossiping Tongue’, p. 23; Constantine, ‘Transcript of an Original Manuscript’, pp. 60–61. Politically motivated gossip concerning Henry VIII’s fourth marriage was circulating among members of the Tudor court in England around 1539 when this delicate topic was discussed by two former members of Anne Boleyn’s Protestant faction as they rode from Bristol to St David’s: George Constantine (c. 1500–1560), an ‘incorrigible gossip’ and former servant and priest to the courtier and alleged lover of Anne Boleyn, Sir Henry Norris (c. 1482–1536), together with diplomat, John Barlow (dates unknown), the former chaplain of Anne Boleyn and Dean of the College of Westbury-on-Trym. There was not only risk involved in sharing one’s knowledge regarding the identity of the bridal candidates and names of the envoys employed in the negotiations, but even more serious danger posed by disclosing one’s underlying political bias and religious leanings for a favoured match to the wrong ears. In this

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Eustace Chapuys (1494–1556), renowned for his wise, discreet, highly detailed and prolific reportage, informed his sovereign Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1519–56), of the progress of Henry VIII’s marital affairs on 9 January 1539.11 Ten months later, on 3 October 1539, the French diplomat, Charles de Marillac (c. 1510–1560), similarly updated King Francis I (r. 1515–47) and noted that: though their truth is not absolutely certain, the rumour is so strong and the probability so great. It is to be presumed that the marriage of this King with the sister of the duke of Cleves is agreed upon and will shortly be consummated, and, although the ministers still say only that they have good hope of it, appearances indicate that it is settled. 12

These reports demonstrate a relatively benign aspect of early modern gossip and rumour, in contrast to other examples of ‘distilled malice’, that circulated around Henry VIII’s fourth marriage in professionally sanctioned attempts to provide the rival French King and Holy Roman Emperor with behind-the-scenes information.13 In the writings about the bridal candidate herself, one of the negotiators, Dr Nicholas Wotton (c. 1497–1567), an English cleric and experienced ambassador, described Anne of Cleves as retiring and somewhat unexciting, though highly competent in domestic duties such as needlework.14 She apparently had good common sense and was of agreeably moderate drinking habits. On the other hand, she had no knowledge of foreign languages, no talent for singing or playing musical instruments, and little interest in books.15 These important areas of incompatibility with Henry VIII, a monarch renowned for his love of courtly music, erudition in Latin, and cultural patronage of art and architeccase, both parties put any fear to rest by tentatively ascertaining their shared preference for the Duchess of Cleves, with Constantine then praying to God in his hopes that the union between Henry VIII and Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan (1521–1590), would be ‘dashed’ and remarking that ‘the Duke of Cleves doth favour God’s Word, and is a mighty Prince now; for he hath Guelderland in his hand too, and that against the Emperor [Charles V]’. 11  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xiv-i, p. 15. 12  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xiv-ii, p. 274. 13  Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’, p. 393. 14  The two skilled negotiators, Wotton and Sir Edward Carne, were accompanied by courtier Richard Beard (also recorded as Byrd and Berde). 15  Erickson, Great Harry, pp. 302, 307; Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 88, 90–91; Wilson, Hans Holbein, p. 259. While Jane Seymour was not proficient in a language other than English, she shared the familiar tongue and cultural capital of the Tudor court with Henry VIII.

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ture, sounded a warning that was surprisingly overlooked. Nevertheless, shortly before the Duchess of Cleves’s passage to England, Henry VIII was reassured in a long and detailed letter by her conveyor, the 1st Earl of Southampton, William Fitzwilliam, and Wotton, that ‘Her manner is like a Princess’.16 Commendation of Anne of Cleves’s virtues and graces appears to have been virtually unanimous amongst the Tudor entourage, with the full support of Cromwell, chief instigator of the union. Both Wotton and his accomplice, Richard Beard (fl. 1540) had previously navigated the complex negotiations of proxy courtship and the drawn-out political discussions to confirm the hand of Anne of Cleves for Henry VIII. The procrastination of Chancellor Olisleger of the Cleves Court in Düren was evidenced by his curious delays in first proffering portraits of the Duchess, and her younger sister, Amelia, to the English envoys for their perusal, then resisting their request to observe the ladies in person in order to vouch for the truthfulness of the images as eyewitnesses, which was recorded as having been a particularly sensitive issue. In their report of these events, sent to Cromwell on 3 May 1539, Wotton and Beard noted that ‘The Chancellor Olisleger […] made a long protestation of the Duke’s sincerity, that no delay was intended, and that he himself could assure the King of the faithfulness of the portrait’. The envoys objected that they could not see the sitters properly because of their ‘monstrouse habyte and apparell’ that showed ‘but a parte of theyr faces’, at which point the Chancellor brusquely asked if they might like to see the young women naked instead. In the same dispatch Wotton and Beard reported that the Chancellor had offered the following ostensibly confident, if biased, prediction: ‘and as for my [Lady Anne] he knowwithe well ynnough that her beawtye wille g[et her] a goode husbande’.17 Descriptions, defensive or otherwise, provided by the Cleves entourage, could hardly have been trusted for their impartiality; as events would unfold, contradictory accounts by witnesses would also prove equally nebulous. Nevertheless, the overall impression of Anne of Cleves before the royal marriage, as constructed in letters, dispatches, and oral reports by both Henry VIII’s representatives and outsiders, offered a relatively positive appraisal of her physical attractiveness and suitability as a royal Tudor spouse. Unanimous agreement between the eyewitnesses was what counted, particularly since the dialogues between the Tudor and Cleves participants demonstrate that in the early stage of negotiations Anne did not have a personal reputation outside of her posi16  17 

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xiv-ii, p. 246. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xiv-i, 920, p. 428.

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tion as an eligible daughter of the House of Cleves. Her status as an available bride on the international marriage market was first raised at the Tudor court in 1537. Yet, this was in name only, without any information concerning her physical appearance or personality.18 Despite her impressive lineage, which was traced back to Edward I of England, Anne of Cleves had not previously been married to a powerful man, as was the case for the other bridal candidate, the widowed Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan (1521–1590).19 The Duchess of Cleves had experienced a sheltered upbringing at the ducal court in Dusseldorf, where she was reported to have been constantly at the protective elbow of her mother.20 She appears to have been an exemplary model of feminine domesticity that was peculiar to the German court, where young women were restricted to traditional female activities, such as embroidery and expressions of piety, rather than the attainment of skills in other languages, musical entertainments or witty repartee (typified by Anne Boleyn).21 However, shortly before the royal marriage vows were to be confirmed on 6 January 1540, the French ambassador Marillac’s report on the beauty of Anne of Cleves diluted Chancellor Olisleger’s previous confident assertions of her desirability. Marillac sent the following dispatches to Francis I and his Chief Constable, Montmorency (1493–1567) on the day before the wedding ceremony, 5 January 1540: [To Montmorency:] She [Anne of Cleves] was clothed in the fashion of the country from which she came, and he [Henry  VIII] received her very graciously and conducted her into his house at Greenwich to the chamber prepared for her. She looks about 30 years of age, tall and thin, of medium beauty, and of very assured and resolute countenance. She brought 12 or 15 ladies of honour clothed like herself — a thing which looks strange to many.

18 

Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 67. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv-899, p. 446. While the brevity of the marriage was both isolating and humiliating for Anne of Cleves, her ultimate fate as Henry VIII’s respected ‘sister’ highlights the protective function of her heritage. She was in turn provided with an ‘annual income of 8,000 nobles’, ‘Two manors, Richmond and Blechingley, having splendid houses and parks of 6 leagues and 2 leagues’, ‘hangings, plate and furniture, and ‘money for her household till her income is sufficient’, ‘Jewels and pearls’, and ‘a good number of officers, the heads being nobles’. 20  Loades, Tudor Queens, p. 109; Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 55–56, 64–65, 87–88, 90–92. 21  Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p. 151. 19 

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[To Francis I:] According to some who saw her close, is not so young as was expec­ ted, nor so beautiful as every one affirmed. She is tall and very assured in carriage and countenance, showing that in her the turn and vivacity of wit supplies the place of beauty. She brings from her brother’s country 12 or 15 damsels inferior in beauty even to their mistress and dressed so heavily and unbecomingly that they would almost be thought ugly even if they were beautiful.22

Marillac’s disparaging comments on the new bride’s beauty do not necessarily reflect Henry VIII’s tastes. Neither of his two previous brides was considered a great beauty. While Anne Boleyn was not generally known for her physical beauty, she was renowned for her strong-willed character and flirtatious charms, as well as her accomplishments in the feminine courtly arts derived from her time spent in France.23 A contemporary description of her coronation in London in 1533 described her as wearing ‘a violet velvet mantle, with a high ruff of gold thread and pearls, which conceals a swelling she has resembling a goitre’.24 On 18 May 1536, Chapuys sent a dispatch to the Burgundian statesman and Cardinal, Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–1586) in which he remarked that Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves’s immediate predecessor: […] is of middle stature and no great beauty, so fair that we would call her rather pale than otherwise. She is over 25 years old […] not a woman of great wit, but she may have good understanding. It is said she inclines to be proud and haughty.25

These various written accounts constitute verbal portraits of Henry VIII’s wives. Together they confirm that hearsay about physical attributes, relative beauty, or personality, was an unreliable method for assessing or predicting the attraction and compatibility between the King and his queens.

The Marriage Portrait and Visual Rhetoric In addition to the verbal construction of the bridal candidate’s fama, the delicate and fraught diplomatic process involved in arranging Henry VIII’s fourth marriage included the rapid production of ‘application’ portraits. While betrothal 22 

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv-22–23, p. 10. Rowlands and Starkey, ‘An Old Tradition Reasserted’, p. 91. There is only one extant contemporary image of Anne Boleyn, in her coronation medal, dated 1534. 24  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, vi-585, p. 266. 25  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, x-901, p. 373. 23 

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and marriage portraits commemorated a successful union between a husband and wife, in a celebratory capacity after the legalities were finalized, application portraits were used as part of the ‘business of vetting suitable candidates for queen’.26 They were a significant component of the protocols established for the conduct of arranged royal marriages that in theory enabled early modern royal couples to view — and judge — a likeness of their potential spouse before they were wed, by proxy.27 As part of Holbein’s challenging artistic and diplomatic mission for Henry VIII in 1539, he travelled to France, Flanders, and Germany to make portraits of five possible contenders for the King’s hand, of which only two portraits, those of Christina of Denmark and Anne of Cleves survive.28 Holbein sketched Anne from life (along with her sister Amelia) in Düren in August 1539.29 His drawing of her was then used as a template for executing the finished painting in oil and tempera on parchment that was subsequently mounted on canvas at a later date. The unusual material of the Louvre portrait was probably the artist’s practical response to the required speed for creating the image with limited means and time, and would also have facilitated easy transportation back to England.30 Despite the absence of primary sources to elucidate the precise details of the mysterious relationship that existed between Holbein and Henry VIII, it is clear that sophisticated interpersonal skills and aesthetic sensibility were required by court artists to carry out this most important and intimate diplomatic duty on behalf of a monarch effectively.31 A royal application portrait could theoretically have been used to either reinforce or counter written and oral reports, using the close visual perspective (and possible political bias) of the artist. The question of to what extent Holbein may have been influenced by contradictory information, or gossip leaked from the diplomatic writings on Anne 26 

Foister, Holbein and England, p. 200. Warnicke, ‘Henry VIII’s Greeting of Anne of Cleves’, pp. 565–85. In the sixteenth cen­ tury, a successful marital alliance was usually followed by a private greeting ceremony between the monarch and his consort modelled on chivalric ideals. 28  Foister, Holbein in England, p. 93. Hans Holbein the Younger, Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, London, National Gallery, 1538, oil on oak, 179.1 x 82.6 cm. 29  Foister, Holbein in England, pp. 93, 102; Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 86. 30  Hacker and Kuhl, ‘A Portrait of Anne of Cleves’, pp. 172–75. Holbein also created a more intimate miniature portrait of Anne of Cleves on a small roundel in watercolour on vellum placed on a playing card, enclosed in a small box with an ivory, turned, rose-patterned lid, c. 1539, diam. 4.5 cm, held in London in the Victoria and Albert Museum: . 31  Brooke and Crombie, Henry VIII Revealed, pp. 13–14, 16–17. 27 

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of Cleves, and whether this prompted him to idealize her portrait, is impossible to answer. In theory, Holbein’s connection with Cromwell could have provided the necessary political stimulus for him to produce an overly flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves. Holbein had painted the Principal Secretary’s portrait in the early 1530s and ‘became a regular guest at Cromwell’s table’.32 In fact, the idea that Holbein may have been ‘bribed’ to make the portrait more beautiful than reality was first proposed by Alfred Woltman in the nineteenth century, long after Bishop Burnet first attached the nickname of ‘Flanders Mare’ to Anne of Cleves in the seventeenth century.33 Although Cromwell subsequently lost his head in 1540 as part of the messy aftermath following the annulment of the marriage, Holbein appears only to have suffered a decline in popularity as royal painter.34 The creative process involved in making a portrait of a prospective queenconsort was complicated by the competing demands of physical verisimilitude to meet the needs of the male patron/viewer, and a semblance of sensitivity, if not flattery, towards the female sitter to convey some essence of their personality or emotional intensity through the visible cues of facial expression, gesture, and pose. This already fraught activity was further complicated by the hovering presence of the bridal candidate’s watchful entourage. In Holbein’s painted likeness the facial expression of the Duchess of Cleves is hard to pin down definitively. The precise communicative nuances of her steady, yet gentle gaze and softly closed lips are subtle, moving from benign to aloof, then knowing and dull, seeming both ‘alluring to modern eyes’ or at least ‘passably handsome’.35 However, according to Oskar Bätschmann and Pascal Griener, ‘Anne’s plain features’ are ‘akin to a cheap stone mounted in too rich a setting; it disappears under the wealth of the jewels’.36 John Rowlands has likewise observed that Holbein ‘concentrated his efforts on the immensely elaborate rendering of Anne of Cleves’s dress in all its intricate detail’, and further notes that ‘[h]er rounded features have a characterless, vacant dullness of expression, unparalleled elsewhere in Holbein’s portraits’.37 While this may be the case, depending on the viewer’s perspective, it hardly seems reasonable to compare this specialized type of application portrait against 32 

Strong, Holbein, pp. 4–5; Brooke and Crombie, Henry VIII Revealed, pp. 13–14, 16–17. Woltmann, Holbein und seine Zeit, ii, 36ff. 34  Foister, Holbein in England, p. 142; Brooke and Crombie, Henry VIII Revealed, p. 16; Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 19; Wilson, Hans Holbein, p. 237. 35  Foister, Holbein in England, p. 102; Loades, Tudor Queens, p. 109. 36  Bätschmann and Griener, Hans Holbein, p. 192. 37  Rowlands, Holbein, p. 117. 33 

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Holbein’s other modes of court portraiture completed at the Tudor court. In essence, the aforementioned authors claim that Holbein’s portrait was a form of ‘visual rhetoric’. The portrait is understood as a likeness infused by gossip or rumour, if not pointed directive, which reflected Cromwell’s preference for the Tudor–Cleves merger. Holbein’s study of the Duchess’s countenance thus persuaded Henry VIII to agree to the arranged marriage with the German bridal candidate. However, Anne of Cleves’s subsequent fama as Henry VIII’s unattractive ‘Flanders Mare’ is imbued in this popular interpretation, with the lingering taint of gossip and rumour stemming from the aftermath of the shambolic marriage, rather than from an objective visual analysis of the portrait and its accompanying textual context. In Holbein’s portrait Anne of Cleves is positioned in a three-quarter length, full-frontal pose. Her face is framed by an elaborately bejewelled, geometric headdress, softened only by a short, transparent veil. Her body is quite concealed by the swathes of voluminous, heavy, rich velvet fabric of her finely embellished gown, edged with bands of criss-crossed golden thread and pearls, while her décolletage and neck are covered by an intricately wrought, rectangular lace bodice encrusted with gems and pearls. This provides a backdrop for two, medium-length golden rope necklaces and an ornamental pendant cross that hangs from her neckline in a choker-like fashion. Her small waist is firmly nipped in by an embroidered belt that is positioned directly above her soft, gloveless, fleshy hands clasped in a conventional show of piety, thus simultaneously displaying the ruffled cuffs of her white under-linen and four fine gold rings on three of her fingers and thumb. The static pose, steady gaze, enigmatic facial expression, and volumetric costume create a sense of solidity and passivity that appears not to have been relieved by the Renaissance portrait device of a background shadow to enliven the presence of the sitter.38 From a visual perspective, the portrait nevertheless gives the appearance of a meticulously rendered, desirable image of Renaissance femininity that was reportedly a true likeness of a queen fit for the King.39 The risks involved in falsifying the facial features of a bridal candidate in an application portrait, especially likenesses created for Henry VIII, also problematize the argument in favour of Holbein’s intentional use of a frontal view to pre-

38 

Hertel, ‘Engaging Negation’, p. 107. The absent shadow in Anne of Cleves’s betrothal portrait contrasts with the visible silhouette of Christina of Denmark in the blue-green background of Holbein’s arresting full-length portrait of Henry VIII’s preferred bridal candidate (executed in 1538 and held in the National Gallery of London), see . 39  Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 87–88.

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vent concealment of any possible physical ‘defects’.40 When Holbein’s portraits of other women of the Tudor court and Henry VIII himself are juxtaposed against his likeness of Anne of Cleves, they demonstrate that her face was not noticeably less attractive with regard to any one particular facial feature. Her assertive frontal pose could also be interpreted as a peculiarly empowering stance that presents her as a feminized mirror of Henry VIII’s predominant image and identity as a resolute Renaissance ruler. If the artist is to be accused of bias in his representation of Anne of Cleves, his choice of format offers more compelling evidence than the decorative nature of her attire or imagined presence of a too-large nose. In Holbein’s skilful hands, the full-frontal stance in both the three-quarter and full-length portrait formats was traditionally used to project a sense of virile masculine presence. This was most spectacularly achieved in his iconic full-length representation of Henry VIII overshadowing his father, Henry VII, in girth if not elevation, in the commanding Whitehall mural cartoon (fragment).41 Of course, it could also be argued that Holbein’s decision to portray Anne of Cleves in a fullfrontal pose was a conscious strategy for giving the viewer an unadulterated view of her face and thus counteract the frustratingly high level of bodily concealment afforded by her perceptibly monstrous Germanic costume. Yet Holbein not only used the same pictorial formula in his previous fulllength application portrait of Christina of Denmark, but also in his delightful three-quarter length state portrait of the toddler prince, Edward VI, which he presented to Henry VIII on New Year’s Day 1539, and for which he received a silver-gilt cup with gold cover (by the workshop of Cornelius Heyss) in return.42 Nevertheless, the use of the assertive, full-frontal, three-quarter length format for Anne of Cleves’s application portrait, in which her reserved gaze is directed straight towards the viewer, does not detract from the overriding impression of a subdued aura of serenity and modesty. Also, the full-frontal depiction of the face in Renaissance portraiture served to reveal natural irregularities of individual physiognomy that were visible when interacting with a sitter in real life, rather than to conceal overt physical flaws. In the interests of verisimilitude, it may have 40 

An example of such an argument can be found in Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p. 307. Hans Holbein the Younger, King Henry VIII. King Henry VII (Whitehall Mural Cartoon), c. 1536–37, ink and watercolour, 257.8 x 137.2 cm, London, National Portrait Gallery: . 42  Woltmann, Holbein und seine Zeit, i, 416. Hans Holbein the Younger, Edward VI as a child, probably 1538, oil on panel, 56.8 x 44 cm, Washington, National Gallery of Art: < http:// www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg35/gg35-71-prov.html>. 41 

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been helpful for court artists to have provided both a full-frontal portrait and a more archaic (classically inspired) profile depiction of bridal candidates if this were deemed appropriate and time permitted. However, it is doubtful that the provision of two portraits by the same or different artists would have changed the circumstances that unfolded for Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves. In contrast to Holbein’s application portrait of Anne of Cleves, his life-size portrait of Christina of Denmark continues to be judged as an accurate reflection of her reputed youthful beauty. The sixteen-year-old widow was universally praised as a great beauty by the Tudor ambassadors, and was described as such for Henry VIII on 1 February 1539 by Thomas Wriothesley (1505–1550): Very pure, fair of colour she is not, but a mervelous good brownishe face she hathe, with faire red lippes, and ruddy chekes; and onneles I be deceived in my judgement, which in all things, but specially in this kynde of judgement, is very basse, she was yet never soo wel paynted, but her lyvely visage dothe muche excel her poincture.43

Holbein’s portrait of the young contender also appears to be more palatable to the gaze of modern viewers: To avoid distracting the royal gaze, Holbein chose a very plain turquoise setting which […] provided an ideal means of offsetting the perfect white skin and the beautiful oval-shaped face, whose bright red lips are echoed by the red stone adorning the Duchess’s left finger.44

While the black mourning costume worn by Christina of Denmark was suitably decorous and reflected her status as a widow, the variegated sheen of the dark mourning gown that covers the full length of her body also provides a mesmerizing contrast for illuminating the vitality of her glowing, youthful skin, dimpled countenance, and agreeably charming personality.45 In a report sent to Cromwell on 21 December 1537, the English ambassador to the Netherlands, John Hutton (dates unknown), described Christina of Denmark at the age of sixteen as very tall: […]a goodly personage, of competent beauty, of favour excellent, soft of speech, and very gentle in countenance. She weareth the mourning apparel, after the manner of Italy. The common saying here is that she is both widow and maid.46 43 

State Papers of Henry VIII, viii-5, p. 137. SP 1/142, fol. 207. Bätschmann and Griener, Hans Holbein, p. 192. 45  Hertel, ‘Engaging Negation’, p. 109. The original portrait sketched by Holbein in person is lost. Henry VIII commissioned the full-length painting from his court artist on his return to England at some point before the end of 1538. 46  State Papers of Henry VIII, v, 6–7. 44 

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Christina also had a lisp that apparently only served to amplify her appealing physicality and personality. The empowering full-length format of her application portrait by Holbein not only provided an indication of the size, if not shape of her bodily frame, but also gave her an appealing sense of mystery, enticing the viewer to speculate as to what further beauty lay beneath her concealing robe. Henry VIII was evidently pleased with Holbein’s application portrait of Christina of Denmark.47 Yet, the Duchess of Milan stated that she would never disobey God’s laws in her marriage to Henry VIII, following Pope Paul III’s renewal of the Bull of Excommunication against Henry VIII in January 1539; it was this claim and the declaration by her powerful uncle, Charles V, that the marriage could not occur without papal dispensation, that halted deliberations over the otherwise promising union in February 1539.48 This is contrary to the claim that first surfaced in the seventeenth century in which the Duchess of Milan allegedly ‘said that had she two heads, she should gladly put one at the King’s disposal’.49 Christiane Hertel has made the astute observation that Christina of Denmark’s ‘legendary “no thank you”’ to Henry VIII’s invitation to wed ‘has become inseparable from’ her application portrait by Holbein.50 Yet we see this idea inverted in Holbein’s representation of Anne of Cleves, whose reputation appears to have been eternally marred by Henry VIII’s comments concerning her alleged lack of feminine appeal and matronly body and by his later reconstruction of her fama after his notorious rejection of his fourth wife.51

The Impotent King: How Gossip Reconstructed Anne of Cleves’s Fama Henry VIII’s abrupt rejection of Anne of Cleves was scandalous for several reasons. In addition to Holbein’s portrait, he had previously received ‘four references to her appearance’ from trusted eyewitness sources before the wedding; they con47 

Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 51. Hertel, ‘Engaging Negation’, p. 113; Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 61. 49  Ady, Christina of Denmark, p. 204; Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 22, 42, 47, 60–62. 50  Hertel, ‘Engaging Negation’, p. 109. 51  In contrast to Anne of Cleves’ application portrait, both past and present commentators have responded to Christina of Denmark’s portrait as an image of a great beauty, confident in her physical allure and ability to decline the advances of a notoriously tyrannical monarch, despite her youth. Nevertheless, Henry VIII and Christina of Denmark did not have an opportunity to carry out the fundamental compatibility test of meeting in person with a ceremonial greeting or in the marital bed. 48 

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firmed her attractive physical appearance and recommended her demeanour as a suitable royal consort and queen of England.52 This was in addition to her perceived political value as a strategic interceptor ‘to the Franco-Imperial alliance’ between Francis I and Charles V: ‘In the event of an attack on his realm, Cleves would be able to provide a diversionary military action’.53 Anne of Cleves’s behaviour at the infamous and ill-timed ‘spontaneous’ private meeting on 1 January 1540 at Rochester, where Henry VIII first presented himself in chivalric disguise, is not only commonly interpreted as a demonstration of her lack of courtly capital, but also provides the first recorded instance of Henry VIII’s aversion to his new bride. The following account was recorded by the Windsor herald, Charles Wriothesley (1508–1562): […] and on New Year’s day at afternoon the King’s grace, with five of his privy chamber, being disguised with cloaks of marble with hoods, that they should not be known, came privately to Rochester, and so went up into the chamber where the said Lady Anne looked out at a window to see the bull baiting that was that time in the court, and suddenly he embraced her and kissed, and showed her a token that the King had sent her for her New Year’s gift, and she being abashed, not knowing who it was, thanked him, and so he communed with her; but she regarded him little, but always looked out of the window on the bull baiting, and when the King perceived she regarded his coming so little, he departed in [an] other chamber and put off his cloak and came in again in a coat of purple velvet; and when the lords and knights did see in his grace they did him reverence; and then, she, perceiving the lords doing their duties, humbled her grace lowly to the King’s majesty, and his grace saluted her again, and so talked together lovingly, and after took her by the hand and led her into another chamber, where they solaced their graces that night and till Friday at afternoon; and his grace took his leave and departed thence to Gravesend, and there took his barge, and so went to Greenwich that night, and she rode to Dartford that night and lodged till the morrow.54

In addition to recording the implied mutual lack of interest of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, the incident also exposes the inbuilt inequalities in the royal marriage process and the limited function of application portraits and ambassadorial reports for selecting bridal candidates effectively. While Henry VIII had the advantage of first perusing Holbein’s application portrait of Anne of Cleves, to his satisfaction, there is no indication that she was provided with the same opportunity to familiarize herself with one of his likenesses before their first encounter 52 

Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 88. Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, p. 94. 54  Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England, ed. by Hamilton, i (1875), p. 109. 53 

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in person.55 The King’s romantic, if impatient, overture at Rochester was also somewhat ill-considered considering the Duchess’s previously noted unworldly background and non-existent foreign language skills. Had she been given foreknowledge of Henry VIII’s image and identity with a portrait or vivid literary description of his distinctive, monumental appearance, perhaps she might not have responded with what modern commentators have interpreted as ‘lumpish bewilderment’, nor ‘appeared as a plain and rather stupid young woman, quite unable to rise to the unexpected’.56 Henry VIII’s justification for his impulsive rejection of Anne of Cleves was based on the less personalized, yet far less effective, legal attempt to invalidate the marriage in response to rumours of a past marital contract between Anne of Cleves and Francis of Lorraine.57 While the truth of the motivation behind Henry VIII’s immediate and resolute assertion of his distaste for Anne of Cleves remains ambiguous and elusive, written accounts confirm that his displeasure was at no stage focused on the ugliness of her painted or actual facial features. To drive home his resolve to extricate himself from this dilemma, in that most awkward stage of proceedings shortly after the marriage, Henry VIII instigated a concerted campaign utilizing gossip and rumour to tarnish Anne of Cleves’s credentials as a woman and as a spouse; in particular, he made claims about her ‘unvirginal body’. His criticism was based, he said, on his experience of her unattractively ‘loose’ body. This was, in fact, a counter-offensive to legitimize his capricious change of heart concerning his fourth marriage. In aggressively ramping up this now dangerously urgent crisis of international diplomacy, Henry VIII self-righteously proclaimed his aversion to Anne of Cleves’s physical appearance within the local gossip network of the Tudor court. He also told Cromwell, shortly after their first meeting, that ‘she is nothing so fair as she was spoken of ’.58 The King’s perspective on this matter was subsequently leaked into the interna-

55  Cooper, A Guide to Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, pp. 8, 27. This contrasted the experience of Margaret of Austria (1480–1530) who was the recipient of a portrait of Henry VII (r. 1485– 1509) as part of unsuccessful marital negotiations in 1505. Unknown Netherlandish Artist, Henry VII, 1505, oil on panel, 4.25 x 30.5 cm, London, National Portrait Gallery: . 56  Hacker and Kuhl, ‘A Portrait of Anne of Cleves’, p. 172; Loades, Tudor Queens, p. 110. 57  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv, 861; Kelly, The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII, pp. 264–65, 267–69, 274; Warnicke, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, pp. 67–68, 81. 58  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv-823, p. 389.

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tional rumour mill on 7 February 1540 in Cardinal Alessandro Farnese’s letter to Pope Paul III, sent from Amiens: […] the queen of France tells me that the King of England at this new marriage created 100 gentlemen in imitation of this Court, which has 200; also that the new Queen is worthy and Catholic, old and ugly, so that when the King saw her he was not pleased with her in that German dress, and made her dress in the French fashion.59

Henry VIII’s discontent was reportedly intensified in the royal bedchamber; he declared his inability to conduct sexual relations with his new queen, because his ‘nature abhorred her’ non-virginal breasts and belly, initially to Cromwell and thereafter to his court physicians.60 The pointedly intimate nature of Henry VIII’s critique not only counteracted and coerced the revision of any contrary viewpoints that had previously been expressed about Anne by his close circle of courtiers and confidants, but also made it clear that there would be no additional heir to the English throne with his German spouse. Extracting several formal depositions to confirm the King’s blameless moral position in his charge of his new wife’s defective femininity appears to have been a straightforward affair, even from those members who had previously sung her praises, such as the Earl of Southampton. On 7 July 1540 all of the witnesses made revised judgements, noting that Henry VIII ‘liked not the Queen’s person’, was ‘marvellously astonished and abashed’ on first sighting her, ‘was never more dismayed in all his life to see the lady so far unlike that which was reported’. Henry ‘mistrusted the Queen’s virginity, by reason of the looseness of her breasts and other tokens’. Witnesses observed how Anne of Cleves’s ‘fashion and manner of bringing up’ was ‘so gross that […] the King should never heartily love her’.61 These apparent eyewitness accounts confirm that Henry VIII was systematically building a case that would demonstrate that he had ‘not been well handled’ at his meeting with Anne of Cleves, and ‘that he had never known her carnally, although he had lain nightly, or every second night by her’.62 In reconstructing Anne of Cleves’s fama as an unattractive and inappropriate queen-consort, Henry VIII simultaneously 59 

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv-179, p. 65. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv-822, p. 388 and xv-825, p. 394; Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p. 340, notes, in an ironic twist, that Chapuys ‘privately thought it unlikely that Jane [Seymour] had reached the age of twenty-five without having lost her virginity, “being an Englishwoman and having been so long” at a court where immorality was rife’. 61  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv-850, p. 421. 62  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv-823, p. 389. 60 

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bolstered his own sense of masculinity when he disclosed to his physician, Dr Butts, that he had experienced two nocturnal emissions since sleeping with her, which established that his virility was not at question: indeed, he affirmed that he ‘thought himself able to do the act with other[s] but not with her’.63 Other motivations for the dissolution of the marriage were hinted at in Marillac’s dispatch, sent to Francis I on 21 July 1540, in which he noted that Anne of Cleves was demoted to the status of ‘Lady’. It was also commonly said that the ‘[…] King will marry a lady of great beauty [and] If permitted to write what he hears, he would say this marriage has already taken place and is consummated; but as this is kept secret he dare not yet certify it as true’.64 It is curious that despite Holbein’s extensive experience as a court portraitist, and his renowned powers of observation, the visual evidence of his application portrait of Anne of Cleves has been neglected within the volatile oral and textual channels of gossip and rumour that circulated around Henry VIII’s fourth marriage.65 Although her image in paint was initially approved of by the King, it was Cromwell the politician, not Holbein the artist, who was held accountable for promoting the allegedly exaggerated claims concerning her feminine virtues and political value as a Tudor wife. While Holbein’s portraits are often treated as forms of pictorial biography and truth, all Renaissance portraits were fundamentally works of artful fiction. While the tightly cinched waist on Anne of Cleves’s gown in Holbein’s portrait does not substantiate Henry VIII’s eyewitness statements concerning her matronly physique, it is impossible to know the truth about her physical appearance. In line with early modern artistic codes of practice for portraiture, Holbein was not a privileged viewer of the Duchess of Cleves’s bodily contours, hidden beneath her garments, any more than were the English envoys charged with the task of assessing her on behalf of the King. In this way, an application portrait of a potential queen-consort posed a special challenge for the artist in merging the personal with the political, as it was executed and viewed within a complex play of gazes, primarily by a male artist for a male patron and male viewers. What could be reasonably expected was a subjective impression of what a potential partner looked like in terms of highlight63 

Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, i, part 2, p. 461. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv-901, p. 446. This refers to Henry VIII’s likely infatuation with his fifth wife, Catherine Howard (c. 1518/24– 1542). 65  Erickson, Great Harry, pp. 328–29; Wooding, Henry VIII, p. 228. At the beginning of his fourth nuptial question in 1537, Henry VIII was forty-six years old and long past his physical prime. 64 

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ing any overt physical defects, especially of the face. An overly flattering portrait might have acted as a superficial lure and artificial measure of the potential physical attraction and emotional compatibility between a royal couple, but not usually at the expense of an alliance formed by pedigree and politics. When examining Anne of Cleves’s portrait, viewers not only need to look at and think about the visual evidence objectively, but also judge it with reference to its political function and specific narrative context. They need to consider the fundamental questions: What is the likelihood that Anne of Cleves was as unattractive as a ‘Flanders mare’, in light of the visual and literary evidence? Why would Holbein have invited the wrath of Henry VIII by deliberately concealing her lack of appeal in an application portrait? On the other hand, the power of gossip and rumour is testified by the triumph of the oral and textual over the visual. When viewers look at the silent witness in Holbein’s portrait today, what they so often see is Henry VIII’s version of truth: the truth that gave birth to Bishop Burnet’s ‘Flanders Mare’. Therefore, today’s viewers should be mindful of the impact of the testimonials of past witnesses, and note the special power of oral and textual forms of gossip and rumour on the reception of portraits and the subsequent construction of fama. Anne of Cleves’s portrait and reputation appear to have been constructed and contested by a powerful oral and textual discourse, subjected to gossip and disseminated by rumours that were as dangerously quixotic and fickle as Henry VIII himself. This statement implies an element of blame on the part of the King. However, it must be emphasized that, from an amoral perspective, Henry was manipulating the dominant oral narrative enacted by his courtiers as directed by Cromwell. Henry needed to make a major change in desperate circumstances and he did it by modifying the historical record with the sheer persuasive power of his authority. As we gaze at Anne of Cleves’s carefully detailed countenance in Holbein’s portrait, we see the evidence that gossip and rumour can render the most sophisticated, appealing, and realistic portrait mute across time and place. In negotiating the maze of textual, oral, and visual evidence that constitutes the complex narrative of the ill-fated Tudor–Cleves union, it is clear that Henry VIII exerted his power, and knowledge of gossip and rumour to shape the fama of Anne of Cleves to suit his own changing needs and desires. It was neither the first nor the last time the great Tudor King, who from 1537 was long past his prime — a ‘bloated, suppurating monster of a man presiding vengefully over a wayward court’ — would use this method to navigate the intricacies and obstacles of his social world and nuptial destiny.66 66 

Wooding, Henry VIII, p. 228.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Constantine, George, ‘Transcript of an Original Manuscript, containing a Memorial from George Constantyne to Thomas, Lord Cromwell. Communicated by Thomas Amyot, Esq. F. R. S., Treasurer, in a Letter addressed to Henry Ellis, F. R. S., Secretary’, Archaeologica, 23 (1831), 50–78 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. by J. S. Brewer and others, 22 vols (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1862–1932) State Papers Published under the Authority of His Majesty’s Commission. Henry VIII, 11 vols (London: Record Commission,1830–1852) Strype, John, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1820–40) Wriothesley, Charles, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors from ad 1485 to 1559, ed. by William Hamilton, 2 vols (London: The Camden Society, 1875–77)

Secondary Studies Ady, Julia Cartwright, Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan and Lorraine, 1522–1590 (New York: Murray, 1913) Bätschmann, Oskar, and Pascal Griener, Hans Holbein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) Botelho, Keith M. Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumour and Early Modern Masculinity (New York: Palgrave, 2009) Brooke, Xanthe, and David Crombie, Henry  VIII Revealed: Holbein’s Portrait and its Legacy (London: Holberton, 2003) Chamberlain, Arthur B. Hans Holbein the Younger, 2 vols (London: Allen, 1913) Cooper, Tarnya, A Guide to Tudor & Jacobean Portraits (London: National Portrait Gallery in Association with the National Trust, 2008) Cowan, Alexander, ‘Seeing is Believing: Urban Gossip and the Balcony in Early Modern Venice’, Gender & History, 23 (2011), 721–38 Erickson, Carolly, Great Harry: The Extravagant Life of Henry VIII (London: Robson, 1998) Foister, Susan, ‘Hans Holbein the Younger: Musée du Louvre’, The Burlington Magazine, 127.985 (1985), 252–53 —— , Holbein and England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) —— , Holbein in England (London: Tate, 2006) Fraser, Antonia, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992) Ganz, Paul, The Paintings of Hans Holbein: First Complete Edition (London: Phaidon, 1956) Hacker, Peter, and Candy Kuhl, ‘A Portrait of Anne of Cleves’, The Burlington Magazine, 134.1068 (1992), 172–75

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Hertel, Christiane, ‘Engaging Negation in Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan’, in Women and Portraits in Early Modern Europe: Gender, Agency, Identity, ed. by Andrea Pearson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 107–27 Hildebrandt, Esther, ‘Christopher Mont, Anglo-German Diplomat’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 15 (1984), 281–92 Hindle, Steve, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley: Gossip, Gender and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change, 9 (1994), 391–419 Holman, Peter, ‘The English Royal Violin Consort in the Sixteenth Century’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 109 (1982–83), 39–59 Horodowich, Elizabeth, ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Life and Political Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies, 19 (2005), 22–45 Kelly, Henry Ansgar, The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976) Loades, David, Tudor Queens (New York: Continuum, 2009) Prevenier, Walter, and Wim Blockmans, The Burgundian Netherlands (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1986) Rowlands, John, Holbein: The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger (Boston: Godine, 1985) Rowlands, John, and David Starkey, ‘An Old Tradition Reasserted: Holbein’s Portrait of Queen Anne Boleyn’, The Burlington Magazine, 125.959 (1983), 88, 90–92 Strong, Roy, Holbein: The Complete Paintings (London: Granada, 1980) Warnicke, Retha M., ‘Henry VIII’s Greeting of Anne of Cleves and Early Modern Court Pro­to­col’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 28 (1996), 565–85 —— , The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) Weir, Alison, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (London: Arrow, 1995) Wilson, Derek, Hans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man (London: Phoenix Giant, 2006) Woltmann, Alfred, Holbein und seine Zeit, 2 vols (Leipzig: Seeman, 1874) Wooding, Lucy, Henry VIII (London: Routledge, 2009)

Poison, Pregnancy, and Protestants: Gossip and Scandal at the Early Modern French Court

Una McIlvenna

Una McIlvenna* Bruit: m. a rumour, common tale, publike voice, fame, reputation, report, the talke of people, the speech abroad (Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 1611)

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n 15 March 1565, the Italian informer Gaspar Barchino wrote to the Spanish ambassador to France relaying information about Huguenot proposals. The French Protestants wished to end the relationship that their leader, the Prince of Condé, was conducting with his mistress, Isabelle de Limeuil, a lady-in-waiting to the French Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici. If negotiations encouraging Condé to end the affair failed, claimed Barchino, the Huguenots felt ‘che la Limolia si dovesse scomunicare, anatematizare et dare in potere di Satanasso’ (that Limeuil ought to be excommunicated, cursed, and rendered to Satan’s power).1 This dramatic ultimatum, revealing both Huguenot des* I would like to thank Evelyn Welch, John Gagné, Rebecca McNamara and Noeleen McIlvenna for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. I am also grateful to Susan Broomhall for her help and advice. 1  Archivo Documental Español, vii, Negociaciones con Francia, p. 186, Gaspar Barchino to Frances de Alava, 15 March 1565. The letter is also cited, with French translation, in Aumale, Histoire des princes de Condé, p. 553. The proposal is ambiguously worded, although were it to be taken literally it would imply a surprising amount of complicity between Huguenot leaders and the Papacy who, one assumes, would be responsible for excommunicating the Catholic Limeuil. Una McIlvenna ([email protected]), Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London.

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peration and the international significance of the affair, forms only part of one of the most notorious scandals of sixteenth-century Europe. Two years previously, Limeuil had begun a relationship with the married Louis de Bourbon, first prince of Condé and leader of the French Protestant movement. The affair was tolerated at court until, in May 1564, Limeuil collapsed during a solemn audience in Dijon and shortly thereafter gave birth to a son. She was immediately taken from the court and imprisoned in the Franciscan convent at Auxonne. While contemporary observers criticized the severity of her punishment, they were unaware that Limeuil had been imprisoned because she had been accused not simply of sexual offences but also of attempting to poison the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon. Her alleged motive was revenge: the elderly prince had delighted in informing Condé that the child Limeuil carried was probably not his, but more likely had been fathered by one of Catherine’s secretaries of state, Florimond Robertet, seigneur de Fresnes. Yet, despite the widespread doubts about his paternity, Condé pursued Limeuil during her imprisonment and eventually helped her escape in the early months of 1565. The possibility that he might then relinquish his Protestant beliefs in order to marry the Catholic Limeuil was the stuff of gossip at courts across Europe, and was the catalyst for the Huguenot ultimatum quoted above.2 This is a particularly ‘early modern’ story: while adultery and illegitimate birth are still concerns for us today, cuckoldry, heresy, and poisoning would seem out of place in a modern-day scandal. Given the multiplicity of scandalous factors in this case, and the historical contingency of many of those factors, the story of Isabelle de Limeuil provides an illuminating study of how gossip and rumour could be expressed and controlled at the early modern court. Gossip is inherent to scandal, and particularly to accusations such as poisoning and cuckoldry which often rely on rumour rather than material evidence and are thus harder to refute.3 This paper explores how nobles responded to such damaging allegations; it reveals the strategies they employed to defend their reputations against slander based on events both real, such as an illegitimate birth, and imagined, such as poi2  The documents concerning Limeuil’s story can be found in Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’. The story is situated within its historical context in La Ferrière, Trois amoureuses. The case and its historiography is also discussed in Bayle, The Dictionary, iii, 832–35: s.v. ‘Limeuil’. 3  For studies of gossip see Gluckman, ‘Gossip and Scandal’; Horodowich, ‘The Gossiping Tongue’; Wickham, ‘Gossip and Resistance among the Medieval Peasantry’. A study that argues for the term ‘talk’ rather than the pejorative term ‘gossip’ is Fenster and Smail, eds, Fama. For studies of slander and seditious speech see Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Cressy, Dangerous Talk. For studies of rumour see Fine, Campion-Vincent, and Heath, eds, Rumor Mills; Neubauer, The Rumour.

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soning. Controlling information is always key to managing a scandal. This essay demonstrates how Catherine de Medici’s apparent management of information about the affair was effective at both the local and international level, preventing the revelation of the most shocking aspect of the case, and thereby permitting the rehabilitation of her lady-in-waiting after such a notorious scandal. This might seem surprising, given Catherine’s subsequent reputation as the ‘wicked Italian queen’ who was said to order her most beautiful ladies — known to later historians as her ‘escadron volant’ (flying squadron) — to seduce politically significant noblemen for her own Machiavellian ends.4 The scandal of Isabelle de Limeuil was a clear example, claimed Catherine’s critics, of the ‘flying squadron’ in action, and the scandal has been portrayed until now as the inevitable result of a ‘female’ style of rule, in which sexual allure and duplicity are exploited for political gain. Catherine’s superlative negotiating abilities, testified to by her contemporaries, would be depicted by later historians in this reductive way. She succeeded in March 1563, for example, in convincing Condé to sign the Peace of Amboise, thereby ending the first War of Religion. It was during these negotiations that the prince, brother of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, fell in love with the Catholic Limeuil, and quickly began to neglect both his wife, Eléonore de Roye, and his Protestant faith. The Huguenot poet and historian, Agrippa d’Aubigné, would later attribute Condé’s lack of concern for the atrocities being visited on his Protestant countrymen directly to his affection for Limeuil: ‘Si telles plaintes alloyent jusques au prince de Condé, les caresses de la roine et les amours de Limeuil employoyent tout son esprit’. (If such complaints managed to reach the prince of Condé, the queen’s caresses and Limeuil’s affections took up all his spirit.)5 Although the act of taking a mistress was not only acceptable but expected of noblemen in early modern France, the new reformed religion celebrated marital fidelity.6 Rumours of Condé’s behaviour travelled all the way to Geneva, attracting the attention of Calvin himself, who, along with Théodore de Bèze, his French counterpart, wrote Condé a letter in September 1563 urging the young prince to

4 

For a historiography of Catherine’s negative reputation see Sutherland, ‘Catherine de Medici’. For a historiography of the myth of the ‘flying squadron’ see McIlvenna, ‘A Stable of Whores?’. There are few balanced studies of Catherine in English; recent scholarly French biographies include Garrisson, Catherine de Médicis: l’impossible harmonie; Crouzet, Le Haut Coeur de Catherine de Médicis; Wanegffelen, Catherine de Médicis: le pouvoir au féminin. 5  Aubigné, Histoire universelle, ii, 205. Aubigné, who was seven at the time of the events, wrote the Histoire in 1616–18, over fifty years later. 6  Carroll, Blood and Violence in Early Modern France, p. 237.

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remember his role as moral example, and underlining the damage his conduct could cause to his reputation: Vous ne doubtez pas, Monseigneur, que nous n’aimions vostre honneur, comme nous dés­irons vostre salut. Or nous serions traistres en vous dissimulant les bruits qui courent. Nous n’estimons pas qu’il y ait du mal où Dieu soit directement offensé, mais quand on nous a dict que vous faites l’amour aux dames, cela est pour déroger beaucoup à vostre authorité et réputation. Les bonnes gens en seront offenséz, les malins en feront leur risée. Il y a la distraction qui vous empesche et retarde à vaquer à vostre devoir. (You do not doubt, my lord, that we esteem not your honour as much as we desire your salvation. Yet we would be traitors if we were to hide from you the rumours that are circulating. We do not believe that evil is being committed that would directly offend God, but when we are told that you are making love to women, such a claim will seriously damage your authority and reputation. Good people will be offended by it, the wicked will make you a laughing stock. There is distraction which impedes you and prevents you from attending to your duty.)7

Calvin was aware that bruit, or rumour, could be just as dangerous to the cause of reform as confirmed fact, and the court represented many of the material, earthly delights shunned by the new religion. Protestants were eager to depict the ladies of the French court as a debauched and dangerous group of sexually aggressive women, ready to relinquish their moral values at the behest of their ambitious female queen. Jeanne d’Albret, the Calvinist Queen of Navarre, would describe the French court in 1572 as a place where ‘ce ne sont pas les hommes ici qui prient les femmes, ce sont les femmes qui prient les hommes’ (it is not the men who invite the women here but the women who invite the men).8 Limeuil’s affair with Condé is thus usually described as part of Catherine’s master plan to seduce the Protestant leader away from his political and religious leanings and closer to her own political goals. The vitriolic 1575 pamphlet Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et deportements de Catherine de Médicis, royne-mère claimed that le Prince de Condé estoit dès lors amoureux de la damoiselle Limeuil, une de ses filles, qu’elle luy avoit baillée pour le debaucher, comme elle se servoit tousjours de fort honnestes moyens pour parvenir à ses desseins.

7  Lettres de Jean Calvin, ed. by Bonnet, pp. 537–39, Jean Calvin and Théodore de Bèze to Louis de Bourbon, 17 September 1563. 8  Castelnau, Les Mémoires de Messire Michel de Castelnau, ed. by Le Laboureur, i, 859, Jeanne d’Albret to Henri de Navarre.

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(the Prince of Condé was then in love with the young lady Limeuil, one of her girls, whom she had sent to debauch him, as she always would use very ‘honest’ means to succeed in her plots.)9

Eventually, Catholic writers would also begin to perpetuate the rumours that Catherine ordered her lady-in-waiting to begin a sexual relationship with Condé as a means of retaining him at court. In 1606, for example, the historian de Thou (approximately ten years old at the time of the events) wrote in his memoirs: Car la Reine s’étant apperçûë qu’il jettoit souvent les yeux sur une de ses filles d’hon­ neur, qui étoit sa parente, elle conseilla à cette fille, pour pénétrer dans ses secrets, & pour l’enchaîner à la Cour, de répondre à son amour, & de ne rien omettre pour augmenter de plus en plus son ardente passion. (For the Queen having perceived that his gaze often fell on one of her maids of honour, who was her relative, she counselled this girl, in order to penetrate his secrets and to enchain him at Court, to respond to his love-making, and to omit nothing that could increase his ardent passion.)10

If Limeuil’s behaviour was already viewed as controversial, it would reach a scandalous climax during the tour of France by Charles IX in 1564. Catherine de Medici decided that when her son reached fourteen, the age of maturity for a king, he should make a grand tour of his kingdom in order to greet his subjects firsthand. So for twenty-seven months, from 1564 to 1566, the entire court travelled across France.11 Fresnes, Catherine’s secretary of state, was assiduous at the court of his queen, and would nostalgically refer to this tour in his later letters to Limeuil: Il me souviendra, cependant, du malheureux lieu de Danetal et Fescamp, de Can et de la Chambrolle, lors de la pouvre dame qui n’en sçavoit rien: et diray bien heureux celuy qui en tous ses lieulx a receu tant de contentement. (I am reminded, however, of the unfortunate places of Danestal and Fescamps, of Caen and la Chambrolle, then of the poor lady who knew nothing about it: and I would call him very fortunate who in all those places received so much happiness.)12

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Discours merveilleux de la vie, ed. by Cazauran, p. 166. de Thou, Histoire universelle, ed. by le Mascrier, iv, 537. 11  Boutier, Dewerpe, and Nordman, Un tour de France royal; Graham and Johnson, The Royal Tour of France. 12  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 63. 10 

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The places he refers to are the towns where the court stayed during its voyage through Normandy and Picardy in July and August 1563. The source of the ‘happiness’ Fresnes experienced in those places would become obvious when, nine months later, during the visit to Dijon in late May 1564, at ‘une audience solennelle’ (a solemn gathering) Limeuil became ill and was taken into the Queen’s wardrobe, where she gave birth to a son.13 She was shortly thereafter (between 22 and 29 May) taken from the court and imprisoned in the Franciscan convent in Auxonne, a few miles east of the court’s location. The news of the scandalous circumstances of the birth in Dijon was disseminated on 9 July via a ‘doctor of the Sorbonne’ to his friend in Paris in the form of ‘nouvelles en rime Prosaïques’ (news in prosaic rhyme). The news, written entirely in octosyllabic Latin rhyming couplets, cast doubt on Catherine’s ignorance of the affair and criticized the severity of her treatment: Contra hoc tamen regina Se ostendit tantum plena Cholera, ac si nescisset Hoc quod puella fecisset, Et dedit illi custodes Superbos nimis et rudes, Mittens in monasterium Quærere refrigerium. Sed certe pro tam levi re Sic non debebat tractare, At excusare modicum Tempus, personam et locum. Aliis non sit taliter Quæ faciunt similiter. (Yet, faced with this, the Queen Reveals herself to be so full Of anger, and whether ignorant or not Of that which the maid had done She gives her to the guards Too proud and rough; She is thrown into a monastery And seeks for consolation. But surely for such a trivial affair, She does not deserve such treatment 13 

Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 7.

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Whereas it can be somewhat explained by Time, personality and rank. No one exists Who would have acted differently.)14

Significantly, this gossip about scandalous events was transmitted via the means of verse, a genre that would necessitate the sacrifice of factual accuracy for the sake of metre and rhyme. It is important to note that both the writer and recipient of the verses were university-educated males, fluent in Latin, and that their status as intellectual elites in no way prevented them from trading in gossip and hearsay. While much of the verse related actual events — the birth and subsequent imprisonment in a convent — the writer was unaware of crucial details, and hence painted Catherine’s punishment as draconian.

The Scandal of Illegitimate Births But was this a ‘trivial affair’? How damaging to one’s reputation was an illegitimate birth at court? The memoirist Brantôme claimed that the commandment was clear for the ladies of Catherine’s household: she demanded that ‘elles eussent de la sagesse et de l’habileté et sçavoir, pour engarder l’enflure du ventre’ (they had the wisdom, ability, and knowledge to prevent a swelling of the stomach).15 If a ladyin-waiting was unlucky enough to become pregnant, all possible measures were to be undertaken to cover up the scandal. Catherine’s daughter, Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, recounted the efforts to which she and other women of the court went in 1581 to disguise the illegitimate birth of a child to her own husband’s mistress, Françoise de Montmorency-Fosseux, known as ‘la belle Fosseuse’: Je la feis promptement oster de la chambre des filles et la mis en une chambre escartée, avec mon medecin et des femmes pour la servir, et la feis tres-bien secourir…Estant delivrée, on la porta en la chambre des filles, où, bien que l’on apportast toute la discretion que l’on pouvoit, on ne peust empescher que ce bruict ne fust semé par tout le chasteau. Le Roy mon mary, estant revenu de la chasse, la va voir comme il avoit accoustumé. Elle le prie de faire que je l’allasse voir, comme j’avois accoustumé d’aller voir toutes mes filles, quand elles estoient malades, pensant par ce moyen oster le bruict qui couroit. 14 

Castelnau, Les Mémoires de Messire Michel de Castelnau, ed. by Le Laboureur, ii, 371. Brantôme, Recueil des dames, ed. by Vaucheret, p. 64. Brantôme’s comments, however, must always be considered in the context of his intended male-only audience; see LaGuardia, Intertextual Masculinity, pp. 181–85. 15 

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(I had her promptly taken from the girls’ bedroom and put in a separate room, with my doctor and some women to serve her, and had her very well taken care of […] Once she had been delivered, she was taken into the girls’ room where, although it had been carried out with all the discretion possible, it was unavoidable that the news would spread throughout the château. The King my husband, having returned from hunting, went to see her as was his custom. She beseeched him to make me go to see her, as I was accustomed to doing whenever any of my girls were sick, hoping by this method to put an end to the gossip that was circulating.)16

Marguerite’s comments make it clear how many people would have had access to information about this birth, including servants and medical professionals. News travelled within the royal household but could be modified by the behaviour of the most senior (in this case) female member. If the Queen acted in such a way as to suggest illness rather than pregnancy, there would be few who would contradict this interpretation to her face. Thus, it is not surprising to find that when, in 1557, Catherine’s lady-in-waiting Françoise de Rohan was discovered to be in the late stages of pregnancy with the Duke of Nemours’s child, Catherine immediately returned her to her family home in Brittany to give birth.17 Like Limeuil, however, some women chose to hide the pregnancy and carry on as if nothing had happened. La Ferrière claims that ‘pareil malheur était arrivé à mademoiselle de Vitry; mais, accouchée le matin, elle avait eu la force et le courage de se traîner au bal donné au Louvre’ (the same misfortune had occurred to Mademoiselle de Vitry, but having given birth in the morning, she had had the strength and the courage to drag herself to the ball being given in the Louvre).18 In all these cases, it would appear that decorum was the most significant aspect; preventing the gossip of others by creating a façade — however transparent — of seemly behaviour was more important than the reality of an illegitimate conception. Limeuil’s very public delivery shattered the secrecy of her pregnancy and with it, her reputation. Moreover, she found herself imprisoned within days of giving birth. At the time courtiers were critical of Limeuil’s treatment on the grounds of what they perceived as Catherine’s hypocrisy. The 1564 Latin verse quoted above reveals that public rumour (‘dicunt’) painted Catherine as the instigator of the relationship as part of her plan to keep Condé on her side: 16 

Mémoires et lettres de Marguerite de Valois, ed. by Guessard, pp. 177–79. McIlvenna, ‘Word versus Honor’. 18  La Ferrière, Trois amoureuses au xvie siècle, p. 86. Louise de l’Hospital, damoiselle de Vitry, a dame d’honneur to Catherine de Medici, and wife of Jean de Symier, master of the wardrobe for the duc d’Anjou. 17 

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Puella illa nobilis, Quæ erat tam amabilis, Commisit adulterium Et nuper fecit filium. Sed dicunt matrem reginam Illi fuisse Lucinam; Et quod hoc patiebatur Ut principem lucraretur. (This noble maiden Who was so lovely Committed adultery And recently created a son. But they say that the queen mother In this was Lucina And permitted this To profit from the prince.)19

Depicting Catherine as Lucina, the Roman goddess of childbirth, the author credits her with overseeing the whole affair for her own ends. Brantôme related how Limeuil was ‘renvoyée hors de la troupe par sa maistresse, qu’on disoit pourtant que sadite maistresse luy avoyt commandé d’obéir aux volluntez dudit prince; car ell’avoit affaire de luy et le gaigner’ (sent away from the troop by her mistress who, it was said however, had commanded her to obey the will of the said prince, because she had some business with him and needed to win him over).20 In Brantôme’s description of events we again see how rumour (‘it was said’) was crucial to the development of the myth of the ‘flying squadron’: Limeuil was portrayed as a sexual pawn in the service of her queen, sacrificed by her mistress when she contravened the ‘rules’.

The Scandal of Poisoning But those who criticized her imprisonment were remarkably ignorant of the true circumstances. Not only had Limeuil allowed herself to become pregnant, but an accusation had also been levelled at her that she had threatened to poison Charles de Bourbon, Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon, an elderly Prince of the Blood.21 19 

Castelnau, Les Mémoires de Messire Michel de Castenau, ed. by Le Laboureur, ii, 371. Brantôme, Recueil des dames, ed. by Vaucheret, p. 468. 21  A short biography of la Roche-sur-Yon is given in Brantôme, Oeuvres complètes, ed. by Lalanne, v, 26–29. 20 

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Her accuser was Charles-Robert de La Marck, comte de Maulevrier. In the presence of two leading bishops, Maulevrier gave two depositions, the first on 25 May 1564.22 He claimed that Limeuil had, on several occasions, offered to help him poison la Roche-sur-Yon, against whom he had a longstanding grudge.23 Limeuil had attempted to ally with him against la Roche-sur-Yon, he alleged, because of her own ill-treatment by the prince. The prince’s wife, Philippes de Montespedon, was Catherine’s close friend and dame d’honneur, a role which required her to oversee discipline within the royal household. La Roche-sur-Yon was evidently pressuring his wife to control the younger ladies at court. In her deposition, Limeuil admitted to feeling singled out for criticism from the couple: La dite princess, à la sussitation dudit sieur prince son mari, oultre les peines quelle donnoit à toutes les filles de la Royne, sembloit en vouloir à elle plus particulièrement et recherchoit de vérifier quelle fut grosse, la faisant souvent tourmenter par la Royne sur ce faict et aultres. (The said princess, at the behest of the said prince her husband, aside from the pains that she gave to all the maids of the Queen, seemed to have a particular animosity towards her [Limeuil] and tried to verify whether she was pregnant, often tormenting her in front of the Queen on this matter and others.)24

In the same deposition Limeuil claimed the Prince had boasted to her lover of his efforts at discipline. She claimed he had entreprins faire tout le pis qu’il pourroit aux filles de la Royne, comme il l’a bien dict luy mesme à monsieur le prince de Condé, et qu’il vouloit poursuivre la refformation: luy demandant sy en foy, en conscience, il vouldroit que l’on vesquist en sa maison de la sorte qu’on faysoit chez la Royne? (undertaken to do the worst that he could to the Queen’s maids, as he said himself to monsieur the Prince of Condé, saying that he wanted to pursue a reformation; asking him whether in faith and conscience he wished that one lived in his house in the manner one did in the Queen’s household?)25

22 

This preliminary investigation of both parties, conducted in secret, was known as an apprise. Since no further legal action was taken against Limeuil, it can be assumed that the bishops and/or Catherine deemed the accusations baseless. See Akehurst, ‘Good Name, Reputation and Notoriety’, pp. 83, 87. 23  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 11. 24  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 34. 25  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, pp. 34–35.

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One can only speculate as to how accurate was the Prince’s depiction of the court, but Limeuil’s deposition reveals that it was certainly a site of conflict over morality, and of acrimonious rivalry among courtiers. Maulevrier felt it was acrimonious enough to incite Limeuil to thoughts of murder. In his deposition, he quoted her as saying ‘il ne luy failloyt qu’ung bon repas’ (all he [the Prince] needs is one good meal)26 and said that she ‘prist en sa bourse certaine pouldre blanche, laquelle estoyt dedans ung papier, et luy en bailla une partye dedans ung petit morceau de papier’ (took from her purse a certain white powder, which was inside some paper, and gave him part of it in a little piece of paper).27 He then claimed that Limeuil threatened him that ‘il se trouvast mort en quelque coing de rue’ (he would be found dead on a street corner) if he were to divulge any of the plot.28 In her dissertation on poisoning in early modern France, Silje Normand reveals the ubiquity of accusations of poisoning in the period, calling it a ‘poison epidemic’ that reached a frenzy in the Affaire des Poisons (1679–82) which saw forty-four people executed, 218 people imprisoned for life, and Louis XIV’s mistress, Mme de Montespan, accused along with many other aristocratic women.29 Poisoning is a crime that has longstanding associations with women, for reasons both physical and social.30 Its secretive nature, goes the theory, suits women, who are not only naturally duplicitous but furthermore cannot rely on physical strength to overcome others, such as in armed conflict. Moreover, women’s traditional domestic status enables such secrecy: with access to the food her loved ones eat, and the medicines they take, a woman is seen to be in the perfect position to carry out such a crime. In his 1584 study of witchcraft, Reginald Scot claimed that ‘women were the first inventors and the greatest practisers of poisoning and more naturallie addicted and given thereunto than men’.31 Such a belief in the ‘natural’ disposition of women to the use of poisoning has encouraged the literary trope of woman as poisoner, from Circe and Medea onwards; moreover, poison histories, Normand reminds us, abound with examples of notorious female poisoners, including the French queens, Frédégonde and Brunehaut.32 Cosmetics in the early modern period, already a site of anxiety around a woman’s duplicitous ability to transform or mask herself with ‘false’ col26 

Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 14. Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 18. 28  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, pp. 14–15. 29  Normand, ‘Perceptions of Poison’, p. 7. Mollenauer, Strange Revelations. 30  Hallissy, Venomous Woman. 31  Scot, The discoverie of witchcraft, i, chap. 3, p. 67. 32  Normand, ‘Perceptions of Poison’, p. 139. 27 

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ours, were themselves often made of potentially poisonous materials.33 Even menstruation was believed to make women venomous, causing noxious fumes to emanate from their eyes and mouths.34 In much the same way that Cynthia Herrup has recognized ‘the social utility of sodomy as an accusation’ against men in this period, because of its potency as an ‘organizing principle for other fears’, so poisoning can be said to operate as a means of distilling fears about women into one single felony.35 If being a woman in the early modern period meant that one was more likely to be accused of poisoning, being foreign meant that the suspicion was doubled. The countless treatises on poisoning in the period regularly depicted venoms as bodily invaders that encroached upon a territory that was not their own.36 This same language was also used in early modern France towards foreigners and, in particular, towards Italians. Rampant xenophobia in France in the sixteenth century vilified Italian immigrants as sly and cowardly, stopping at nothing to usurp power from its rightful owner.37 Limeuil’s mistress, Catherine de Medici, was female, Italian, and regent, and therefore alleged to be usurping male power via her immature sons, with poisoning as her preferred method of despatching enemies. ‘According to popular rumour’, Normand tells us, ‘poison first made its way to France through Catherine de Medici’s Italian entourage, which contained perfumers thoroughly versed in the art of poisoning, and courtiers more than willing to use it’.38 Eventually, Catherine’s name would become synonymous with poison. She was given the nickname ‘Madame la Serpente’ and vicious libels circulated linking her family name with venomous qualities.39 Although much of Catherine’s negative reputation was developed much later by Huguenot polemicists, it is true that several of her ladies suffered unsubstantiated accusations of poisoning.40 That Maulevrier provided no material evidence, nor an actual victim of poisoning, was unimportant: the accusation had weight because it was directed at one whose reputation (due to her illegitimate pregnancy) was already vulnerable. In his cultural history of rumour, Hans-Joachim Neubauer 33 

Philippy, Painting Women. Normand, ‘Perceptions of Poison’, pp. 142–45. 35  Herrup, A House in Gross Disorder, p. 37. 36  For a discussion of early modern French poison treatises, see Normand, ‘Venomous Words’. 37  Dubost, La France italienne; Heller, Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth-Century France. 38  Normand, ‘Venomous Words’, p. 123. 39  L’Estoile, Registre-Journal, ed. by Lazard and Schrenk, iv, 71. 40  For the accusations against Françoise de La Marck and Charlotte-Catherine de La Trémoille see McIlvenna, ‘Considering the “Cabal of Cuckoldry”’, pp. 9, 113–14. 34 

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reminds us that ‘rumours are not lies; in fact they are stirred up when knowledge and conditions combine’.41 The rumours about Limeuil’s potentially damaged honour would make the allegation of her secretive plotting more believable. In addition to its debilitating effects on the reputation of the accused, the poisoning accusation also had a practical use. ‘The early modern poison metaphor’, says Normand, ‘much like modern metaphors of pollution and disease, was used as a means of branding and exclusion’.42 Limeuil’s refusal to conform to the moral code, by conducting a relationship with a controversial political figure, becoming pregnant, and then giving birth in such a public manner, created anxiety at court, where the appearance of decorum was of paramount importance. Limeuil was identified as a disorderly subject, and an accusation of poisoning — with its suspiciously coincidental timing — was an effective means of removing her from the household.

Intelligence and Information At Auxonne, Limeuil was placed in the Franciscan convent under the guard of Claude de Saulx, seigneur de Ventoux et de Torpes, the King’s lieutenant and local governor. Despite her distressed emotional state, as testified to by de Saulx, Limeuil was energetic in her own defence. While she admitted in her interrogation to animosity between herself and the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon, she strongly denied any involvement in a plot to poison him. She claimed ‘n’avoir jamais eu ni veu telles drogues, et souvent avoir désiré veoir du sublimé ou du blanc d’Espaigne, parce qu’elle oyoit dire qu’il y en avoit qui s’en fardoient’ (never to have had nor seen such drugs, and often had desired to see some sublimé or Spanish white, because she had heard that there were those who used it for makeup), demonstrating her knowledge of the links between early modern cosmetics and poison.43 After establishing her own innocence, Limeuil then went on the offensive, turning the focus of the deposition onto the Count’s reputation. Had she wanted to poison someone, she said, the Count would have been the last person she would have confided in, since he ‘estoit notoirement tenu d’un chascun pour un fol et un yvroigne’ (was notoriously thought of by everyone as a madman and a drunk).44 Whether she was aware of it or not, Limeuil’s response accorded with the legal doctrines of ‘fama’ and ‘infamia’: she initially established 41 

Neubauer, The Rumour, trans. by Braun, p. 4. Normand, ‘Perceptions of Poison’, p. 21. 43  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 37. 44  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 47. 42 

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her own honour, reputation and trustworthiness, and then attacked those of her detractor.45 Both in Roman law and in customary law (both of which operated in sixteenth-century France), individuals marked with the condition of ‘infamia’, due to their behaviour and reputation, were prevented from testifying in court.46 Limeuil’s attack on Maulevrier’s mental capacity and fondness for alcohol — in particular her use of the term ‘notoirement’, meaning well-known or notorious — referred to the public knowledge, or fama, of Maulevrier’s behaviour and was a shrewd means of rendering his testimony redundant and inadmissible.47 Meanwhile, Limeuil appears to have been aware that the most effective means of combating scurrilous rumours was to proactively disseminate verifiable intelligence. Indeed, her letters and those of her guardian, de Saulx, reveal a remarkable amount of agency on her part even when imprisoned and excluded from court. De Saulx’s letters to the Queen Mother show that he was obeying her order to make copies of all letters both written and received by Limeuil. Nevertheless, de Saulx felt that Limeuil was capable of bypassing these measures by exploiting the sympathies of allies on both sides of the confessional divide: Je ne crains que une chose quest que, en la religion où elle est, les murailles y sont en d’aulcungs endroits fort basses, et qu’ayant gaigné toutes les Cordelières, ce quelle a faict, elle ne jecte des lettres pardessus ladite muraille ou que l’on luy en jette; […] Ou bien que l’on luy donne la nuict quelqu’eschelle pour eschapper pardessus lesdites murailles, et après la receller en quelque maison de huguenot en ceste ville: je ne le dis pas sans cause, parce que j’en ay esté adverty par de mes soldars, que ledit basque a parlé à deux ou trois des plus apparans huguenots de ceste dite ville. (I fear only one thing which is, given her religion, the walls are here in several places very low, and having won over all the Franciscans, as she has done, she will just throw the letters over the said wall or that they will be thrown over to her; […] Or even that one night someone will throw her some kind of ladder to escape over the said walls, and afterwards hide her in the house of some Huguenot of this town: I do not say this without cause, because I was warned about it by my soldiers, that

45 

Edgerton, Pictures and Punishment, p. 60. Bowman, ‘Infamy and Proof in Medieval Spain’, p. 96; Akehurst, ‘Good Name, Reputation and Notoriety’, pp. 76–77, 83–85; Greenidge, Infamia, pp. 18–40. For a discussion of the complex legal systems operating concurrently in sixteenth-century France see Baumgartner, France in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 83–96. 47  For a discussion of the nuanced differences of the term ‘notoire’ in Roman, canon, and customary law in France see Akehurst, ‘Good Name, Reputation and Notoriety’, p. 85. 46 

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the said basque [Condé’s servant] spoke to two or three of the most prominent Huguenots of this said town.)48

Limeuil had, through force of personality, provoked sympathy among the Catholic nuns who were, ironically, allowing her to exploit the poor defences of the convent to communicate with Condé’s Huguenot allies. Her intelligencing activities did not stop there: even as Limeuil was moved around from Auxonne to Mâcon, Lyon, and Vienne — all towns situated along the Rhône — as the court moved around the south-east on its tour of the country, she kept Condé informed with crucial details that would help him to find her and help her escape: Je vous escrips séte létre estant sur le chemin de Mâcon: mès delà je ne say où l’on me mennera. Mon conducteur est un valet de chambre de la Reyne nommé Gentil; vous le congnoysés byen. (I am writing this letter to you while en route to Mâcon: but from there I do not know where they will take me. My driver is a valet of the Queen’s chamber called Gentil; you know him well.)49

She also regularly petitioned Condé to mobilize influential nobility on her behalf, asking him to write not only to the Queen Mother, but also to the Maréchal de Bourdillon, Imbert de la Platière, and the Duchess of Savoy, Marguerite de France, who had come to Lyon to visit her nephew, the King.50 Limeuil’s actions demonstrate both a remarkable knowledge of the visitors to court — information probably gleaned from the bearers of the numerous letters — and initiative in exploiting her ties to such prestigious members of the nobility who could plead her case with the Queen Mother.

Gossip and Cuckoldry Limeuil’s ability to send and receive factual and reliable intelligence even while imprisoned stands in contrast to Condé’s regular complaints to her of his ignorance of her whereabouts and of his suffering due to slanderous gossip. Back at court, Fresnes was evidently exploiting his privileged position as secretary of state to taunt Condé with his access to sensitive information:

48 

Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 78. Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 92. 50  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, pp. 92, 94–95. 49 

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Monsieur du Fresne me mande prou souvant que luy etcryvés de voz nouvelles, mès moy je n’an puys savoir où vous estes menée. Je m’étonne fort, puys cavés le moien d’écryre à quelque ungs, que ne puys resevoyr de mesme de vos lestre, car vous savés quy n’y a home au monde quy tant sait faché de vos pènes que moy. (Monsieur du Fresne tells me very often that you write to him of your news, but I am unable to find out where you have been sent. I find it very surprising, since you have the means to write to certain people, that I am unable to receive your letters also, for you know that there is not a man in the world who is as aggrieved at your pains as I.)51

Condé’s letters to Limeuil reveal his jealousy of Fresnes’s relationship with her, particularly because it threatened him with the abhorrent label of cuckold, the most shaming of labels for a man in the early modern period. His resentment of Fresnes was a longstanding one; Brantôme related an anecdote in which Fresnes, in the presence of Condé, mocked a courtier for only having had sexual intercourse five times on his wedding night: ‘Par Dieu! j’en ay pris une douzaine en vingt-quatre heures sur la plus belle motte qui soit icy à l’entour, ny qui soit possible en France’. (My God! I had a dozen rides in twenty-four hours on the most beautiful mount that could be found here, or anywhere else in France.) The lord (Condé) was dismayed, claimed Brantôme, car par là il apprit ce dont il se doutoit il y avoit longtemps; et d’autant qu’il estoit fort amoureux de cette princesse, fut fort mary de ce qu’il avoit si longuement chassé en cet endroit et n’avoit jamais rien pris, et l’autre avoit esté si heureux en rencontre et en sa prise. (because with that he learned what he had feared for a long time; and given how much in love he was with this princess, he was really angry for what he had chased for such a long time in this way without ever taking anything, and the other had been so happy in his hunt and in his taking.)52

That Fresnes’s claims of sexual performance seem hyperbolic and, therefore, doubtful did not appear to be an issue for either Brantôme or Condé. Male reputation in the early modern period was based on claims of virility, however much those claims were falsified. David LaGuardia argues that early modern men ‘seem to have been obligated to recount, to give an account of, or simply to count

51  52 

Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, pp. 65–66. Brantôme, Recueil des dames, ed. by Vaucheret, p. 643.

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the myriad faces and facets of their (often phantasmic) relations with women’.53 Cuckoldry anxiety, ubiquitous in the period, was a fear rooted in the homosocial male activity of boasting of one’s sexual exploits, whether factual or fantastical.54 As an activity that relied entirely on hearsay (at least on sexual matters), maleonly gossip was thus competitive and damaging by its very nature, deliberately attempting to create jealousy in the listener. Condé did not hide his fear of having been deceived from Limeuil: ‘Car je vous asurre, mon ceur, quy m’annuyrés bien grandemant que l’on pût prendre seur voz acsions seuget de dire: “A quy èt sait enfant?” Come, sy deux y avèt passé’. (For I assure you, my love, that it annoys me greatly that one can find in your actions to say: ‘To whom belongs this child?’, as if two persons had been there).55 Condé (perhaps disingenuously) claimed ignorance of a matter that was clearly common knowledge at court. The Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon’s earlier comments, that Condé ‘estoit bien trompé s’il pensoit que si elle estoit grosse, ce fust de luy, et qu’aucunls n’y eussent part’ (was well fooled if he thought that if she were pregnant it was by him, and that no one else had had a part in it) would have added to Condé’s fear of being reputed as a cuckold.56 The public nature of the birth, however, would catapult those rumours from within the palace walls to the wider public arena. Condé’s cuckolded state was also alluded to in the Latin news verses sent to Paris, which punned on the word ‘secretis’ to refer to Fresnes’s position as secretary of state: At multi dicunt quod pater Non est princeps, sed est alter Qui regis est à secretis, Omnibus est notus satis. (But many say that the father Is not the prince, but is another Who to the King is secret; All is sufficiently known.)57

53 

LaGuardia, Intertextual Masculinity in French Renaissance Literature, p. 184. For discussions of early modern cuckoldry anxiety see LaGuardia, Intertextual Masculinity in French Renaissance Literature; Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England; Finucci, The Manly Masquerade; Kahn, Man’s Estate, in particular her chapter‘“The Savage Yoke”’. 55  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, pp. 69–70. 56  Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’, p. 32. 57  Castlenau, Les Mémoires de Messire Michel de Castelnau, ed. by Le Laboureur, ii, 371. 54 

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Here the use of ‘many say’ alludes to the very public knowledge of Condé’s cuckolding by a man of lower rank, and the verse’s author appears to delight in this public shaming of such a high-profile figure.

International Scandal The scandal would continue to grow on an international scale; in a despatch on 11 April 1565 from France to the English court, it was claimed that ‘The Prince of Condé has by a certain gentleman stolen Mademoiselle de Lymoel from Tournon, where she was kept, and has her with him’.58 Similarly, Gaspar Barchino’s dispatch of 15 March 1565 to the Spanish ambassador Alava, quoted at the beginning of this essay, related how Condé had recently received a letter which ended with the words ‘La demoiselle est arrivée’ (the lady has arrived) and how he ordered that she be brought to him.59 If these two dispatches are to be believed, Limeuil escaped from prison at some point around March 1565, ten months after her arrest. The ‘Limeuil affair’ was a considerable matter on the European political scene; the leader of the Huguenots was seen to be wavering in his devotion to his faith because of his love for her, putting the entire cause of the French Reformation in jeopardy. When Calvin wrote to Condé back in September 1563 to warn him of ‘distractions’, Condé was still married to the staunchly Protestant Eléonore de Roye, but after her death in July 1564 he was free to marry a woman from either religion. Barchino was clearly delighted at the prospect of Condé’s defection to Catholicism and discussed how the Spanish could capitalize on what he saw as Condé’s ‘weakness’ for women by offering him ‘una moglie bella, ricca et honorata, come la sorella di Monsr. di Ghisa’ (a beautiful, rich and honoured woman like Monsieur de Guise’s sister [CatherineMarie de Lorraine]).60 Intriguingly, the letter reveals that although Catholics felt that providing Condé with a suitable woman was key to retaining his religious loyalty, the Catholic Limeuil was explicitly not a candidate. Meanwhile, as we have seen, the Huguenots were prepared to have her portrayed as under ‘Satan’s power’. The letter demonstrates just how far her reputation had fallen in less than a year. Barchino then discussed Catherine’s role in the matter:

58 

Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, ed. by Stevenson and others, vii, 331, 11 April 1565. Archivo Documental Español, vii, Negociaciones con Francia, p. 186. 60  Archivo Documental Español, vii, Negociaciones con Francia, p. 189. 59 

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I catolici dicono che, per impedire il matrimonio di Condé con la nepote del car­ dinale di Lorena, si serve del mezo de la Limolia. Gl’ugonoti dicono che per il costei mezo vuole inescare Condé et farlo tornare papista, come fu fatto di Vandomo impazzito per li amori di Roet; jo non m’accordo col parere di questi, ne di quelli, anzi penso, se pur ha parte nel negotio de la Limolia, che sia per volere fare tutto suo Condé, et che non dipenda d’alcun altro che da lei. (The Catholics say that she uses Limeuil to impede Condé’s marriage to the niece of the Cardinal of Lorraine. The Protestants say that by the same means she wants to tempt Condé and turn him into a papist, like was done to Vendôme [Condé’s brother, Antoine de Navarre] stricken with love for la Rouet [Louise de La Beraudière, who had his child]. I am not of the opinion either of the one or the other, but I think that, if however she has a part in the Limeuil affair, it is to attract Condé to her own party and so that he depends on no one but her.)61

Barchino’s comments once again reveal that communication between elite men, in this case ambassadorial intelligence, could be nothing more than scurrilous rumour and unsubstantiated claims. The comments make it clear that contemporaries on both sides of the religious divide believed that Catherine was prepared to sacrifice the honour and reputation of her ladies-in-waiting to further her own political goals. As it was, Condé would crush Catholic hopes and cement his status as Huguenot leader by his marriage to Françoise d’Orléans, Duchesse de Longueville, daughter of the staunchly Protestant Rohan-Orléans family, on 8 November 1565. Thus Limeuil found herself without a partner, exiled from court, and with her reputation tarnished by an illegitimate birth and a stay in prison.

Management of Rumour Limeuil’s scandalous story of cuckoldry, illegitimate birth, and imprisonment would go on to be recounted in almost every history of the Valois court; however, no historian mentioned the poisoning accusation until 1863, when a dossier belonging to L’Aubespine, one of the interrogating bishops, was transcribed and published.62 According to that dossier, the final meeting with the bishops was a confrontation between Limeuil and Maulevrier on 18 July 1564, in which both parties stood by their original assertions. No further action was taken against either party; however, Limeuil remained in prison for a further eight months, all 61 

Archivo Documental Español, vii, Negociaciones con Francia, p. 189. Aumale, ‘Information contre Isabelle de Limeuil’. This obscure publication, in a journal for nineteenth-century bibliophiles, has remained unknown to many historians of the Valois court. 62 

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the while being moved to locations close to the itinerant court where de Saulx’s letters show that Catherine was keeping her under observation. It would appear that Catherine suppressed the information within the dossier, thereby keeping the accusation of poisoning a secret. Even Fresnes, in his privileged position as Catherine’s secretary, seems to have been unaware of the poisoning accusation against Limeuil, never mentioning it in his letters to her. Such behaviour would indicate that an accusation of poisoning was potentially more damaging to one’s reputation than an illegitimate birth. Catherine’s decision to keep Limeuil imprisoned appears to show that, rather than — or as well as — punishing her, Catherine was trying to safeguard Limeuil’s reputation by removing her from the gossip-fuelled environment of the court, while allowing her contemporaries to assume that the red herring of illegitimate birth, rather than poison, was the cause of her disgrace. That the case against Limeuil was not taken any further seems to indicate that Catherine believed the accusations of poisoning to be without substance, but was aware of the links, both metaphorical and literal, between rumour and poison in early modern France. In the same way that venom was thought to invisibly attack a healthy body, causing it to rot from inside, slanderous rumours and gossip were often portrayed as poisons that infiltrated society to critically injure a person’s reputation. In his 1690 Dictionnaire universel, Antoine Furetière defined ‘venom’ in its figurative sense as ‘des discours de medisance, des haines qu’on garde dans le coeur, qui sont causes qu’on fait à son ennemy tout le mal qu’on luy peut faire’ (speeches of slander, of the hatred one keeps in one’s heart, which would cause one to hurt one’s enemy as much as possible).63 When it comes to the term ‘bruit’, the illustrative example given by Furetière speaks volumes about the supposed links between gossip and poison: ‘La Chambre establie contre les empoisonneurs a fait grand bruit, grand éclat dans la France’ (The Chamber established to try the poisoners [the Chambre Ardente of the Affaire des Poisons] was much talked about, made a big impact in France).64 Aware of the destructive power of the poison accusation, Catherine successfully suppressed the venomous denunciation of her lady-in-waiting and let the bruit of the scandalous pregnancy circulate instead. ‘Poison’, as Normand reminds us, ‘was associated with displacement — its perpetrators were often those who simply did not belong’.65 If the accusation of poisoning had been an attempt to exclude Limeuil because of the threat her behav63 

Furetière, Dictionnaire universel, s.v. ‘venim’. Furetière, Dictionnaire universel, s.v. ‘bruit’. 65  Normand, ‘Perceptions of Poison’, pp. 167–68. 64 

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iour presented to the status quo, it was Catherine’s responsibility as her guardian to limit the damage to the reputation of her fille damoiselle by removing her until the controversial relationship with Condé had run its course. Having achieved that, she invited Limeuil to return to court two years later, paving the way for her wedding, on 20 January 1569, less than four years after she was released from prison, to the wealthy Italian financier Scipion Sardini, with whom she would go on to have five children. The widely held theory, therefore, that Catherine manipulated Limeuil for her own political ends and then cruelly abandoned her because of her failure to keep Condé on the side of the crown is unfounded. Instead, the evidence shows her to have been concerned about the reputation of her household; she was discreet when scandal broke, and proactive when it came to rehabilitating someone’s honour. What has been described for centuries as an abuse of monarchical power can be interpreted instead as effective housekeeping. Early modern stereotypes of women as frail, irrational, and prone to gossip are belied by the examination of Limeuil’s case, in which the men involved appear to favour rumour and gossip over the transmission of factual and reliable information. While the men in this case sent each other verse that only told half the story, and boasted to each other of fictitious sexual exploits, Limeuil befriended information-bearers from both religions, who relayed vital intelligence both to and from her cell. Meanwhile, Catherine controlled the flow of information about Limeuil, concealing it from even her most trusted secretaries in order to protect her lady’s reputation. If we can argue in this case for a ‘gendering’ of information management, we also witness a gendering of accusations; while poisoning was seen as a particularly ‘female’ crime, the shaming epithet of ‘cuckold’ was a damaging attack on a man’s reputation. That both could be based purely on scurrilous rumour highlights the arbitrary and fraught nature of creating and defending personal honour and reputation in the early modern period. But not only personal honour was at stake in this case. If Condé had abandoned the Protestant cause to wed the Catholic Limeuil, the ramifications for French Protestantism — and European history — would have been enormous. One can only speculate about whether the taunting of Condé about cuckoldry was a significant factor in his decision to relinquish Limeuil, but were it so, it would demonstrate the power of gossip and rumour on a long-term, international scale. The traditional view of gossip as petty and trivial, concerned ‘only’ with details of interpersonal relationships, therefore needs re-evaluation, especially when those relationships are between politically influential actors.

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Boutier, Jean, Alain Dewerpe, and Daniel Nordman, Un tour de France royal: le voyage de Charles IX (1564–1566) (Paris: Montaigne, 1984) Bowman, Jeffrey A., ‘Infamy and Proof in Medieval Spain’, in ‘Fama’: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. by Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 95–117 Breitenberg, Mark, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Carroll, Stuart, Blood and Violence in Early Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) Cressy, David, Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in PreModern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) Crouzet, Denis, Le Haut Coeur de Catherine de Médicis: une raison politique aux temps de la Saint-Barthélemy (Paris: Albin Michel, 2005) Dubost, Jean-François, La France italienne, xvie–xviie siècle (Paris: Aubier, 1997) Edgerton, Samuel Y., Jr, Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985) Enders, Jody, ‘Dramatic Rumors and Truthful Appearances: The Medieval Myth of Ritual Murder by Proxy’, in Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend, ed. by Gary Alan Fine, Véronique Campion-Vincent, and Chip Heath (New Brunswick: Trans­ action, 2005), pp. 15–29 Fenster, Thelma S., and Daniel Lord Smail, eds, ‘Fama’: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003) Fine, Gary Alan, Véronique Campion-Vincent, and Chip Heath, eds, Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2005) Finucci, Valeria, The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003) Garrisson, Janine, Catherine de Médicis: l’impossible harmonie (Paris: Payot, 2002) Gluckman, Max, ‘Gossip and Scandal’, Current Anthropology, 4 (1963), 307–16 Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) Graham, Victor E., and W. McAllister Johnson, The Royal Tour of France by Charles IX and Catherine de’ Medici: Festivals and Entries 1564–66 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979) Greenidge, A. H. J., Infamia: Its Place in Roman Public and Private Law (Oxford: Cla­ rendon Press, 1864) Hallissy, Margaret, Venomous Woman: Fear of the Female in Literature (New York: Green­ wood, 1987) Heller, Henry, Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth-Century France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003) Herrup, Cynthia, A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law, and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) Horodowich, Elizabeth, ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Life and Political Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies, 19 (2005), 22–45

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Kahn, Coppélia, Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) —— , ‘“The Savage Yoke”: Cuckoldry and Marriage’, in Coppélia Kahn, Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 119–50 La Ferrière, Hector de, Trois amoureuses au xvie siècle: Françoise de Rohan, Isabelle de Limeuil, la Reine Margot (Paris: Levy, 1885) LaGuardia, David, Intertextual Masculinity in French Renaissance Literature: Rabelais, Brantôme, and the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, Women and Gender in the Early Modern World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) McIlvenna, Una, ‘Considering the “Cabal of Cuckoldry”: Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 2010) —— , ‘A Stable of Whores? The “Flying Squadron” of Catherine de Medici’, in The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-Waiting across Early Modern Europe, ed. by Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 181–208 —— , ‘Word versus Honor: The Case of Françoise de Rohan vs. Jacques de Savoie’, Journal of Early Modern History, 16 (October, 2012), Special Issue: ‘Speech and Oral Culture in Early Modern Europe and Beyond’, 315–34 Mollenauer, Lynn Wood, Strange Revelations: Magic, Poison, and Sacrilege in Louis XIV’s France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007) Neubauer, Hans-Joachim, The Rumour: A Cultural History, trans. by Christian Braun (London: Free Association Books, 1999) Normand, Silje, ‘Perceptions of Poison: Defining the Poisonous in Early Modern France’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2005) —— , ‘Venomous Words and Political Poisons: Language(s) of Exclusion in Early Modern France’, in Exploring Cultural History: Essays in Honour of Peter Burke, ed. by Melissa Calaresu, Filippo de Vivo, and Joan-Pau Rubiés (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 113–31 Philippy, Patricia, Painting Women: Cosmetics, Canvases, and Early Modern Culture (Balti­ more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) Sutherland, Nicola, ‘Catherine de Medici: The Legend of the Wicked Italian Queen’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 9 (1978), 45–56 Wanegffelen, Thierry, Catherine de Médicis: le pouvoir au féminin (Paris: Payot, 2005) Wickham, Chris, ‘Gossip and Resistance among the Medieval Peasantry’, Past and Present, 160 (1998), 3–24

The Queen of Bohemia’s Daughter: Managing Rumour and Reputation in a Seventeenth-Century Dynasty Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent

I

n December 1657, thirty-five-year-old Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz, the second daughter of the Elector Palatinate Frederick V, King of Bohemia and his queen, Elizabeth Stuart, slipped away alone from her mother’s household in The Hague in the dead of night to Bergen Op Zoom. From there she travelled to Antwerp, to the heart of the rival Catholic Spanish Netherlands, having left a note for her mother explaining her desire to convert to Catholicism. Was belief at the heart of her secretive behaviour, or were there other motivations? Louise Hollandine had left without her female servants, accompanied for most of her journey by a male Catholic confidant, Sieur de La Rocque, formerly captain of the guards of the powerful French Prince de Condé. Rumours of pregnancy soon circulated when it was discovered that she had left without being laced into her corsets (Louise later recalled that she had left with her corsets in her hand because she could not ask for the assistance of her ladies-in-waiting without alerting them to her departure).1 As the contemporary chronicler, Philippe de Villiers, recorded in his journal on 3 January 1658: ce dessein […] a eu un tout autre mouvement que celui d’un pur zèle, car on sçait de quelle façon elle a autrefois vescu, et l’on soupçonne que la Rocque […] avoit eu quelque entretiens fort secrets avec cette princesse. 1 

Pillorget, ‘Die Kinder Friedrichs V. von der Pfalz in Frankreich’, p. 264.

Susan Broomhall ([email protected]), Winthrop Professor of History, Chief Investigator, ARC Centre for the History of Emotions, 1100–1800, University of Western Australia. Jacqueline Van Gent ([email protected]), Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre for the History of Emotions, 1100-1800, University of Western Australia.

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This plan […] had a completely different motivation than that of pure zeal, for everyone knows in what fashion she lived, and one suspected that La Rocque […] had several secret meetings with this princess.

On 30 January, he was able to add from letters he had received from The Nether­ lands: ‘que la religion avoit servi de pretexte à la fuite de la princesse Louyse et qu’effectivement elle ne s’estoit retirée que pour cacher ce qu’elle aprehendoit que le monde sçeust’ (that religion served as a pretext to the flight of Princess Louise and that effectively she retired only to hide what she feared the whole world knew).2 Which was considered the worse offence — conversion to Catholicism or sexual indiscretion? In whose interests were such rumours? They did not reflect well on the honour of the dynasties of which Louise Hollandine was a member, all leading Protestant families in the mid-seventeenth century, nor did they suit Catholics. In Antwerp Louise Hollandine sought refuge in the English Carmelite convent, and formally converted there on 25 January 1658. Her conversion was an important coup for Catholic groups: the Jesuits, for example, recording in their annual missive to superiors in Rome their part in the conversion of: quos inter una fuit quae stemmatis claritate excellebat prae omnibus, Caroli Stuarti Regis Angliae ex sorore neptis ac Palatini Electoris germana soror, Aloysia nomine. (one who surpassed the others in the brilliance of her pedigree, niece of Charles Stuart King of England by her sister and full sister of the Palatine Elector, called Louise.)3

During her time in Antwerp, Louise Hollandine was visited by various representatives of her family, including her cousin, the English King Charles II, and then travelled to Rouen in March 1658, where she was met by her brother Edward, also a Catholic convert, to be taken to Paris.4 Her Catholic aunt, the exiled Queen Henrietta Maria of England, welcomed her in France.5 Louise Hollandine stayed in the convent of the Visitation of Ste Marie de Chaillot, which her aunt had founded, taking the veil on 25 March 1659.6 However, she was eventually to find a more permanent home with the support of the French queen, Anne of Austria, at Maubuisson where she later, in August 1664, became abbess, dying there in 1709.

2 

Villiers, Journal d’un voyage à Paris, ed. by Faugère, pp. 369, 398–99. Van Spilbeeck, ‘Louise Hollandine’, p. 215. 4  Wendland, ‘Pfalzgraf Eduard und Prinzessin Louise’, p. 60. 5  Wendland, ‘Pfalzgraf Eduard und Prinzessin Louise’, p. 61. 6  Van Spilbeeck, ‘Louise Hollandine’, p. 216. 3 

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Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz is perhaps best known and studied today as a promising artist who had trained with Gerard van Honthorst,7 or to historians of religion as Louise Marie, the Abbess of Maubuisson.8 Yet a persistent feature of her historiography stems from a 1788 publication of character portraits extracted from the letters of Louise Hollandine’s niece, the Princesse Palatine, Elisabeth Charlotte, in which she relates that ‘L’Abbesse de Maubuisson, Louise Hollandine, […] a eu tant de bâtards, qu’elle juroit toujours: par ce ventre qui a porté quatorze enfans’ (The Abbess of Maubuisson, Louise Hollandine, […] had had so many bastards that she swore by ‘this belly that has borne fourteen children’).9 This passage is inconsistent with other letters Elisabeth wrote to her relatives about Louise Hollandine’s piety and austere lifestyle.10 Nonetheless, this has forged her reputation for leading a ‘notoriously gay life’, which led one historian to conclude: ‘could Charles Louis [Louise-Hollandine’s older brother] have secured a dozen or more Louise-Hollandines for the Palatinate, his anxieties about repopulation would have been at an end’.11 A final, alternative interpretation of Louise Hollandine, which has been sustained largely through novels, sees her as a victim of a series of thwarted romances, with her lovers ranging from the Elector of Brandenburg, the Honthorst brothers,12 7 

Von Rohr, ‘“Peint par Madame l’abesse”’; Labordus, ‘Gerard van Honthorst en zijn prinsessen’; and, most recently, Kerstjens, ‘A Princely Painter’. For example, there are documented paintings by Louise Hollandine in Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum), Hannover (Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum), and Isselburg (Museum Wasserburg Anholt). 8  See, for example, Depping, ‘La Princesse Louise-Hollandine’; Dutilleux and Depoin, L’Abbaye de Maubuisson, pp. 61–66; McKenzie, ‘Jane Barker, Louise Hollandine’; Van Spilbeeck, ‘Louise Hollandine’, p. 277; and see also Bossuet, Oeuvres completes, ed. by Lachat, xviii (1864), p.  iii; Maboul, Oraison funebre de Louise Hollandine; Saint-Simon, Mémoires complets et authentiques, ed. by Chéruel, iv, 300–01; Van Spilbeeck, ‘Louise Hollandine’. 9  Bavière, Fragmens de lettres originales, trans. by de Maimieux, i, 7. Reproduced in Charlotte-Elisabeth d’Orléans, Secret Memoirs, p. 390. 10  Some later letters between Louise Hollandine and her sister Sophie are included in State Papers and Correspondence, ed. by Kemble, pp. 447, 465; and, Sophia of Hannover, Sophie de Hanovre, ed. by Van der Cruysse, p. 262. 11  Eberlein, The Rabelaisian Princess, p. 17. See, similarly, Barine, Madame, Mother of the Regent, p. 26. 12  In her biography of Louise Hollandine, Jeanne Holierhoek asks ‘was het de invloed van de katholieke Gerard van Honthorst?’ (was it the influence of the Catholic Gerard Honthorst?). See Holierhoek, ‘Louise Hollandine prinses van de Palts (1622–1709)’, in the Digitaal Vrouwen­lexicon van Nederland online at: [accessed 15 November 2012].

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the Earl of Montrose,13 and a gallant French cavalier, the Sieur d’Épinay.14 In these interpretations Louise Hollandine’s flight from The Hague is an act of revenge on her mother for opposing her marriage. Thus, the major event in the relatively littleknown life of Louise Hollandine, lived at the edge of the von der Pfalz, Stuart, and Orange-Nassau families, has lent itself readily to a multitude of political and religious interpretations for contemporaries and scholars. The aim of our analysis is not to determine what Louise Hollandine did or did not do, but rather to examine how these events, and the rumours that ensued, were managed by various dynastic members, as well as by the Catholic community and Protestant political network. Gossip and rumour have been the object of careful study by early modern historians, who have fruitfully drawn upon anthropological analyses to discern their distinct forms and functions.15 The specific roles of women in such informal communication networks have begun to attract historians’ attention; this indicates that women were often lynchpins of epistolary communications within elite families, transmitting information that had political and dynastic import as well as affective and social significance.16 Although both men and women participated in the circulation of rumour and gossip, women’s use of gossip to gain social power and collective female social regulation,17 and the implications for elite men’s reputations in terms of honour politics have been significant topics of interest in early modern research.18 While some of the earlier analysis of gossip and rumour has examined its ability to permeate the public/private divide, this division is less useful in the study of elite families, in which the actions of individual members had dynastic consequences, and little went unseen or unheard by others. For dynasties, judgements about what was at stake and how action 13 

Irwin, The Bride; see also Buchan, A Stuart Portrait. Tallemant des Réaux, Les Historiettes, ii (1834), pp. 94–96. 15  Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’; Fox, ‘Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion’; Capp, When Gossips Meet; Stewart and Strathern, Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors and Gossip, pp. 29–57; Cowan, ‘Seeing is Believing’. 16  See, for example, Neuschel, Word of Honor; Schlarman, ‘The Social Geography of Grosvenor Square’; Chalus, ‘Elite Women, Social Politics’; Greengrass, ‘Informal Networks’; Horodowich, ‘The Gossiping Tongue’; Couchman, ‘“Give birth quickly”’; Broomhall, ‘Letters Make the Family’; and Broomhall and Van Gent, ‘Corresponding Affections’. 17  Cattelona, ‘Control and Collaboration’; Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’; Capp, When Gossips Meet. 18  Hitchcock and Cohen, eds, English Masculinities; Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination; Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England; Broomhall and Van Gent, eds, Governing Masculinities; Broomhall and Van Gent, ‘Converted Relationships’. 14 

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was to be taken were determined in a group context — one that relied on the wider identity of the dynasty and its collective and patriarchal interests. For the von der Pfalz, Stuart and Orange-Nassau dynasties, who identified as staunchly Protestant, conversions of family members to Catholicism carried political consequences and thus required reputational management that extended beyond the individual concerned.19 Here we intend to examine both men’s and women’s perceptions of the importance of rumour to their identities; we also look at the opportunities they had to manage both personal and dynastic reputation.20 Keith M. Botelho’s important research suggests that it was men who were considered to have ‘a discerning ear’; that is, they asserted authority by deciding which rumours were worthwhile attacking, and which should be ignored.21 Not all members were equal in the decision-making process and not all could effect the same actions. Thus, in this essay we investigate what reputation consisted of, how it could be upheld or lost, and who recognized its importance for individual or dynastic identity. In particular, we explore how female family members assert their views or concerns about their reputations. Analysis of the management of rumour and reputation in this example highlights the importance that early modern dynastic groups assigned to perceptions of female sexual reputation, female honour, and maternal and fraternal responsibilities more broadly. We also explore the particular strategies and mechanisms for management that dynastic members had at their disposal. Scholars have pointed to the ways in which generally elite men and women used the medium of the letter differently in managing familial affairs.22 This case study provides further opportunity for analysis of gender dynamics of early modern reputational management in the epistolary form. The manage19  Diefendorf, ‘Houses Divided’; also Luria, Sacred Boundaries, esp. ‘Divided Families: The Confessional Boundary in the Household’, pp. 143–92; Mader, ‘Konfessionalität im Hause Pfalz-Neuburg’; Mader, ‘Staatsräson und Konversion’; Mader, ‘“[…] wegen unserer conversion Irr und Perplex gemacht”’. On the gendering of these management strategies, see Broomhall and Van Gent, ‘Converted Relationships’. 20  For an earlier study of elite women’s perceptions of honour, see Broomhall, ‘Queens and Court’. 21  Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses, p. 5. 22  For the gendered and strategic uses of correspondence in the wider Orange–Nassau dynasty of which the von der Pfalz were a part, see Berriot-Salvadore, Les Femmes dans la société française, pp. 119–55; Couchman, ‘“Give birth quickly”’; Pascal, ‘Princesses epistolières’; Hodson, ‘The Power of Female Dynastic Networks’; Broomhall and Van Gent, ‘Corresponding Affections’; Broomhall and Van Gent, ‘In the Name of the Father’; Broomhall, ‘Letters Make the Family’; Broomhall and Spinks, Early Modern Women, esp. ‘Memorializing Grief in Familial and National Narratives of Dutch Identity’, pp. 73–98.

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ment of reputation here reveals communication pathways adopted by men and women within and beyond their families. We explore the social networks that family members employed to seek and convey information, and how precisely they were instrumentalized. Finally, we examine the role that the letter itself plays in these communication networks. To date, most literature on gossip and rumour has focused on its oral dimensions, but this case study suggests that written correspondence had a complex role, offering the opportunity not only to convey elite scandal but also to negate it.

Explaining Louise Hollandine’s Actions Understanding the origins of Louise Hollandine’s actions was critical for the family. It was particularly important for Louise Hollandine’s mother, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, to uphold her daughter’s honour, and her own as a mother under whose household management Louise had been living, as well as that of the wider family unit. As the dispossessed and widowed Queen of Bohemia, Elizabeth was living in The Hague on the hospitality of her OrangeNassau relatives, financially impoverished and reliant on the charity of her husband’s kin. Perhaps because of her lack of financial independence, she was fiercely protective of her superior social status as the daughter of an English king, and her social influence in Dutch and English aristocratic networks. Soon after Louise Hollandine’s flight, three letters to her from Maria Elisabeth II van den Bergh op Zoom, the Catholic Princess van Hohenzollern (1613–1671), were discovered. Hohenzollern had been a friend of both Elizabeth Stuart, and the Princess of Orange, Amalia von Solms, at whose court Elizabeth resided.23 Hohenzollern and Elizabeth had enjoyed a close friendship for many years, including travelling incognito themselves to Antwerp in 1654 to watch theatre performances and to meet the celebrated Catholic Swedish Queen Christina there.24 These letters, real or forged, were published in the Dutch Republic soon after the events, in 1658, allowing widespread interrogation of the affair to extend beyond limited elite social networks. Although the letters did not suggest that the Princess of Hohenzollern had prompted Louise Hollandine’s conversion, they revealed her delight and explicit encouragement of Louise to act clandestinely to avoid her mother knowing of her decision. In the first letter Hohenzollern warned 23  24 

Akkerman and Huysman, ‘Een zeventiende-eeuwse catfight’, p. 64. Akkerman and Huysman, ‘Een zeventiende-eeuwse catfight’, p. 64.

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her friend, ‘comme le chose n’est pas d’une petite importance, il y faut aller avec grande precaution’ (as this is a thing of no little importance, one must proceed with great caution).25 In the following letter she suggested that Louise use her brother, Edward, as an excuse for her need to travel, making her mother believe that he had ‘un affaire de si grande importance, qu’il ne pouvoit, en aucune facon la fier ny vous les dire par Lettre’ (an affair of great importance to communicate to you, that he cannot in any way confide to you by letter). As we shall see, the use of letters in this affair illustrates the deeply problematic status of epistolary correspondence as a medium for communication and control of restricted information. Hohenzollern then proposed that Louise borrow her carriage to get to Antwerp, from where she wrote: ‘nous trouverons bien moyen, pour le reste, & aussy des pretexts pour prolonger un se-jour icy, pendant le-quel nous songerons apres ce qu’il y aura a faire’ (we will well find means as to the rest and the pretexts to prolong a stay here, during which we will think what has to be done next).26 Louise Hollandine was to be lodged in Antwerp with a priest and confessor of Hohenzollern’s. In the third letter, Hohenzollern suggested how Louise Hollandine should write the letter she was to leave for her mother: si vous avez le temps de le communiquer au P. il vous escrira cela le mieux au monde; si pourtant, le temps ne permette, vous le ferez assez bien vous mesme: remettez à leur dire les raisons qui vous ont esmeu à changer: lors que vous serrez arrivé au lieu ou vous voulez aller. (if you have the time to communicate it to the priest, he will write it the best in the world, if however time does not permit, you can do it quite well yourself: delay telling them the reasons that have moved you to change until you have arrived in the place you are going).27

Correspondence had enabled Louise Hollandine to participate secretly in a Catholic network while she was living in her mother’s household in The Hague. The publication of these letters among Protestant readers in the Republic reflected poorly on Hohenzollern for deliberately flouting a mother’s authority over her child. The letters clearly suggest that Louise Hollandine had been instructed by others in what to write about her conversion, and on which aspects of her changed beliefs she should remain silent.

25 

Van Aitzema, Historie, ix (1664), pp. 139–40. Van Aitzema, Historie, ix (1664), p. 141. 27  Van Aitzema, Historie, ix (1664), pp. 142–43. 26 

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However, the publication of the letters also highlighted the damage to Elizabeth’s reputation as a mother in control of her household and children. Elizabeth wrote an angry letter to her former friend, and Hohenzollern’s response was also published in the collection. In her response Hohenzollern sympathized with the Queen but rejected the suggestion that she had acted criminally by helping Louise Hollandine to leave her mother’s household. Hohenzollern explained that she was in Louise’s confidence and had a duty to respect this; she asserted that her intention was ‘vouloir prendre soin, que sa dite retraitte, ne peut estre interpretee à mal, & que l’honneur de sa personne peut estre protegé de blame, & calomnie des mesdisans’ (to take care that that her removal not be interpreted ill, and that the honour of her person be protected from blame and calumny of scandal-mongers). Hohenzollern concluded by insisting again on her respect for Elizabeth and all her house, but reiterated that she could not have broken her silence without having thus broken her word to Louise Hollandine.28 However, in arguing that she had sought to quell them, Hohenzollern implied that there was some truth in the damaging rumours about Louise’s actions. Elizabeth’s immediate response was an angry, vengeful one: to punish Hohenzollern. On 6 February 1658, she wrote to the Estates General of the Dutch Republic. There would have been several reasons for involving the leading political men of The Netherlands in the affairs of the Orange-Nassau dynasty. The States of Holland were the godparents of Louise Hollandine and had bestowed her unique name on her. Elizabeth wished to suggest that the Gentlemen of the States held some responsibility for providing assistance to her daughter — a responsibility, indeed, that involved their own honour. Moreover, such intervention from the Republic’s governing body would reinforce the dynasty’s status as one of the nation’s leading families. The Estates acquiesced by writing to the governors of Ecluse, Bergen, Breda, and Bois-le-Duc to look out for the Princess, to try to intercept her, and return her to her mother.29 Later, Elizabeth asked them to seize from Hohenzollern all rights and powers to the lands belonging to her over which the Estates held jurisdiction. She even initiated a campaign to scrutinize the activities of Catholics in leading positions in Hohenzollern lands within the Dutch territories. Elizabeth made clear to the Estates her belief that Hohenzollern had, at the very least, fostered gossip about her daughter by acknowledging in her letter the possibility of such gossip. She wrote that ‘nous avons rencontré dans icelle des calomnies très piquantes’ (we have encountered in it very piquant calumnies). 28  29 

Van Aitzema, Historie, ix (1664), p. 144. Van Spilbeeck, ‘Louise Hollandine’, p. 211.

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Elizabeth linked these rumours directly to her own reputation and that of her family: ‘Elles blessent tellement nostre honneur & celuy de tous les princes et princeses nos parents et alliez’ (These hurt our honour so much and that of all the princes and princesses, our relatives and allies). Elizabeth appealed to them as a widow and a mother in need of the Estates’ protection. She demanded that Hohenzollern be required ‘de nommer les personnes, qui ont preoccupé nos sentiments & nostre esprit de leur conseil pervers, & corrompu nostre naturel; car cette reproche nous est très-sensible’ (to name the people who have preoccupied our sentiments and our mind with their perverse counsel, and corrupted our natural state, for this reproach is very hurtful to us).30 Elizabeth’s letter used strongly emotive language about her feelings of displeasure, sorrow, betrayal, and hurt at the actions of her daughter, those who had helped her, and the commentary on these events now being spread by these same people. Elizabeth interpreted Hohenzollern’s letter to her as intentionally creating or fostering rumours. Yet, it could be said that these were rumours that Elizabeth was then prepared to circulate further herself in seeking to have them quashed. This was a high-risk strategy designed to protect the reputation of the whole dynasty, and it was one that not all members of the von der Pfalz family endorsed. In a separate correspondence to Elizabeth’s eldest son, Charles Louis, the Elector Palatine, her sixth son, Edward, was critical of his mother’s actions. Edward had also converted to Catholicism, secretly leaving for France in 1645 to marry the wealthy French noblewoman Anna Maria Gonzaga, although both his mother and siblings had tried to persuade him to change his mind.31 Cut off from his mother’s patronage and networks, Edward was financially supported by his wife’s family in France. It was, however, in his interests to remain aligned with his elder brother, the family patriarch, Charles Louis. Edward wrote to Charles Louis on 14 February to defend his sister’s conversion and condemn his mother’s aggressive stance towards Hohenzollern: elle navoit onqueun subject de pousser la pr[incesse] de Zollern comme elle a fait, car quant une fillje de lage de celle la ill faut crere quelle peut prandre ses mesurez celon sez advantagez sur tout en sa craeence la quelle luy doit estre libre et la raine a mis cette fame en un tell desespoir quil ny importe plus ce quelle fasse ni ce quelle dise pour sauver son bien. (she has no cause to push the Princess Hohenzollern as she has, for when a girl [is] of the age of this one, one must believe her when she takes measures according to 30  31 

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Letters, ed. by Baker, p. 266. Wendland, ‘Pfalzgraf Eduard und Prinzessin Louise’, pp. 46–47.

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her advantages on what concerns her belief, which should be free to her, and the Queen has put this woman in such despair that it no longer matters what she does or what she says to save herself.)

Edward further noted that ‘nostre mere fait ce qui passe issy pour une action genereuse de sa filje elle la detruict entyeremenet par cette sottise la, car pour la familje ill ny a que le bruict qui fasche car pour leffect sest entre Dieu et elle’ (our mother does what seems like a generous action to her daughter [but] she destroys her entirely by this silliness; as for the family, it is only rumour which is a nuisance, for the other [matter of faith] is between God and her).32 Perhaps it should not be surprising that Edward, who had sought his own freedom of choice to become Catholic, would defend his sister’s right to make the same conversion. However, what is significant is the way in which he interprets his mother’s actions. Although Elizabeth claimed to be defending the honour of her daughter and herself, Edward saw his mother’s antagonism towards Hohenzollern as something likely to further damage the family, and to spawn even more gossip about them as a family or dynasty. Contemporary expectations of female sexuality and maternal responsibility informed the perception of damage to reputation held by both Edward and Elizabeth. But their opposing views on how rumour should be managed exposed fundamental differences in their premises for action. For Edward, the honour of his female relatives was best handled by silently ignoring the rumours; for Elizabeth, rumours had to be actively proven false in order for her own and her daughter’s honour to be restored. Elizabeth thus acted as though her honour was something that could be regained; Edward’s attitude suggested a view that female honour could not be restored through action, and might only be further damaged. While Edward’s strategy suggests that his view about how to manage reputation was gender-based, Elizabeth’s position prioritized the retention of elite social status. Elizabeth’s correspondents included her third son, Rupert. He had spent many years in England supporting his uncle, Charles I, and leading many of the significant Royalist military engagements of the Civil War. As such, it was in Rupert’s interests to provide support to his mother, as his own allegiances and networks in England came via her Stuart status. Thus, Rupert replied to his mother on 23 February 1658 in sympathetic terms, expressing ‘la douleur que m’a fait recevoir le changement de Madame la princesse Louise’ (the sorrow that I received from the changing of Madame Princess Louise) but rejoicing in the fact that: ‘votre Majesté ait eu la bonté de s’en ouvrir à moi; car, outre que c’est une marque de sa confiance, elle me donne la moyen de travailler à les dissiper, et d’en faire remarquer la faus32 

Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 136.

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seté’ (your Majesty has had the goodness to open herself up to me, for apart from the fact that it is a mark of confidence, she has given me the means to strive to dissipate the rumours and to comment on their falseness).33 Rupert’s response to his mother’s letters suggests that he regarded his inclusion in the community with whom she shared this information as an honour. Indeed, his sister’s actions had given him an opportunity to take on a role as one of the dynasty’s representatives in defence of her honour. Managing his family’s reputation thus brought Rupert into the heart of Stuart and von der Pfalz family affairs — affairs in which, as a younger son, he could perhaps not ordinarily have expected to participate. Rupert then wrote to the Estates General, to support his mother’s request, insisting that they should give ‘à la Reine et à toute nostre maison la satisfaction que nous est du, et l’égard des mésdisances, qui augmentent si outragieusement l’injure, qui vous a esté faite par le dit elévement’ (to the Queen and to all our house the satisfaction that is due to us, and with regard to the gossip-mongers that augment so outrageously the injury which is done to you by the removal).34 For Rupert, it was in all their interests to act together, although his sister’s personal reputation was never explicitly mentioned. It seems perhaps that management of any threat to the dynastic or maternal honour of the family could assist Rupert’s own agenda of increasing his power within family networks; however, like Edward, he felt that his sister’s impugned sexual reputation should be met with silence.

Clearing Louise Hollandine’s Reputation As early as 17 January 1658, Edward had written to Charles Louis about his sister’s behaviour, playing down the potential for damaging gossip surrounding her actions: ‘toute la faute quelle a faitte sest de nester pas venu tout droit me trouver […] la faute sera bien tost reparee’ (all the misdeed she has done is to not have come straight to find me [in France]. […] this fault can soon be repaired). Edward had written to Louise and told her what the ‘scandal-mongers’ were saying while she remained isolated from family support in Antwerp. He told Charles Louis that their aunt, Henrietta Maria, was already preparing lodgings for her in France.35 33 

Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, iii, 286–87. Warburton dates this letter to 1649 but this does not seem to the match the circumstances of that year. We have hence suggested that it is from 1658. 34  From the British Library manuscript collection, A Collection of State Papers of John Thurloe, vi, 803 cited in Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, iii, 287–88. 35  Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 135.

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In February, he wrote to Charles Louis that Louise had taken certain actions in response to the gossip: ‘si tost quelle a scu la medisence que lon a fait delle elle sest montre a tout le monde elle ne peut fere d’avantage’ (as soon as she knew of the gossip, she showed herself to all the world, she can do no more).36 Thus both physical visibility (which proved Louise Hollandine was not pregnant) and letters were used as tools to counteract rumour, validate different information, and to act as evidence that supportive networks surrounded Louise. While Edward sought out a practical solution to his sister’s isolation in Antwerp, their mother Elizabeth also continued her attempts to quash rumours circulating about Louise. In March 1658 she wrote to her eldest son, Charles Louis, asking him, as head of the family, to defend his sister’s honour, and attached a copy of the Princess of Hohenzollern’s letter to her. She noted that there could be no truth to the rumours of Louise’s pregnancy, for she had a report of a ‘collation there where Louyse satt uith my Nephues and Neece [Charles II and his sister] at table, she had her goune on and was as lanke as she was here’. She continued: ‘As soone as she uill be at Paris, then she uill satisfie vs all of her innocencie and then I hope you uill vindicate her honour in which the honour of our house is concerned. The States haue done their part for the justice I asked concerning her rape and reuolting her religion’.37 Elizabeth went on to give a detailed description of Hohenzollern’s character and a justification of her own decision to pursue her so vigorously: if she had stood vpon her religion for her assistance to Louyse and not made that scandalous lye, all the papists had taken her and manie others woulde not have bene so much against her, not I neither, but this medisance has lost her all her oune religion and eurie bodie else but those her purse keeps to her and some, but verie few, their oulde galantrie.38

Elizabeth felt strongly that these rumours could not be left undefended. Her letters compared the religious violation of the conversion to a physical violation of her daughter, in order to show that both must be untrue. Presumably, both her brothers and also her mother knew that Louise Hollandine was unlikely to be pregnant, but only Elizabeth used this knowledge in her rhetoric so strongly. Perhaps she saw an implicit association with the rumours some years before concerning d’Épinay (in which inappropriate relationships were hinted at for both mother and daughter) and who had then been killed by her own son, Philip. It 36 

Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 136. Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Letters, ed. by Baker, p. 267. 38  Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Letters, ed. by Baker, pp. 267–68. 37 

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is possible that the connection which had been made in the public imagination between the chastity of the mother and the daughter through the earlier event made Elizabeth particularly determined to quash the present accusations firmly. Charles Louis, the errant family patriarch, was not interested in defending his sister’s honour in the ways his mother suggested. He was something of a renegade within the von der Pfalz family who had already shown himself unlikely to prioritize dynastic concerns over his own interests. Dispossessed of the Palatinate during the Thirty Years War, Charles Louis had shocked people beyond his family when he chose to fight against his uncle and Stuart family interests during the English Civil War, siding with Parliament for what seems to have been potentially the promise of his uncle’s crown.39 Once reinstalled with a smaller portion of his previous Palatinate entitlement, Charles Louis then stunned elite European society by declaring himself divorced from his wife and entering into a morganatic marriage with Marie Louise von Degenfeld. As patriarch, Charles Louis had the authority to act generally as he chose, with scant regard to the consequences for the dynasty’s reputation. In late February he cautioned his mother not to have a confrontation with the Princess of Hohenzollern: ‘in case it be brought to the publique stage by such an accusations as Yr Mty thinkes fitt it will render one if not both persons of quality whom it concerns infamous’.40 In her next letter of 8 April 1658, Elizabeth responded to her son with some vigour: I need not take the paines to render her infamous, she has done it sufficientlie herself to all the worlde by her base mesdisance [gossip] of Louyse, for true or false all the worlde condemnes her for it either for her betraying the trust of her frend that trusted her.41

Elizabeth had had all of Louise’s servants questioned and their statements confirmed by a notary.42 Her laundry maid, for example, attested that she had always personally washed all the princess’s bedding and that there was no trace of ‘unseemliness’; while another noted that ‘the princess had always behaved with honesty

39 

Harris, Clarendon and the English Revolution, p. 133. Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609–74), suspected that Sir Henry Vane and Oliver St John ‘had been playing with the idea of Charles Louis as a possible alternative King’. 40  Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Briefe der Elisabeth Stuart, ed. by Wendland, p. 83. 41  Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Letters, ed. by Baker, p. 270. 42  Wendland, ‘Pfalzgraf Eduard und Prinzessin Louise’, p. 58. The documents can be found at The Hague, City Archives, Notarial Archives, inv. No. 270, 22 March 1658, fols 121–22.

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and virtue’.43 While her brothers appeared to consider that the less said about the rumours the better, establishing the truth of Louise’s condition and having it put on the legal record was of key importance to her mother, Elizabeth. Elizabeth also engaged the Princess of Orange’s private secretary, Constantijn Huygens, to use his own communication networks to find out about Louise’s circumstances in Antwerp and also to confirm her condition. Huygens then wrote to his friend Béatrix de Cusance (1614–1663).44 Beatrix was Catholic, the second wife of Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine and residing at the court of the Infanta Isabella in Brussels. Elizabeth, via Huygens, requested that Beatrix enjoin her Catholic friends, particularly the Bishop of Antwerp, to defend her daughter’s reputation by affirming her true state throughout their religious networks within the Dutch Republic. 45 This request recognized the power of these Catholic social networks to shape the reputation of the Protestant von der Pfalz dynasty in the Republic, as well as signalling the important role of women in organizing and negotiating the discussion of such delicate information into correspondence avenues that were traditionally male. Importantly, Huygens closed the letter by stressing to Beatrix the real nature of Elizabeth’s concerns: En ce particulier il n’est pas question de matiere de religion, mais de la satisfaction d’une mere affligée, en ce qui touche l’honneur de sa fille, qu’elle ne cesse d’affectionner, nonobstant le subject de deplaisir qu’elle luy a voulu donner. (In this particular, it is not a question of religion, but of the satisfaction of an afflicted mother, in what concerns the honour of her daughter, about whom she does not cease to care, despite the displeasure she has given her).46

Ignoring the religious divide between them, he called upon Beatrix as a woman and mother to empathize with the Queen’s plight. A request such as this one from Huygens and also communications between Edward and his mother highlight the importance of letters in providing us with historical facts about powerful communities of elite social networks; they also demonstrate that those concerned understood how correspondence could be a tool to quash rumour by establishing truth. When Beatrix replied to Huygens, from Brussels, in March 1658, she was able to confirm Louise’s condition at first hand: ‘lorsque j’ay veue Madame la prinssese Louisse, je n’ay veue aparance qu’el soit en l’estat que les mesdisant ay medisante 43 

Keblusek, ‘The Bohemian Court in The Hague’, p. 53. Akkerman and Huysman, ‘Een zeventiende-eeuwse catfight’, p. 63. 45  Huygens, De Briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens, ed. by Worp, v, 303–04. 46  Huygens, De Briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens, ed. by Worp, v, 303–04. 44 

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veulle faire croire, car elle estet plustot trop menue que trop puisante’ (I have seen Madame the Princess Louise and I have seen no evidence that she is in the state that the gossip-mongers would have us believe, for she is rather too small than too large).47 By 12 July [1658], Edward could write to Charles Louis, ‘Je vous envoy une coppye du bref du Pape a la pr[incesse] Louise avecque la lettere du cardinal neupheu’ (I am sending you a copy of the letter from the Pope to the Princess Louise with a letter from the Cardinal, his nephew). These letters showed highprofile support for Louise Hollandine coming from both local and international Catholic communities.48 Epistolary backing from the Catholic hierarchy in cases of a prominent aristocratic convert may have been strategic policy at a time of intense religious rivalry, but it also served to shore up Louise Hollandine’s personal honour. It was not in the interests of Catholics, any more than her family, that her reputation and the motivations for her conversion should be questioned.

Identifying the Rumours Just as critical for Elizabeth that the rumours be publicly denied was the urge to trace the pathways by which they had circulated. Elizabeth was determined to identify the chain of communication that had propagated rumours about her daughter. She wrote to Charles Louis on 18 March 1658, attaching Hohenzollern’s letter, and adding you uill finde at least eight great lyes in her letter, in that she woulde reveal that abominable lye to none but me, when she tolde it a month before as soon as she came to this town to diuers persons besides to de Grote, de Witt and Torsy, who tolde it to Somerdike, who saide it to Broughton before my lady Herbert in her house, and as I tolde you in my last.49

Through this careful untangling of a chain of communication, Elizabeth sought to make clear to her son that Hohenzollern’s claim to be protecting Louise Hollandine could not be sincere. This proved that Hohenzollern was an untrustworthy person, capable of spreading rumours, just as Elizabeth claimed she had, and that Elizabeth’s own claims to truth in this matter could be trusted by her son. Not only was Elizabeth now defending herself to society as a respectable and

47 

Huygens, De Briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens, ed. by Worp, v, 304. Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 140. 49  Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Briefe der Elisabeth Stuart, ed. by Wendland, p. 84. 48 

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responsible mother and member of an elite dynasty, but also to her son, Charles Louis: she had been right to doubt Hohenzollern. In her next letter to Charles Louis on 21 March 1658, Elizabeth corrected her earlier claim identifying some of those she then believed had known of the allegations; she now clarified that this may not have been the case. This was an important clarification to make to her son, both to prove her own veracity in doubting the Princess of Hohenzollern’s claims not to have spread rumour, and also in terms of determining just how far afield people knew of the rumours. Elizabeth then listed other instances in Hohenzollern’s correspondence with Edward that did not match what she had been able to ascertain from third parties. She concluded to Charles Louis: by all this you may see what beleef you can giue to her stories, I dout not but Ned has uritten to you to excuse her proceedings and to condemn mine, as cause of the publishing of that base calumie, but he is verie much mistaken, for she had published it before I euer knew it or she had sent to speak uith me, […] Ned saith que ie l’ay poussé au bout [that I pushed her to the limit] which I did not doe, but coulde doe no less then complaine of her helping and counselling Louyses change and unhandsome leauing of me and did as ciuilie as I coulde else it had bene beleeue[d], I had bene priuie to it, and did not meane to haue pursued it […] Ned sooner belieeues her then me, and his excusing of her doth his sister no smale wrong, both here and in France. I urite this to you, that you may know all the truth of the business as farr as I know it, neither uill I urite but what I ame sure is true.50

Elizabeth knew, therefore, that Charles Louis was being supplied with an alternative interpretation of the rumour-mongering by his younger brother, Edward, and pushed strongly for Charles Louis to support her views and actions. To her other son, Rupert, Elizabeth likewise reiterated her claims to truth in this matter, insisting that she was the more reputable of the two protagonists: ‘Ned doth not acknowledge his error in having so good an opinion of the P. of H. She is detested by Protestant and Papist’.51 Not only had Louise’s flight exposed Elizabeth’s lack of household authority, but now she had to convince her own sons of the justice of her actions and claims. By 23 May 1658, Elizabeth noted that although she had previously suggested that Charles Louis write a letter to Hohenzollern ‘to make her either denie or proue her base lye concerning Louyse’, she had since thought:

50  51 

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Letters, ed. by Baker, pp. 268–69. Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia Letters, ed. by Baker, pp. 271–72.

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that it uill be better for you to urite to the Pss. of Zolerne a sharpe but not vnciuil letter of the medisance she has made of your sister and that if she doth not unsaye it againe vous vous resentirez, for to urite to her to proue it, uill shrew as if you were not confident of your sisters innocence. […] onelie I pray, send this letter to the Princess of Zolerne as soone as you can, for she continues still to brag, and continue her lyes.52

Elizabeth’s stance continued to soften, perhaps because she was getting very little practical assistance from her eldest son. By her letter of 24 June 1658, Elizabeth had altered her narrative of events: As for the Ps. of Zolernes business I neuer was of a minde to make a process of it, and if you haue well marked my letter, I onelie desired you to urite a quick letter to her to vnsay what she had saide, else you woulde finde a time to resent it, I ame as much as you against proouing and finding.

Although the outcome she desired from Hohenzollern and her son had changed, she was not, nevertheless, willing to relinquish the truth of her claims: ‘I haue done what is fit for me and all I can to vindicate your Sisters honour and so of your house, I thanke God none can reproche me for it, that my negligence has made people belleeue still the Pss. Of Zolernes lyes’.53 By now she was defending her own honour as much as that of Louise. Elizabeth’s familial authority was unravelling with every letter as she met practical resistance from her eldest son and became increasingly aware of the counter-claims and defences promulgated by her younger Catholic son, Edward.

The Question of Forgiveness Elizabeth was gradually getting a sense that others were responding hesitantly to her call to defend herself and her daughter. Their cautious reactions and slow acceptance of her position caused Elizabeth to moderate her own. In her letter to Charles Louis of 18 March, Elizabeth related that the king [Charles II in exile] went thither uith his Brothers and Sisters; they woulde not goe without asking me leaue, whether I woulde permitt them to doe it. […] The King and my Neece chid her for what she had done in changing her religion and leauing me so un handsomelie. To the first she pretended her contience but to the other, she saide, she was very sorie she had angred me.54 52 

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia Letters, ed. by Baker, pp. 272–73. Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia Letters, ed. by Baker, pp. 275–76. 54  Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Briefe der Elisabeth Stuart, ed. by Wendland, p. 85. 53 

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For Elizabeth, it was important to convey to her oldest son that Louise herself recognized that she had disobeyed her mother. This helped to uphold her own authority within the family. Elizabeth wrote to her son Rupert on 29 April 1658 defending her position not to pardon Louise, thus reinforcing her familial authority: The Queen [Anne of Austria] wrote to me, that she will have a care of her as of her own daughter, and begs her pardon: but I have excused it as handsomely as I could, and entreated her not to take it ill, but only to think what she would do, if she had had the same misfortune.55

Elizabeth’s forgiveness of her daughter would be a long time coming. As Edward wrote to Charles Louis on 8 October: ‘la raine nostre mere fait tant de fason sur laferre de ma seur quelle men fait pittye […] la pauvre filje ne croit pas pouvoir ester contant jusques a ce que sa mere luy aye taymogne, elle laime encore’ (the Queen our mother makes such a fuss about the affair of my sister that she makes me pity her […] the poor girl will not believe herself content until her mother has witnessed it to her [that] she loves her still).56 Louise was perhaps the one person over whom Elizabeth could successfully maintain her authority, by withholding not practical assistance, but affection. Just how far she should do so was a matter on which Elizabeth sought the advice of her eldest son, Charles Louis. On 14 July 1659, she wrote of the ‘diuers letters from the Queene, my Sister and the King to beg Louyses pardon, which hitherto I haue excused. I pray let me know your opinion, whither I shoulde do it, if I haue againe another letter to press me to it?’57 She repeated her request for Charles Louis’s advice in a later letter of 4 August 1659, where she asked whether she ought to forgive the Sieur de La Rocque, who had assisted in the plot: I haue putt off those that spoke for him til now, but if I shoulde chance to forgiue Louyse, I shal againe be importuned for him and I know not what to doe, for if I see him againe, some may think I doe it, to stop his mouth concerning the Princess of Zolernes base accusation of Louyse […] I pray, let me know freelie your opinion what is best for me to doe, and what you think uill be best for to stop all causeries.58

As Louise Hollandine and her supporters continued to push for Elizabeth’s forgiveness, her mother was left in a quandary. This was not simply a matter of maternal 55 

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Letters, ed. by Baker, pp. 271–72. Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 143. 57  Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Letters, ed. by Baker, p. 285. 58  Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Letters, ed. by Baker, p. 286. 56 

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love, but also of Elizabeth’s reputation and authority. Then, by November of the same year, Edward wrote to Charles Louis, that ma seur la novisse a ressu le pardon de la raine sa mere, mais comme elle dit par obeisance luy ayent et ordone par la raine sa belle seur et le roy son neupheu que san sa elle ne loroit pas fait (my sister the novice has received the pardon of the Queen my mother, but as she says by obedience, having been ordered by the Queen her sister in law [Henrietta Maria] and the King her nephew [Charles II] without which she would not have done it).59

Thus, it was the wider network of the Stuarts that finally insisted on a resolution to Louise Hollandine’s situation through her formal affective reintegration in the family. This could only have undermined Elizabeth’s personal and maternal authority as well as her sense of her own honour. Financial support for Louise Hollandine after her conversion likewise engaged various notions of the family’s honour. This was a particular concern for her brothers, more so than for her mother, because they were responsible for supplying her with such support. This had been raised early on in 1658 by Edward to Charles Louis, when he wrote on 14 February 1658 of his motivations for supporting his sister; he had ‘fait ce que mon devoir et la nature monct oblige de fere’ (done what my duty and nature had obliged me to do). He determined that ‘tout ce si ne ce peut reparer que par le voile et sest aquoi je taschere den venir about si elle vienct entre mes mains […] je croy que cest le mieuz que lon peut fere pour la familje’ (all this can be repaired only by the veil and it is to that that I try to have her come into my care […] I think that it is the best that one can do for the family).60 For Edward, the best outcome for family honour was to see Louise placed in a convent. In January of 1659 he wrote again to Charles Louis, asking what financial contribution he was prepared to bestow upon his younger sister to ease her into a suitable convent.61 In March 1659 Edward was still chasing clarification of the precise financial support Louise could expect from their elder brother. This contribution was now a matter of honour for Edward as well as for Louise herself: ‘je suis honcteu dimportuner la raine pour les petites chosez qui luy faudra […] en attendant, je lassisteres toujous ce lon mon petit pouvoir’ (I am ashamed to importune the Queen [Anne of Austria] for little things which she needs […] whilst waiting, I

59 

Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 159. Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 136. 61  Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 150. 60 

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still help her according to my small power).62 Now, it was Edward’s turn to experience dynastic and personal dishonour through his brother’s delaying tactics, when he was obliged to seek extensive financial and material assistance from the French court. In May he wrote again of his despair of assuring Louise of financial support from her family, but he was careful to demonstrate his understanding of the family hierarchy and his subordinate position within it: ‘je […] assure V.A.E. que on humeur sera toujours egall pour vous server, pour ce qui tousche la pr Louise, je suis bien fashe davoir servy davocat en une affere qui a si mall reussy’ (I […] assure Your Highness that my desire is always to serve you, in what relates to Louise, I am very annoyed to have served as champion in an affair which has turned out so poorly). He criticized Charles Louis’s ‘chetiff ’ (paltry) offer, which he compared to the wages of a chambermaid and, significantly, asked him explicitly to reflect upon ‘ce qui sera plus honorable pour nostre maison’ (what will be the most honourable for our house).63 The family’s honour and reputation in France were the focus of Edward’s requests for financial support for Louise, and Edward’s own reputation could be damaged by Charles Louis’s delays and meagre support for his sister. Importantly, he was careful not to upset his older brother in direct correspondence with him, even though he had not hesitated to criticize the equally unsympathetic behaviour of their mother in this affair. In the end, Edward’s religious alliance with his sister was not strong enough to make him challenge his subordinate status within the family hierarchy.

Conclusions Rumours about the circumstances of Louise Hollandine’s conversion had a series of consequences not restricted only to herself. The scandal may have been about her actions, but it implicated the honour and authority of her mother, brothers, of Dutch Protestants, the Estates General, and Catholic aristocratic networks. These elite men and women debated and promoted various strategies to clear their respective reputations. This episode was not simply an incidental conflict between women; we argue that the leading men in the family at the time played an equally important part. At least two of her sons differed significantly from their mother, Elizabeth, in their views on the management of rumour and its subsequent consequences for their reputations. 62  63 

Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 152. Hauck, ‘Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs’, p. 153.

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A key point of this case study is what it reveals about Elizabeth Stuart’s sense of honour — as a mother able to supervise her daughter; about her duty to defend the house; about her ability to have her sons comply with her requests. As a mother she stood also for the dynasty, but she interpreted this as distinct from her own personal reputation. Elizabeth appears to have seen her role as a mother as one that held her more responsible for an unmarried daughter’s sexual transgressions than for her religious ones (and in contrast to the many sexual transgression of her sons). It is not clear that her sons recognized such a distinction, and generally they interpreted her actions as emotional and irrational. Elizabeth identified a woman, the Princess of Hohenzollern, who had been a member of her circle of close associates, as the source of the damaging rumours. In doing so, her intention was to take the blame off Louise (and implicitly off herself ). Her view of what needed to be done to restore female honour exposed marked differences with the viewpoints of her sons. But Elizabeth did not act just on her own; she also acted in negotiation with her sons and other members of the wider dynasty. Indeed, a wide range of mechanisms were put in place to try to address the gossip surrounding Louise Hollandine’s actions. Rupert helped by encouraging the Estates General to take political action; letters of support were garnered from the Catholic aristocratic network of Antwerp; and extended family links with the Orange and Stuart dynasties were used to support the von der Pfalz family symbolically as well as materially. Indeed, these same families also came back to control Elizabeth, forcing her to forgive her daughter for the sake of preserving the wider interests of the dynasties and overriding her own personal sense of honour. However, Louise Hollandine’s brothers, Charles Louis and Edward, perceived their mother’s actions as being at odds with their own senses of honour and their own reputations — reputations that required them to assist their sister in one case (Edward) or to not engage too readily in anything that might stoke unseemly gossip or entail financial obligations (Charles Louis). In their correspondence with each other, and with their mother, they downplayed the rumours and, in particular, they refused to give the same weight as their mother to the accusations of sexual transgression. In this sense, Charles Louis and Edward made their own decisions about which rumours were worthwhile attacking and which should be ignored. Sometimes, doing nothing revealed who held most power and also served to reinforce that power. Finally, if Louise Hollandine had hoped to marry or indeed to be independent like Queen Christina of Sweden, the most celebrated recent aristocratic convert of the era, it was not to be. Monastic life was a prerequisite in the eyes of both Catholic and Protestant members of her family as well as her supporters for clearing her name. The onus was finally on Louise herself to retreat from society in order to quell rumours and thereby reinstate her reputation and that of her family.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Bavière, Charlotte-Elisabeth de, Fragmens de lettres originales, trans. by Joseph de Maimieux, 2 vols (Paris: Maradan, 1788) Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, Oeuvres complètes de Bossuet, ed. by François Lachat, 31 vols (Paris: Vivès, 1862–66) Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Briefe der Elisabeth Stuart, Königin von Böhmen, an ihren Sohn, den Kurfürsten Carl Ludwig von der Pfalz, 1650–1662, ed. by Anna Wendland, Biblio­­thek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 228 (Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart, 1902) Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, Letters of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, ed. by L. M. Baker (London: Bodley Head, 1953) Hauck, Karl, Die Briefe der Kinder des Winterkönigs, Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher,15 (Heidelberg: Koester, 1908) Huygens, Constantijn, De Briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens (1608–1687), ed. by J. A. Worp, 6 vols (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1911–17) Maboul, Jacques, Oraison funebre de Louise Hollandine, princesse palatine de Bavière, abbesse de Maubuisson (Paris: Simart, 1709) Orléans, Charlotte-Elisabeth, duchess d’, Secret Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV, and of the Regency (London: Whittaker, 1824) Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, Mémoires complets et authentiques du duc de Saint-Simon sur le siècle de Louis XIV et la Régence, ed. by Pierre Adolphe Chéruel, 21 vols (Paris: Hachette, 1829–30) Sophia of Hannover, Sophie de Hanovre: Mémoires et lettres de voyage, ed. and trans. by Dirk Van der Cruysse (Paris: Fayard, 1990) State Papers and Correspondence: Illustrative of the Social and Political State of Europe from the Revolution to the Accession of the House of Hanover, ed. by John M. Kemble (London: Parker, 1857) Tallemant des Réaux, Gédéon, Les Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux: Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du xviie siècle, 9 vols (Paris, Levavasseur, 1834–35) Van Aitzema, Lieuwe, Historie of verhael van Saken van Staet en oorlogh (1657–1660), 14 vols (’s-Gravenhage: Iohan Veely, 1657–71) Villiers, Philippe de, Journal d’un voyage à Paris en 1657–1658, ed. by A.-P. Faugère (Paris: Duprat, 1862) Warburton, Eliot, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, 3 vols (London: Bentley, 1849)

Secondary Studies Akkerman, Nadine, and Ineke Huysman, ‘Een zeventiende-eeuwse catfight: de geloofsvorgang van Louise Hollandine van der Palts als inzet bij de annspraken op her Markiezat van Bergen op Zoom (1657–1659)’, De Waterschans, 2 (2011), 63–72

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Barine, Arvède, Madame, Mother of the Regent, 1652–1722 (New York: Putnam, 1909) Berriot-Salvadore, Evelyne, Les Femmes dans la société française de la Renaissance (Genève: Droz, 1990) Botelho, Keith M., Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumour and Early Modern Masculinity (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2009) Broomhall, Susan, ‘Letters Make the Family: Nassau Family Correspondence at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century’, in Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters, ed. by Julie D. Campbell and Anne R. Larsen (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 25–44 —— , ‘Queens and Court: Gendering the Culture of Honour at the Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Court’, in Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 181–94 —— , and Jacqueline Van Gent, ‘Converted Relationships: Re-negotiating Family Status after Religious Conversion in the Nassau Dynasty’, Journal of Social History, 47 (2014), 647–72 —— , and Jacqueline Van Gent, ‘Corresponding Affections: Emotional Exchange among Siblings in the Nassau Family’, Journal of Family History, 34 (2009), 143–65 —— , and Jacqueline Van Gent, eds, Governing Masculinities in the Early Modern Period: Regulating Selves and Others (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011) —— , and Jacqueline Van Gent, ‘In the Name of the Father: Conceptualizing Pater Familias in the Letters of William the Silent’s Children’, Renaissance Quarterly, 62 (2009), 1130–66 —— , and Jennifer Spinks, Early Modern Women in the Low Countries: Feminizing Sources and Interpretations of the Past (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011) Buchan, Alice, A Stuart Portrait: Elizabeth, Daughter of James I (London: Davies, 1934) Capp, Bernard, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Cattelona, Georg’Ann, ‘Control and Collaboration: The Role of Women in Regulating Female Sexual Behaviour in Early Modern Marseille’, French Historical Studies, 18 (1993), 13–35 Chalus, Elaine, ‘Elite Women, Social Politics, and the Political World of Late EighteenthCentury England’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000), 669–97 Couchman, Jane, ‘“Give birth quickly and then send us your good husbands”: Informal Political Influence in the Letters of Louise de Coligny’, in Women’s Letters across Europe, 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion, ed. by Jane Couchman and Ann M. Crabb (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 163–84 Cowan, Alexander, ‘Seeing is Believing: Urban Gossip and the Balcony in Early Modern Venice’, Gender & History, 23 (2011), 721–38 Depping, G., ‘La Princesse Louise-Hollandine, Abbesse de Maubuisson et son frère le Prince Edouard, Palatin du Rhin’, Bulletin de la Societe de l’Histoire du protestantisme francais, 24 (1875), 421–25 Diefendorf, Barbara, ‘Houses Divided: Religious Schism in Sixteenth-Century Parisian Families’, in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. by Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989)

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Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland http://www.historici.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/ DVN/lemmata/data/LouiseHollandine [accessed 15 November 2012] Dutilleux, Adolphe, and Louis Joseph Depoin, L’Abbaye de Maubuisson (Nôtre-Dame-la Royale): histoire et cartulaire (Pontoise: Amédée, 1882) Eberlein, Harold Donaldson, The Rabelaisian Princess: Madame Royal of France (Nor­ wood: Plimpton, 1931) Fletcher, Anthony, Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) Fox, Adam, ‘Rumour, News and Popular Political Opinion in Elizabethan and Stuart England’, Historical Journal, 40 (1997), 597–62 Foyster, Elizabeth A., Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex, and Marriage (London: Longman, 1999) Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) Greengrass, Mark, ‘Informal Networks in Sixteenth-Century French Protestantism’, in Society and Culture in the Huguenot World 1559–1685, ed. by Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 78–97 Harris, R. W., Clarendon and the English Revolution (London: Chatto & Windus/ Hogarth, 1983) Hindle, Steve, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley: Gossip, Gender and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change, 9 (1994), 391–419 Hitchcock, Tim, and Michèle Cohen, eds, English Masculinities, 1660–1800 (London: Longman, 1999) Hodson, Simon, ‘The Power of Female Dynastic Networks: A Brief Study of Louise de Coligny, Princess of Orange, and Her Stepdaughters’, Women’s History Review, 16 (2007), 335–51 Horodowich, Elizabeth, ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Life and Political Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies, 19 (2005), 22–45 Irwin, Margaret, The Bride: The Story of Louise and Montrose (London: Chatto & Windus, 1939) Keblusek, Marika, ‘The Bohemian Court in The Hague’, in Princely Display: The Court of Frederik Hendrik of Orange and Amalia van Solms, ed. by Marika Keblusek and Jori Zijlmans (The Hague: Haags Historisch Museum/Waanders, 1998), 47–57 Kerstjens, Christopher A., ‘A Princely Painter: Princess Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate, Abbess of Maubuisson’, Court Historian, 4 (1999), 161–66 Labordus, Jorunn, ‘Gerard van Honthorst en zijn prinsessen’, in Vrouwen en kunst in de Republiek, ed. by Els Kloek, Catherine Peters Sengers, and Esther Tobé (Hilversum: Verloren, 1998), pp. 79–88 Luria, Keith P., Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2005) Mader, Eric-Oliver, ‘Konfessionalität im Hause Pfalz-Neuburg: Zur Bedeutung des Faktors ‘Konversion’ für das konfessionelle Profil einer Herrscherdynastie’, in Barocke Herrschaft am Rhein um 1700: Kurfürst Johann Wilhelm  II. und seine Zeit, ed. by Benedikt Mauer (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2009), pp. 95–115

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—— , ‘Staatsräson und Konversion: Politische Theorie und Praktische Politik als Ent­ scheidungshintergründe für den Übertritt Wolfgang Wilhelms von Pfalz-Neuburg zum Katholizismus’, in Internationale Beziehungen in der Frühen Neuzeit: Ansätze und Perspektiven, ed. by Heidrun Kugeler, Christian Sepp, and Georg Wolf (Münster: Lit, 2006), pp. 120–50 —— , ‘“[…] wegen unserer conversion Irr und Perplex gemacht”: Wahrnehmungen, Dar­ stellungen und Vorbedingungen der Konversion des Pfalzgrafen Wolfgang Wilhelm von der Pfalz-Neuburg zum Katholizismus’, Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch, 75 (2004/5), 109–41 McKenzie, Niall, ‘Jane Barker, Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate and “Solomon’s Wise Daughter”’, Review of English Studies, 25 (2007), 64–72 Neuschel, Kristen B., Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989) Pascal, Eugénie, ‘Princesses epistolières au tournant du xvie au xviie siècle: Consom­ matrices de culture, mécènes et/ou propagandistes?’, in Patronnes et mécènes en France à la Renaissance, ed. by Kathleeen Wilson-Chevalier and Eugénie Pascal (SaintEtienne: Publications de l’université de Saint-Etienne, 2007), pp. 101–31 Pillorget, René, ‘Die Kinder Friedrichs V. von der Pfalz in Frankreich: Philipp, Eduard und Luise-Hollandine, Äbtissin von Maubuisson’, Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landes­ geschichte, 44 (1981), 257–68 Rohr, Alheidis von, ‘“Peint par Madame l’abesse”: Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz (1622–1709)’, Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte, 28 (1989), 143–60 Schlarman, Julie, ‘The Social Geography of Grosvenor Square: Mapping Gender and Politics, 1720–1760’, London Journal, 28 (2003), 8–28 Stewart, Pamela J., and Andrew Strathern, Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors and Gossip, New Departures in Anthropology, 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Van Spilbeeck, I., ‘Louise Hollandine, Princesse palatine de Bavière’, Précis historiques, 36 (1885), 201–17 and 263–85 Wendland, Anna, ‘Pfalzgraf Eduard und Prinzessin Louise, zwei Konvertiten des Kur­ hauses Pfalz-Simmern’, Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher, 16 (1909), 43–80

Gossip, Intimacy, and the Early Modern Scottish Household Katie Barclay

I

n 1741 James, 5th Duke of Hamilton, lay ill in bed; he died in March 1743. He was magnate of a vast duchy and held the premier peerage in Scotland. His eldest son, a child of his first marriage who inherited the title and estate on his death, was a teenager at Oxford, graduating a month after his father’s death. The 5th Duke lived with his third wife, Anne, and their two young children, Anne and Archibald (a third son, Spencer, was born in 1742). In the same year, Dorothy Salisbury, an unmarried servant within the household of the Duke, became pregnant to Alexander Inglis, Master of the Horse. To prevent scandal she was quickly removed from the household and sent to Edinburgh, where she gave birth to a son. Between 1742, when she left the Hamilton household, and 1744, Dorothy wrote a series of letters to Alexander that detailed her life in Edinburgh, Hamilton, and later in London, as she waited for him to fulfil his promise of marriage. Alexander, however, was a reluctant suitor, failing to write with regularity, failing to pass on news about her son (who was at nurse near the Hamilton estate), and failing to visit. Fortunately for Dorothy, his reticence was compensated for by her friends and colleagues still working within Hamilton Palace, who wrote to her regularly with ‘family’ gossip. Indeed, her gossip networks were often so effective that it was Dorothy who kept Alexander apprized of events within the household. What her letters make apparent is that gossip had a central function in creating intimacy within the Hamilton household, tying both servants and employers into a familial relationship and continuing that intimacy even after the contractual ties of service dissolved. This article explores the role of gossip within Dorothy’s letters, discussing how gossip was Katie Barclay ([email protected]), Discovery Early Career Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, 1100–1800, University of Adelaide.

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both a manifestation of, and also a mechanism for, creating intimacy between the Hamiltons and their servants, and between Dorothy and Alexander, as a courting couple. Through doing so, it engages in a broader debate around the experiences of those working in service and on the nature of the relationship between master and servant in the mid-eighteenth century. Intimacy is ultimately based upon knowledge of the other; this means that gossip, once defined at its most simplistic as ‘talking about other people behind their backs’, has potentially a significant role to play in its development.1 One of the central social functions of gossip has been in the creation of the group, marking who was included, as well as its boundaries. Being part of a network of gossips implied a certain level of shared trust, as well as the right to access certain forms of information, whilst being gossiped about defined a person as part of the larger community (if not the gossip network), even if the purpose of such gossip was ultimately to demarcate that individual as ‘out of place’ within it.2 As such, gossip historically held a powerful regulatory function, conferring social power on people with information, particularly in societies where personal reputation was central to social and economic credit. Moreover, in a social context where ‘truth’ was weighted by the social class of the speaker, where the word of the social elites was given a greater truth value due to their class, gossip was an effective means of providing an alternative version of events. This in turn meant that gossip was a useful weapon of resistance for those without formal power, including the lower classes, servants, and particularly women.3 Yet, as Robert Paine reminds us, gossip was also a ‘catalyst of social process’, an instrument that could be used to multiple ends by the skilled user.4 It is to Dorothy’s uses that we now turn. Despite the numerical importance of servants during the eighteenth century, the history of men and women in service has only come to fruition in recent years.5 Although we now have an increasingly detailed picture of their economic and social significance, servants themselves have remained stubbornly silent. In recent years 1 

Wickham, ‘Gossip and Resistance’, p. 11. Spacks, Gossip; Abrahams, ‘A Performance-Centered Approach to Gossip’; Cowan, ‘Gossip and Street Culture in Early Modern Venice’; Horodowich ‘The Gossiping Tongue’; Gelles, ‘Gossip’. 3  Scott, Weapons of the Weak, pp. 282–84; Capp, When Gossips Meet; Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’. 4  Paine, ‘What Is Gossip About?’ p. 283. 5  Hill, Servants; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 387–97; Hecht, The Domestic Servant in Eighteenth-Century England; Steedman, Labour’s Lost; Simonton, ‘Birds of Passage or Career Women’. 2 

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attempts have been made to address this lacuna, exploring the writings of the few servants who published memoirs, looking at literary representations of servants from the period, and attempting to reconstruct their lives through references in their employers’ writings.6 In particular, with increasing recognition of the vulnerability of, particularly female, servants to sexual and physical violence within the household, the nature of ‘intimacy’ within the home has come under the spotlight, where ‘intimacy’ is often used as a euphemism for the complex sexual experiences of servants, ranging from consensual intercourse to rape.7 Similarly, the master–servant relationship has come under scrutiny, with loyalty, trust, reciprocity, obedience, and even love explored to unpick the emotional dynamics of the household.8 Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the wide variety of people and households covered by these histories, the picture that is developing is not straightforward; it demonstrates a range of dynamics from relationships that ranged from toxic, violent, and resented to those that were loving, compassionate and, if not equal, respectful and mutually beneficial. During the eighteenth century, this story was complicated by a contemporary change in the nature of service, from a relationship based on patrimony and patronage to one based on contracted and waged labour.9 Moreover, this is a shift that has been viewed in emotional terms, where, as Maza argues for France, hiring families could no longer rely on the loyalty of their servants, and so servants were no longer used as the ‘face’ of the family on public occasions. This, she argues, led to the ‘domestication’ of the servant, enclosing servants within the household and increasingly replacing male servants with female.10 Historians of England have tended to see the ‘feminization’ of domestic labour in terms of a growth in alternative occupations for men and an increasing incidence of frugal middle-class employers taking advantage of low wages. Whether Maza’s thesis applies across the Channel has yet to be explored.11 6  Davidoff, ‘Class and Gender in Victorian England’; Benson, ‘One Man and His Women’; Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England; Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter; Richardson, Household Servants in Early Modern England; Humfrey, The Experience of Domestic Service. 7  Broomhall, Emotions in the Household, especially chapters by Bibring, Gordon, lamberg, and Ojala; Straub, Domestic Affairs. A useful counterpoint is Mann, ‘Whether your Ladiship Will or Ne’. 8  Fairchild, Domestic Enemies; Maza, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century France; Steedman, Master and Servant. 9  Cooper, ‘Service to Servitude?’; Steedman, Labour’s Lost; Steedman, Master and Servant, pp. 147–51. 10  Maza, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century France, pp. 299–330. 11  Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 388; Hill, Servants, pp. 35–43.

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In this context, Dorothy Salisbury’s letters offer a unique opportunity to include a servant’s voice in the discussion of the nature of intimacy within the household, during a period where master–servant relationships were beginning to be redefined. The study of intimate relationships is a flourishing field, yet intimacy is a term that is often employed without precision; it can describe a variety of relationships where people were in close contact, including lovers, spouses, siblings, friends, master and servant, colonizer and subaltern, and more.12 It is used to denote both the nature of the relationship, and also the emotional implications and consequences, although generally the latter have been given less attention. Physical proximity has become increasingly central to understandings of intimacy, so that Philippe Aries argues that by the eighteenth century, ‘the sentiment of family is tied to the house, to the government of the house, to life in the house’.13 Others have gone further, emphasizing the physicality of the intimate relationship, including touch, as well as the labour of maintaining a body, often performed in the past by servants, who carried out duties like washing, dressing, and dealing with bodily waste materials, such as shit, blood, and sweat.14 The knowledge of their masters’ most private functions that servants gained through their labour was understood as providing them with access to their employers’ sense of self. As a result, the intimacy built through such relationships has been shown to destabilize traditional power hierarchies, particularly by those in postcolonial studies.15 For the purpose of this article, intimacy is understood as an emotional framework that is built upon knowledge of the other; in this context knowledge comes from the physical proximity of being part of the same household. It is a framework that allows an array of licit and illicit emotions, such as loyalty, love, trust, desire, hate, and resentment. As will be explored below, gossip was a central tool in creating intimacy within the household.

Dorothy Salisbury, Alexander Inglis, and the Hamilton Household Dorothy Salisbury was sent to Edinburgh in December 1741. As her fellow servant, Christian Cunningham noted excitedly to her brother, William, an ensign in Colonel Long’s regiment: ‘Miss Doly is with Child to Ingels and is put out of the 12  Barclay, Love, Intimacy and Power; Barclay, ‘Intimacy and the Life-Cycle’; Steedman, ‘Intimacy in Research’; Perry, ‘The Autocracy of Love’; Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity. 13  Quoted in Pucci, ‘Snapshots of Family Intimacy’, p. 93. 14  Gowing, Common Bodies; Brown, ‘Body Work in Antebellum United States’. 15  Ballantyne and Burton, Moving Subjects; Stoler, Haunted by Empire.

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house but they most kepe it up from the Duke till he be better so that Ingels stil stays till he kno of it’.16 Dorothy was to live in Edinburgh, with brief interludes to friends in Hamilton, until July 1742, giving birth to her son before that date. Her letters to Alexander from this period are undated, but describe her accommodation, support networks (drawn from the Hamilton household) and the nurse that took charge of their child. In July 1742 Dorothy moved south to London, where she remained until the correspondence ceased in April 1744, by which time she had secured a position as a lady’s companion to the newly-widowed Mrs Corbiere at £10 sterling a year.17 Very little is known about Dorothy’s background, but she appears to have been one of Anne Spencer, 5th Duchess of Hamilton’s (d. 1771) lady’s maids. Anne financially supported her during her lying-in and may have provided her with a settlement that helped support her over the following year, an arrangement that was not unheard of during the period.18 Given that Salisbury was not a local name in the Hamilton area, and combined with the evidence of Anne’s subsequent patronage, it may be that Dorothy had joined the household with Anne on her marriage to the Duke in 1737 and originated, like the Duchess, from Rendlesham in Essex or its vicinity. When she arrived in London, Dorothy went to live near her sister and brother, who remain unnamed in her correspondence. Her sister made an income through running a lodging house and providing some services to the Corbiere family. Her ‘brother’ (who may have been her brother-in-law in modern parlance) helped in this business, but also spent time in the service of large households, travelling throughout England. She also had a cousin who worked as a servant for the Corbiere family.19 While we know little of her social background, Dorothy was not atypical of her class. As many studies demonstrate, servants formed a substantial proportion 16 

GCA, T-LX 14/64, Christian Cunningham to William Cunningham of Craigends, 16 December [1741]. 17  Originals held in the private collection of the Dukes of Hamilton, Haddington East Lothian, catalogued by the National Register of Archives, NRAS332/C3/198–229. This article uses the transcriptions held by South Lanarkshire Council Archives, but which use the same referencing system as the originals. All other references to NRAS332 and NRAS2177 are documents held privately by the dukes of Hamilton. 18  There is internal evidence of this in her letters, but the cataloguer of the original archive also makes this claim, although whether this is based on external evidence is not clear. Other cases of employers supporting pregnant women include John Murgatroyd in England and the Sederholms in Helsinki, Finland, see respectively: Steedman, Master and Servant; Simonton, Women in European Culture and Society, p. 37. Thanks to Deborah Simonton for pointing this example out. 19  NRAS332/C3/198–229, passim.

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of women disciplined for illegitimacy. Women in service were vulnerable to sexual exploitation; even if their pregnancy was the result of a consensual relationship, as many were, their contracts often made it difficult for them to marry quickly, if at all.20 If Dorothy’s origins reflect those of Anne’s other ladies’ maids, then she was likely the daughter of a local tenant-farmer or family living on the Spencer estates.21 Anne’s other maids were mainly drawn from the area in the vicinity of Hamilton Palace, the vast seat of the dukes of Hamilton; their names included Christian (and possibly Margaret) Cunningham of Craigends, Elizabeth or Betty Cullen, Mrs or Nurse Coats, Mrs Hossack, Kitty Taylor, and Mrs Wood.22 These women were often part of families that had worked for the Hamilton family for generations and who, if they had talent, loyalty, and patience, found that such service provided significant financial and social reward. A typical example was Dorothy’s fellow servant, Betty Cullen. Elizabeth Cullen was the daughter of William Cullen, lawyer and factor to the dukes of Hamilton, and sister to William Cullen, who eventually became professor of medicine at Edinburgh and first physician to the king. In the early 1740s, William had a medical practice in Hamilton, patronized regularly by the Hamiltons, who also sponsored his promotion into the king’s household.23 Betty married the 5th Duke’s valet, William Almack, who used the Duke’s patronage to later found Almack’s coffee house, and numerous other places of amusement, in London during the 1760s.24 In the 1740s the dukes of Hamilton continued to favour particular families on their estates that had long connections with their family, reinforcing an intimacy born out of the intertwining of their families over generations. Yet, this was an intimacy based on a strict social hierarchy and a loyalty built on the reciprocal advantages of the relationship; in this sense, it was similar to the relationship that aristocratic households had with their cadet branches, tied together by blood and 20 

Hill, Servants, pp.  58–59; Adair, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage, pp.  84–88; Gardarsdóttir, ‘The Implications of Illegitimacy’; Leneman and Mitchison, Sexuality and Social Control; Graham, The Uses of Reform, p. 267; Blaikie, Illegitimacy, Sex and Society. 21  For more on the social background on servants more broadly, see: Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work, pp. 59 and 99–102; Fauve-Chamoux, ed., Domestic Service and the Formation of European Identity. With thanks to Deborah Simonton for discussing this with me. 22  ‘Mrs’ in these contexts were titles of status, rather than marriage: Erickson, ‘Mistresses and Marriage’. 23  NRAS332/C3/270, [ J.M.] to Alexander Inglis, [1743]; NRAS332/C3/1320, Duke of Hamilton to Thomas Hutton, 30 November 1742; NRAS332/C3/802, Andrew Stuart to Baron Maule, April 1761. 24  Carter, ‘Almack, William’. For another example see: Marshall, The Days of Duchess Anne, pp. 63–65.

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name, as well as service.25 This relationship operated due to the close knowledge that these families had of each other: a knowledge that was maintained through the passing of information, or gossip, up and down the social ladder, and the investment that these families had in each other’s lives. Dorothy met Alexander Inglis when she joined the Hamilton household. Like Dorothy’s, Inglis’s background is difficult to reconstruct. However, he appeared to have been local to the Hamilton area, and various Inglises had been employed by the Hamiltons in preceding generations.26 His brother was Robert Inglis, who served with Lord Stair’s Regiment of Dragoons.27 Alexander first appeared in the Hamilton correspondence in 1724, when he was working as Groom of the Horse to the Duke, a role that involved caring for the Duke’s horses, provisioning their food, training them for racing, selling their offspring and generating an income from animals at stud. In 1735 Alexander was promoted to Master of the Horse, and in 1743, after the death of the 5th Duke, William Pitcairn wrote to him about a rumour that he would be placed in charge of the palace.28 Whether he received an official promotion is harder to discern (and certainly did not happen before 1744) as he continued to manage the stables and their related businesses, as well as performing various household functions, particularly around the provisioning of alcohol. As Master of the Horse, his responsibilities were varied and flexible, as was typical for menservants of the period.29 He continued in the Hamilton household until 1750 when he died, apparently unmarried.30 Despite Christian Cunningham’s predictions, Alexander’s ‘indiscretion’ with Dorothy, and a later one with another maidservant, did not hinder his career. He perhaps benefited from the Duke’s illness, which delayed (perhaps indefinitely) informing him of the news, but, undoubtedly, Alexander was also considered a trusted and competent member of the household staff. He had made himself too valuable to be removed from his place, and doubtless he benefited from the sexual double standard that allowed many, although certainly not all, men to incur premarital pregnancy without social or economic penalty.31 This, in part, may have 25 

Macinnes, Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stewart. Marshall, The Days of Duchess Anne, p. 96. 27  NRAS332/C3/283, Robert Inglis to Alexander Inglis, 14 August 1744. 28  NRAS332/C3/237, William Pitcairn to Alexander Inglis, 31 March 1743. 29  Hill, Servants, pp. 22–43. 30  NRAS332/C3/593, Archibald Stewart to the Duke of Hamilton, 5 June 1750. 31  For discussion: Thomas, ‘The Double Standard’; Capp, ‘The Double Standard Revisited’. For discussion in a Scottish context: Barclay, ‘Sex, Identity and Enlightenment’. 26 

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been influenced by the family’s success in hiding the pregnancy and birth: neither Alexander nor Dorothy appear listed in the Kirk Sessions to be disciplined for fornication. It may also reflect the chronic shortage of ‘quality’ servants in Scotland during the period that would have made men such as Inglis difficult to replace.32

Gossipy Letters between Lovers Twenty-eight of Dorothy’s letters to Alexander survive, but none of his responses. In the same bundle are three letters Dorothy wrote to fellow servants, James Taylor and Mrs Coats. Dorothy’s spelling was very poor and there is no punctuation throughout. The earliest letter is one of express hurt and anger when Dorothy learned that Alexander would not marry her and save her from ‘roun’ (ruin). It appears that Alexander responded with a promise of future marriage, arguing that he could not afford to marry at that time and, moreover, his twenty years of service in the Hamilton household were about to be handsomely rewarded. In the meantime, he asked her to keep quiet about their relationship. She agreed to limit discussion of it to her close circle of gossips, excluding her siblings, who were angry about Alexander’s behaviour. The terms that Alexander negotiated for their future shaped the content of Dorothy’s correspondence. Her reliance on Alexander’s promise meant that these were courtship letters, beginning and ending with affectionate greetings, including expressions of love and anger, complaints about infrequent correspondence, and discussions of their future together. As a mother separated from her child, they also contain laments over the distance between her and her son, concern about how the nurse was treating ‘the boy’ (who is never named in the letters), and reminders to Alexander to pay the nurse, visit the child, and to send her news of his well-being. As befits a woman waiting for her partner’s economic success to marry, her letters are full of advice on how to manage his career, as well as evidence of the numerous favours she had completed on his behalf. Amounting to over 12,000 words, the letters can be analysed from many angles, not least for their insights into how servants expressed love and affection. This paper will focus on how Dorothy used gossip within her letters, for which there is ample evidence. Not a single letter survives that does not contain discussion of members or ex-members of the Hamilton household, highlighting its centrality in the negotiation of this relationship.

32 

Plant, ‘The Servant Problem’.

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Dorothy and Alexander’s relationship was created within the Hamilton household and it was this connection, in addition to their child, that they held in common after they separated. As a result, ‘the household’ became the basis for their relationship and gossip about its members built upon that foundation and strengthened that relationship. This was evident from their earliest letters, where Dorothy would quickly jump from her opening greeting into gossip. In her second surviving letter, Dorothy opened ‘My D[ear] A letter of thanks to her Grace which I must send her before I goo’, before going on to detail the financial help provided through the intermediary of the Hamilton servant, Betty Cullen.33 In the following letter, in line three, she again talked of ‘her Grace’, before discussing the provisions sent by the Hamilton factor, Mr Wood, and the visit she received from his wife, Mrs Wood, with news that John Leggat ‘said I tuke duity [dirty] sheets of my bead and put them on miss Moly which was not tru’.34 Similarly, in the third, she began ‘My D[ea]r I[nglis] I am all most distracted with a message the Du[ches]s is sent me by the ness [nurse] poor woman’.35 As their relationship developed, gossip began to move further down the page, replaced in the main by complaints about a lack of letters, or much more occasionally, excuses for why her own letters were delayed. At the outset of the relationship, gossip about familiar faces offered a space to create intimacy, relying as it did on a shared knowledge of the subject matter and a feeling of trust created through the sharing of confidential stories. For this couple, without new, mutually shared experiences to build upon, this continued to be the main way that they fashioned intimacy. The creation of the Hamilton household in writing became an emotional imagining of their connection, reaffirming the ties that bound them together and reminding them of the context in which their relationship was born.36 At the same time, the role that letters played between lovers, acting as a relic of the absent loved one that offered a physical comfort in absence, as well as symbolizing the care and remembering of the writer, meant that they became potent evidence of affection.37 As a result, the frequency and length of the letters became a central measure of their love, and so discussions of letter writing were increasingly prioritized as their relationship became more established and intimacy was assumed, as much as formed. Interestingly, their child only ever played a minor role in their correspondence. Dorothy often complained 33 

NRAS332/C3/199, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, [n.d., c. 1743]. NRAS332/C3/200, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, [n.d., c. 1743]. 35  NRAS332/C3/201, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, [n.d., c. 1743]. 36  For discussion Hamlett, Material Relations, pp. 75–76. 37  Bray, The Friend, pp. 140–76; Barclay, Love, Intimacy and Power, p. 157. 34 

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that Alexander did not provide enough information on their child, or lamented over his absence, but these references are usually brief and there are letters where she did not mention him at all. While the child was evidence of their relationship, it had not been part of their lives together and so was difficult to integrate into their imagining of an intimacy based on their life in the Hamilton household. Gossip also allowed Dorothy to create a sense of herself and Alexander as a ‘couple’, through demanding that he defend her reputation. In so doing, she asked that he invest in both her and their relationship. Moreover, she used gossip to attempt to sever his ties with people of whom she disapproved. As an unwed mother, rumours inevitably circulated that damaged Dorothy’s reputation in Hamilton; these took the shape of gossip passed on to her through her close confidante, the gardener’s wife, Mrs Hossack. She became increasingly resentful towards those who remained in Hamilton: ‘I dont expect to meet with anything that can add to my happness in any respet while you ar with such a Cr[e]w’.38 She was particularly angry that Alexander continued his friendship with the Murrays, ‘vile people’ who ‘ar always reiling agince me’.39 Later she wrote: how much Soprise I am to hear by verybody that coms from Hamilton how fond you ar of that Lady and her husband [the Murrays] and whot is more verybody in the town takes notice when you have bin anywere abroad it is the first house you go to when you com into the Street[.] this I have from severall[.] I am sure ther was nobody so busy aboute you and I.

On another occasion, she noted ‘I belive had you taken more of my advice and less of such as Mrs Murray gave you it would have bin much better for you […] but I hope sence you have Suffered So much youll know better for the futer’.40 In her next letter, she informed him that it was rumoured in the town that he was more interested in Mrs Murray, than Mr Murray.41 Dorothy also reported to Alexander that Lady Dashwood, the Duchess’s sister, had ‘toll verybody’ that ‘her Brother and sister had don all they could to make you marred me but it was all they could geet from you to say it was whot you neer did deseir to du and for thise lyes I hate them all’.42 In both these instances, Dorothy 38 

NRAS332/C3/213, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 16 September [1742]. NRAS332/C3/216, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 6 September [1743]; NRAS332/C3/226, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 26 March [1742]. 40  NRAS332/C3/216, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 6 September [1743]; NRAS332/C3/217, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, [n.d. September 1743]. 41  NRAS332/C3/218, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 1 October 1743. 42  NRAS332/C3/213, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 16 September [1742]. 39 

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used the potential damage to Alexander’s reputation, alongside criticism of the other parties, to try and control his behaviour. In doing so, she attempted to distance him from those that had attacked them and reinforced the investment they had in each other’s reputations. Dorothy presented herself as the defender of his character, something she underpinned in other letters through her concern at his behaviour, and asked him to play a like part for her, whilst also highlighting that she was not ignorant of his actions, despite her absence. In the latter example, whilst assuring Alexander that she did not believe the story, Dorothy was looking for reassurance from Alexander of his intentions and at the same time making it clear to him that she was not naive and expected him to fulfil his promise. Gossip simultaneously acted as an attempt to draw Alexander closer, reminding him of their partnership and her constant ‘presence’, and as a bid to limit Alexander’s behaviour to actions which Dorothy felt best ensured the success of their relationship. In addition to creating a sense of trust and connection between the two of them, Dorothy’s extensive gossip network made her a valuable resource. Although Dorothy was devastated to leave Scotland, fearing having to return ‘shamed’ to her family and mourning her separation from both Alexander and their son, her relocation to London turned out to be strategically useful. Her cousin worked for Mrs Corbiere, whose house was on the same street as the newly widowed Duchess’s residence in London. Her sister ran a lodging house that was inspected on at least one occasion for use by the new 6th Duke, who spent considerable time in London. Moreover, she was living in a city where aristocratic families regularly visited for parliament, business, and pleasure. For Alexander, left in Hamilton to manage the stables, Dorothy’s new location, combined with her efficient gossip networks — with the Hossacks at Hamilton, Nurse Coats with the younger Hamilton children and the dowager Duchess, and Mr Robinson, in attendance to the 6th Duke — meant that she often had access to the latest information about the Hamiltons, especially their whereabouts. This was particularly important for men like Alexander, whose career largely entailed trying to foresee their employers’ needs. At the start of the century, professional men within the household, such as the factor and secretary, earned around £200 Scots a year from their wages alone; personal servants, including some gentlewomen, were paid £120 annually; the master of the household had £120, while the butler and cook had between £60 and £90. The lowest members of the household, the footmen and lower women servants, earned around £24 a year. Compared to other Scottish households at this period, these were generous, if not excessive, sums.43 In addition, servants typically received vails or ‘tips’ from 43 

Marshall, The Days of Duchess Anne, p. 76. Divide by 12 for sterling.

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visitors, ‘drink money’, food and board, and, for the lower servants, clothing or liveries.44 However, and as importantly, in a large and lucrative household such as the Hamiltons, there were other ways to make money, including benefiting from training, running side businesses and utilizing patronage networks. Alexander Inglis appeared to have made an income from sourcing and selling alcohol, mainly to the Duke’s household, but also more widely.45 As a result, service in large households like the Hamiltons offered significant opportunity for social advancement for men like Inglis (as the military did for many of their brothers), and also for women like Dorothy, who viewed such upwardly-mobile men as desirable partners, towards whose success they could potentially contribute their own savings, labour, and networks.46 It was Dorothy, therefore, who advised Alexander to sell the beer that he had purchased, as the Duke was not to come north and so would not buy it for the household.47 She informed him which servants had been dismissed and who had been successful in finding new employment.48 It was her network that allowed her to champion Mr Hossack after it was rumoured he would be dismissed.49 That her usefulness might also have an emotional impact was demonstrated on the occasion that she learned that the commissioners were to report to the Duke about Alexander’s work on the estate. In the same letter that Dorothy reported this information, and offered to find out what they had said so he could use it to his advantage, she complained that his letters were so hurtful that ‘Sum times I think you have a mind to have all promiss broke betwixt you and me’.50 In her following letter she noted that ‘I am much plase to see you write in the old Stile agine’.51 This change of heart may have been coincidental, but it may also have reflected that her economic usefulness was part of what made her attractive.52 44 

Hill, Servants, pp. 64–92. NRAS332/C3/222, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 29 November [1743]; NRAS332/C3/255, John Niven to Alexander Inglis, 29 April 1743; NRAS332/C3/651, Archibald Stewart to Alexander Inglis, 24 October 1739. 46  Nenadic, ‘The Impact of the Military Profession’. 47  NRAS332/C3/222, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 29 November [1743]. 48  NRAS332/C3/220, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 4 November 1743; NRAS332/C3/221, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 12 November 1743. 49  NRAS332/C3/218–220, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, October 1743. 50  NRAS332/C3/223, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 13 December 1743. 51  NRAS332/C3/224, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 17 January 1744. 52  For discussion see: Tilly and Scott, Women, Work and the Family, pp. 43–60. 45 

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Gossipy Letters and the Hamilton Family The ability of gossip to create intimacy between Dorothy and Alexander was also mirrored amongst other members of the household, and reinforced through the mutual benefits that it brought to the group. Dorothy’s few surviving letters to her other gossips demonstrate that in addition to exchanging information, she performed practical favours, like ordering goods and arranging for parcels to be delivered.53 She wrote to her contacts to try and save Mr Hossack’s job and when the Taylors lost their positions they moved a few doors away from Dorothy in London. After James Taylor secured a place with the Duke of Somerset, Dorothy supported Kitty in London, aiding her in childbed and helping her to source employment as a wetnurse.54 As with Alexander, gossip reinforced the connection between these disparate individuals and the emotional investment they had in each other’s lives, explicitly acknowledged in her normal closing, ‘pray give my kind love to Mrs Coates Mrs Hossack Kettey oh whot would I give to be with them’.55 The emotional investment this group had in each other also gave them an investment in the Hamiltons. It was the Hamiltons who brought them together and even after the servants were separated, either across the different branches of the Hamilton family or dismissed altogether, the Hamiltons tended to be a central feature of their conversations. They also maintained connections with the family after their employment ended. After Kitty gave birth and her original wet-nursing position fell through when the baby died, the dowager Duchess offered her another position with her young daughter. She found a more lucrative wet-nursing role, but a decade later the couple was once more working for the family.56 As with Dorothy, the end of the service arrangement did not cut links to the Hamilton family. This had certain benefits for the Hamiltons. That these servants’ lives to a large extent revolved around them, and that they were the key subjects of their gossip, formed them into a single community (at least in the minds of the servants). This creation of community brought with it an emotional investment; as long 53 

NRAS332/C3/205, Dorothy Salisbury to Mrs Coats, 20 July [1742]; NRAS332/ C3/208, Dorothy Salisbury to James Taylor, 5 August [1742.; NRAS332/C3/210, Dorothy Salisbury to James Taylor, 9 August [1742]. 54  NRAS332/C3/217, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, [n.d., September 1743]; NRAS332/C3/222, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 29 November [1743]. 55  NRAS332/C3/208, Dorothy Salisbury to James Taylor, 5 August [1742]. 56  NRAS332/C3/222, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 29 November [1743]; NRAS332/C3/575, James Taylor to Mr Hamilton, 29 October 1750; NRAS332/F/1/968, Account of Mrs Taylor’s boarding and wages, 9 April 1753.

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as the Hamiltons were thought to be behaving fairly, this included loyalty and trust, with an expectation that this would be reciprocal. Moreover, this emotional investment could translate into practical benefits for the Hamilton family, motivating their servants to work hard, behave honestly, and not to malign the family’s reputation in public. In the context of generational employment within families, it fostered the ready supply of good servants during a period when they were in high demand. As these servants were part of the local community, it also reinforced the centrality of the Hamilton family to the community at large, establishing their importance in the local imagination and so strengthening their social, cultural, and political authority. In 1743 this system was undermined by the death of the 5th Duke. The 6th Duke was still at Oxford, graduating shortly afterwards, but still a minor. The 5th Duchess chose to significantly reduce the size of the household and the Taylors, ‘the piper’, Mrs Masson, Mr Tilly, and Mr Ellis (the beau of Betty Cullen at the time) were all let go. Nurse Coats and the Hossacks were retained (although Mr Hossack’s position was very uncertain for the next year); Betty Cullen was given notice, begged for her position and allowed to stay. The rest of the household was extremely anxious and the sense of betrayal in Dorothy’s letters was palpable. The 6th Duke spent 1743 and 1744 visiting places of pleasure, especially horse races, and scandalizing the respectable world through his flirtations with potential brides. He was only convinced to return to Scotland several months after his father’s death when he finally ran out of money (managed by ‘commissioners’ due to his minority). In the interim, the household was in a state of high anxiety as the servants tried to predict what their future might hold. The unease and sense of betrayal felt by the Hamilton servants was evidenced through the negative gossip that they shared after the event. In the weeks following the dismissal of several of their colleagues, Dorothy reported that James Taylor […] has never bin within the dukes house Sence he left them he think the dutchess has not used him well nor any of the dukes servants for they all make grate complante of her but She don’t mind that for the duke is very fond of her and dus very thing She like […] by all that I hear She has forgot her duke all ready[.] Lady Barker [her mother] is to live with if She is not tired of her gooing on.57

Not only did Dorothy’s attitude towards the Duchess change (where she had previously been grateful for her charity), but her gossip actively maligned the Duchess’s reputation, suggesting that not only had she badly treated the servants, but that she 57 

NRAS332/C3/227, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 28 April [1742].

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was not behaving with the propriety of a new widow. Fascinatingly, as in so many other early modern contexts, the way that the Duchess was ‘punished’ within the gossips’ community was through the undermining of her sexual reputation.58 Over a year later, and despite Dorothy having encouraged both Alexander and Kitty to apply to her for patronage, the Duchess’s reputation was not fully restored to the gossips’ community, with Dorothy noting of her dismissal of Betty Cullen, that ‘rely the dutchis did not behave So well to her when She left her Grace but grate people think they may do just as the plase is must not be thought rong’.59 She was not particularly pleasant about the new Duke either, noting that the servants’ thought ‘his Gr[ace] was never […] in the same mind so that they did not belive whot he said’. This was reinforced with a description of his itinerary: he has always a percell of cambrig and oxford Scolers with him his Gr[ace] is so fond of hors raceis that when he has none to go to he make one him self and ride hi one hors but Couples [a servant] says he is no Good Jocky for he always lossis and bets hi by whot he said to me the master and men ar all alike all on the same footing so pray whot can any man expect from such a proson.60

Dorothy often focused on the Duke’s ‘flighty’ and unpredictable behaviour; once more drawing on patriarchal norms, she viewed the Duke as failing to behave with the proper decorum and respect for hierarchy that was requisite of one in his social position. When angered, Dorothy interpreted both male and female behaviour using popular and gendered narratives of wrongdoing: women were whores; men failed as patriarchs.61 Servants’ gossip was not a trivial matter. As Catherine Mann demonstrates for Lady Lisle, an employer’s reputation affected their chances of hiring good staff. Lady Lisle’s reputation as a ‘sharp’ employer meant she had difficulty finding a companion.62 Sexual reputation was equally important, as sexually lax employers were presumed to not hold their staff to a high moral standard, which could impinge on a servant’s own reputation and so affect possibilities for future employment and marriage. Gossip was one of the central mechanisms through which other servants learned about employers. Moreover, servants’ gossip was not guaranteed to remain within the household; when staff moved between 58 

Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Liscomb, ‘Crossing Boundaries’. NRAS332/C3/222, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 29 November [1743]. 60  NRAS332/C3/220, Dorothy Salisbury to Alexander Inglis, 4 November 1743. 61  Fletcher, ‘Manhood, the Male Body’; Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, pp. 152–73. 62  Mann, ‘Whether your Ladiship Will or Ne’, pp. 119–34. 59 

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employers, gossip worked its way through wider gossip networks of the social elite. Perhaps more strikingly, servants’ gossip could burst onto the public stage in court cases, reminding employers that a failure in loyalty could have devastating consequences for both reputations and bank balances.63 As a result, servants’ gossip had latent power that could act to check the behaviour of their employers, if in limited ways. Moreover, as indicated by the Duchess of Hamilton’s provision for Dorothy, as well as her continuation of ties to her ex-employees, emotional connections could operate in both directions, with employers motivated by obligation, paternalism, and even sometimes, affection. Whether all servants would have shared Dorothy’s implicit faith in their employers to treat them fairly seems unlikely. Dorothy’s sense of betrayal may have been heightened due to a youthful naivety and a lack of experience in the workplace. Yet, it was also a naivety fostered by the close, paternal, and generational relationship that the Hamiltons had with their staff and which was reinforced through broader social discourses that set down the reciprocal obligations of the master-and-servant relationship.64 It was undermined by the contractual nature of the service agreement, which allowed the Hamiltons to reduce their staff quickly and without adequate notice or recompense (although the continued involvement of some ex-employees with the household also suggests that employment breaks were not always clean-cut). Part of the difficulty Dorothy had with the Duchess’s decision was caused by the level of intimacy within this household, where servants had become emotionally entangled in their employers’ lives. This intimacy was partly created through gossip: spreading and sharing information about the Hamiltons tied these servants together, creating bonds of trust and community, and for Alexander and Dorothy it even fostered love. As long as gossip about the Hamiltons remained positive, it also encouraged loyalty towards them as employers and gave these servants an emotional, as well as an economic investment in their success. However, when the Hamiltons ended their servants’ contracts, their betrayal of that same emotional investment led to hurt and anger, leading the servants to change the tone of their gossip, and potentially to damage the Hamiltons’ reputations. Yet, because this gossip network was built on relationships developed in the Hamilton household, it meant that the Hamiltons remained central figures in their community, even after betrayal. Lacking the objects of their gossip, such ties would became fragile, and without gossip, their sense of community would cease to exist. This 63  64 

Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship, pp. 110–16. Steedman, Labour’s Lost, pp. 36–64.

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often ensured that servants remained invested in their employers, even after their contracts expired, and, in the context of tight-knit communities, retained their central focus on major employers as people of social significance and power. As with the service relationship between Dorothy and the Hamiltons, Dorothy and Alexander’s relationship seems not to have survived. Alexander appears to have never married, and there is no record of Dorothy’s life after 1744. Her letters survived, however, as did Alexander’s other correspondence that continued until his death, suggesting that the relationship ended shortly after the date of the last letter. Perhaps Dorothy came to realize that Alexander would never fulfil his promise, or perhaps she met someone else. Maybe she felt that her interest was better served by integrating herself into a gossip network centred on her new employer. There is also no record of the child after Dorothy’s letters end. Gossip was a useful tool for creating a sense of community, as well as disciplining its members and potentially destabilizing power hierarchies. However, while it could create intimacy and reinforce the emotional ties of the household, gossip alone could not sustain a relationship.

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Works Cited Manuscript and Archival Documents Glasgow, Glasgow City Archive [GCA] T-LX 14/64 Series Papers of Lennox of Wood­head Haddington, East Lothian, Dukes of Hamilton Private Collection, catalogued by the National Register of Archives, NRAS332 and NRAS2177

Secondary Studies Abrahams, Roger D., ‘A Performance-Centered Approach to Gossip’, Man, 5 (1970), 290–301 Adair, Richard, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996) Ballantyne, Tony, and Antoinette Burton, eds, Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008) Barclay, Katie, ‘Intimacy and the Life-Cycle in the Marital Relationships of the Scottish Elite during the Long-Eighteenth Century’, Women’s History Review, 20 (2011), 189–206 —— , Love, Intimacy and Power: Marriage and Patriarchy in Scotland, 1650–1850 (Man­ chester: Manchester University Press, 2011) —— , ‘Sex, Identity and Enlightenment in the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Shaping Scottish Identity: Family, Nation and the World Beyond, ed. by Jodi Campbell, Elizabeth Ewan, and Heather Parker, Guelph Series in Scottish Studies (Guelph: Guelph University Press, 2011), pp. 29–42 Benson, John, ‘One Man and his Women: Domestic Service in Edwardian England’, Labour History Review, 72 (2007), 203–14 Blaikie, Andrew, Illegitimacy, Sex and Society, 1750–1900 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) Bray, Alan, The Friend (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003) Broomhall, Susan, ed., Emotions in the Household 1200–1900 (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2007) Brown, Kathleen, ‘Body Work in Antebellum United States’, in Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. by Ann Laura Stoler (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 213–39 Capp, Bernard, ‘The Double Standard Revisited: Plebeian Women and Male Sexual Reputation in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 162 (1999), 70–100 —— , When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Carter, Philip, ‘Almack, William (d.  1781)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), [accessed 6 May 2012] Cooper, Sheila McIsaac, ‘Service to Servitude? The Decline and Demise of Life-Cycle Service in England’, History of the Family, 10 (2005), 367–86 Cowan, Alexander, ‘Gossip and Street Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Journal of Early Modern History, 12 (2008), 313–33

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Davidoff, Leonore, ‘Class and Gender in Victorian England: The Diaries of Arthur J. Munby and Hannah Cullwick’, Feminist Studies, 5 (1979), 87–141 Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987) Erickson, Amy, ‘Mistresses and Marriage: or, a Short History of the Mrs’ (University of Cambridge, Department of Economic and Social History, Working Paper No.  12, 2012) Fairchild, Cissie, Domestic Enemies: Servants and their Masters in Old Regime France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984) Fauve-Chamoux, Antoinette, ed., Domestic Service and the Formation of European Identity: Understanding Globalization of Domestic Work, 16th to 21st Centuries (Bern: Lang, 2004) Fletcher, Anthony, ‘Manhood, the Male Body, Courtship and the Household in Early Modern England’, History, 84 (1999), 419–36 Gardarsdóttir, Ólöf, ‘The Implications of Illegitimacy in Late-Nineteenth Century Iceland: The Relationship between Infant Mortality and the Household Position of Mothers Giving Birth to Illegitimate Children’, Continuity and Change, 15 (2000), 435–61 Gelles, Edith, ‘Gossip: An Eighteenth-Century Case’, Journal of Social History, 22 (2001), 667–83 Gowing, Laura, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power (London: Yale University Press, 2003) —— , Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) Graham, Michael F., The Uses of Reform: ‘Godly Discipline’ and Popular Behaviour in Scotland and Beyond, 1560–1610 (Leiden: Brill, 1996) Hamlett, Jane, Material Relations: Domestic Interiors and Middle-Class Families in England, 1850–1910 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010) Hammerton, A. James, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth Century Married Life (London: Routledge, 1992) Hecht, Jean J., The Domestic Servant in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Taylor and Francis, 1980) Hill, Bridget, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) Hindle, Steve, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley: Gossip, Gender and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change, 9 (1994), 391–419 Horodowich, Elizabeth, ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Life and Political Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies, 19 (2005), 22–45 Humfrey, Paula, ed., The Experience of Domestic Service for Women in Early Modern London (London: Routledge, 2011) Leneman, Leah, and Rosalind Mitchison, Sexuality and Social Control: Scotland 1660– 1780 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989) Liscomb, Suzannah, ‘Crossing Boundaries: Women’s Gossip, Insults and Violence in Sixteenth-Century France’, French History, 25 (2011), 408–26

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Macinnes, Allan, Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stewart, 1603–1788 (Edinburgh: Tuckwell, 1996) Mann, Catherine, ‘Whether your Ladiship Will or Ne: Displeasure, Duty and Devotion in The Lisle Letters’, in Emotions in the Household 1200–1900, ed. by Susan Broomhall (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 119–34 Marshall, Rosalind, The Days of Duchess Anne: Life in the Household of the Duchess of Hamilton 1656–1716 (East Lothian: Tuckwell, 2000) Maza, Sara, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century France: The Uses of Loyalty (Prince­ ton: Princeton University Press, 1983) Nenadic, Stana, ‘The Impact of the Military Profession on Highland Gentry Families, c. 1730–1830’, Scottish Historical Review, 85 (2006), 75–99 Paine, Robert, ‘What is Gossip About? An Alternative Hypothesis’, Man, 2 (1967), 278–85 Perry, Adele, ‘The Autocracy of Love and the Legitimacy of Empire: Intimacy, Power and Scandal in Nineteenth-Century Metlakahtlah’, Gender and History, 16 (2004), 261–88 Plant, Marjorie, ‘The Servant Problem in Eighteenth-Century Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review, 29 (1950), 143–57 Pucci, Suzanne, ‘Snapshots of Family Intimacy in the French Eighteenth Century: The Case of Paul et Virginie’, Eighteenth-Century Culture, 35 (2008), 89–118 Richardson, R. C., Household Servants in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010) Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (London: Yale University Press, 1983) Shepard, Alexandra, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Simonton, Deborah, ‘Birds of Passage or Career Women? Thoughts on the Lifecycle of the European Servant’, Women’s History Review, 20 (2011), 207–25 —— , A History of European Women’s Work: 1700 to the Present (Abingdon: Routledge, 1998) —— , Women in European Culture and Society: Gender, Skill and Identity from 1700 (London: Routledge, 2010) Spacks, Patricia Ann Meyer, Gossip (New York: Knopf, 1985) Steedman, Carolyn, ‘Intimacy in Research: Accounting for It’, History of the Human Sciences, 21 (2008), 17–33 —— , Labour’s Lost: Domestic Service and the Making of Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) —— , Master and Servant: Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Stoler, Ann Laura, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006) Straub, Kristina, Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Tadmor, Naomi, Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship and Patronage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

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Thomas, Keith, ‘The Double Standard’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959), 195–216 Tilly, Louise, and Joan Scott, Women, Work, and the Family (London: Routledge, 1989) Vickery, Amanda, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (London: Yale University Press, 1998) Wickham, Chris, ‘Gossip and Resistance amongst the Medieval Peasantry’, Past and Present, 160 (1998), 9–14 Zeldin, Theodore, An Intimate History of Humanity (London: Vintage, 1998)

The Pleasures and Perils of Gossip: Sociability, Scandal, and Plebeian Poetry in the Long Eighteenth Century Peter Denney

I

n the last decade of the eighteenth century, the patrician renegade Charles Pigott wrote several scurrilous exposés disclosing the private vices of the ruling elite in England, some of whom were his former associates. Pigott was one of the few gentleman participants in the popular radical movement which sprang up in the wake of the French Revolution, and he aimed to persuade a plebeian audience that their rulers were unfit to govern the nation. By encountering The Jockey Club or The Female Jockey Club, labourers could find out all sorts of salacious or shocking information about the private lives of elite public figures, from gambling exploits to sexual dysfunctions.1 The stories communicated by Pigott were well known in elite circles, being common subjects of oral and written gossip. But due to a belief that the lower classes had no right to comment on the private conduct of their superiors, such information was rarely disseminated to a popular audience. For contravening this gentlemanly protocol and making gossip a vehicle of radical propaganda Pigott was arrested for sedition, dying of gaol fever shortly after being released from prison in 1794. In one of these exposés, Pigott satirized the Bluestocking circle, a group of women intellectuals who met to cultivate an improving style of conversation.2 This sketch was informed by a blend of misogynistic and egalitarian attitudes. 1  2 

See Mee, ‘Libertines and Radicals in the 1790s’, pp. 185–86, 190–95. Major, ‘The Politics of Bluestocking Sociability’, pp. 175–92.

Peter Denney ([email protected]), Lecturer in History, School of Humanities, Griffith University.

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Deploying an age-old stereotype he implied that the conversation of the group, as they were women, was mere gossip, deficient in substance yet harmful in effect. Pigott’s attack specifically targeted two members of the Bluestocking circle: the literary critic Elizabeth Montagu and the loyalist pamphleteer Hannah More. Focusing on their reputations for benevolence, the renowned charity of these women was hypocritical, he argued, for it was driven by vanity and sought to placate the poor rather than improve their condition. An example of this spurious charity, according to Piggott, was the way in which Hannah More had paraded her ‘superior’ taste by extending her patronage to Ann Yearsley, a milkwoman from Clifton, who aspired to be a published poet: Miss Hannah had long been in search of a genius in low life, to whom, by affording protection, she might raise her own reputation, in a display of her superior taste and discernment. Her first genius, however, whom she found starving under a haystack did not answer the purpose, so she was immediately restored to her original station; but with Anne Yearsly, she succeeded to her most sanguine hopes, as all who have read that fair milkmaid’s poetical sonnets will testify.3

Thanks to her later public dispute with More, which caused a scandal in the early 1780s, as we shall see, Ann Yearsley became one of the most famous plebeian poets in the eighteenth century. But she was not unique. Throughout this period many poets from labouring-class backgrounds published volumes of verse.4 As Pigott noted, their poetry was valued for revealing examples of genius, a quality which privileged originality over learning, being one version of the cult of primitivism. But genius was not enough to gain access to polite literary culture. To enter the republic of letters, labouring-class writers required a well-connected patron, who could arrange publication and reassure readers and critics of their protégée’s literary worth and moral integrity. This compounded the difficult circumstances under which plebeian poets wrote. Encouragement came mixed with condescension, and expectations of gratitude and deference often curtailed creative and personal autonomy. Such circumstances elicited no sympathy from Pigott, who equated deference with servility, defining ‘grateful’ as ‘great fool’.5 In the process of condemning More for her vanity, Pigott trivialized the object of her patronage. He disdain3 

Pigott, The Female Jockey Club, pp. 200–01. For two recent studies of this tradition of plebeian poetry, see Christmas, The Lab’ring Muses; and Keegan, British Labouring-Class Nature Poetry, 1730–1837. 5  Pigott, A Political Dictionary, p. 50. 4 

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fully referred to Yearsley as the ‘muse of milk’, drawing attention to her low social origins in the same way that critics lambasted labourers with intellectual aspirations.6 In this respect the radical gentleman was in agreement with the conservative aristocrat, Horace Walpole, who wrote to his friend, More, that Yearsley ‘must remember that she is a Lactilla, not a Pastora; and is to tend real cows, not Arcadian sheep’.7 There is something ironic about the fact that Pigott attacked More, Montagu, and the Bluestocking circle for a supposed feminine tendency to gossip, in a pamphlet that was itself designed to publicize gossip about elite private life. Equally important, his pamphlet demonstrates that plebeian poets became common sources of gossip in polite society, with rumours about them and their patrons circulating orally, as well as in letters, reviews, and other media.

Debating Gossip in Plebeian Poetry: Stephen Duck and Mary Collier This essay will examine the significance of gossip in plebeian poetry in the long eighteenth century, beginning with Stephen Duck in the 1730s and ending with John Clare in the 1830s. As I have suggested, labouring-class authors often became subjects of gossip in polite society. Much of this gossip comprised speculation about the likelihood of their upward social mobility and sneers about the triviality of their literary output. Moreover, as the century wore on, rumours began to be circulated about the political views of plebeian poets, and some were accused of dangerous radicalism in print and in private correspondence. We might expect, therefore, that in their poetry plebeian authors would represent gossip in a negative light. And many certainly did. But other plebeian poets depicted gossip as a positive mode of social intercourse, productive of communal solidarity. In the eighteenth century, gossip was an invaluable resource for marginalized groups. A mode of communication beyond the control of the ruling elite, it enabled plebeian groups to maintain a degree of independence, sustaining networks of sociability, policing popular standards of morality, and providing a means of resistance to established authority.8 For labouring women, especially, gossip offered possibilities of empowerment denied them in other spheres of life. It also constituted an enactment of relative freedom, occurring outside the influ-

6 

Pigott, The Female Jockey Club, p. 200. Walpole, The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. by Cunningham, viii, 524. 8  See Spacks, Gossip, pp. 34–46; Gelles, ‘Gossip: An Eighteenth-Century Case’, pp. 667–68. 7 

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ence of patriarchal domination.9 As we shall see, this is a theme explored by several labouring-class writers. For the most part, however, plebeian poetry exhibits an ambivalent attitude to gossip. At times gossip is portrayed as a valuable social activity; but at other times it is depicted as an example of incivility from which poetry promised a means of escape. The most notorious example of this hostile representation of gossip was written by Stephen Duck, the writer who inaugurated the tradition of plebeian poetry with the publication of The Thresher’s Labour in 1730. Before Duck burst onto the literary scene, he was working as an agricultural day-labourer in Wiltshire. His literary ability was already being discussed in the local area when, through the intervention of some patrons, his poetry was read to Queen Charlotte, who gave him a pension and installed him at court. This meteoric rise transformed Duck into a celebrity, and rumours circulated in the press that he was to be appointed the next poet laureate.10 Initiated by guardians of polite taste, other rumours called into question Duck’s literary ability by depicting him as a rural clown, whose experience of manual work rendered him devoid of aesthetic judgement. In The Thresher’s Labour, Duck opposes the pastoral image of rural life as a happy, leisurely affair, depicting agricultural workers as locked into a schedule of unremitting, joyless labour, made worse by the severe authority of a farmer.11 But only male agricultural workers are oppressed, and only they labour with any dignity. Duck condemns female labourers for talking instead of working, and their conversation is represented as gibberish. During the hay harvest these ‘prattling Females’ chat whenever the farmer turns his back, before cranking up the volume when they break for lunch. At this juncture the female haymakers violate the basic principle of conversation, all talking at once with no one listening to anyone else. ‘So loud their speech, and so confus’d their Noise’ that their conversation becomes unintelligible to bystanders; it even defies the laws of physics, ‘Echo’ being too ‘puzzled’ to ‘return a Voice’.12 Female speech is equated with gossip, conceived by Duck as idle rather than malicious talk, but with the implication that malice might flow from idleness. This unsympathetic portrayal of female agricultural workers provoked a riposte from Mary Collier, a charwoman from Hampshire, who countered Duck’s poem with The Woman’s Labour, published in 1739. Initially, Collier had no 9 

Hindle, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley’, pp. 392–94. Christmas, ‘“From threshing Corn, he turns to thresh his Brains”’, pp. 31–36. 11  See Goodridge, Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry, pp. 44–49. 12  Duck, Poems on Several Subjects, p. 21. 10 

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intention to publish but, by reciting the poem to her friends, it gradually ‘got Air’ and became a ‘Town Talk’.13 Intriguingly, in a preface to the published edition, she justified her versifying by claiming that it was a more innocent pastime than gossip. ‘If all that follow the same employment’, she argued, ‘would amuse themselves, and one another, during the tedious Hours of their Labour, in this, or some other Way as innocent, instead of tossing Scandal to and fro, many Reputations would remain unwounded, and the Peace of Families be less disturb’d’.14 By distinguishing her poetry from scandal, gossip in its malevolent, public guise, Collier was pre-empting critics, who might claim that, for a washerwoman, writing was akin to idleness. The poet realized that readers would assume that, as a woman, she possessed a tendency to gossip, and she used this stereotype to her advantage by representing as virtuous her enthusiasm for literary production. In her response to Duck, Collier accepts the association between gossip and the female personality, but she gives this mode of communication a positive value. Gossip, she avers, is the ‘only Privilege our Sex enjoy’, and it is an entitlement she defends against detractors — labouring men, employers, and other figures of authority. On this count, she compares Duck to an Oriental despot: I find, that you to hear us talk are griev’d: In this, I hope, you do not speak your Mind, For none but Turks, that ever I could find, Have Mutes to serve them, or did e’er deny Their Slaves, at Work, to chat it merrily. Since you have Liberty to speak your Mind, And are to talk, as well as we inclin’d, Why should you thus repine, because that we, Like you, enjoy that pleasing Liberty?15

This is a soft rather than hard form of gossip, one conducive to sociability rather than scandal. Still, Collier implies that such ‘chat’ encompasses gossip when she refers to it as a distinctively female ‘privilege’. At the same time, by avoiding negative terms like ‘prattle’, she makes it clear that the convivial conversation of the haymakers constitutes purposive speech. In fact, in her view, all female speech, including gossip, is illustrative of British liberty and is patriotic as well as pleasurable. As we have seen, Duck views such female sociability as mere idleness in contrast to what he depicts as the unrelenting work performed by labouring men. 13 

Collier, Poems on Several Occasions, p. iv. Collier, The Woman’s Labour, p. 3. 15  Collier, The Woman’s Labour, pp. 8–9. 14 

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A mixture of envy and frustration informs his wish that the ‘Hands’ of the ‘prattling’ haymakers were as ‘active as their Tongues’.16 Collier answers this by pointing out the endless round of activities which have to be performed by female labourers, including not just farm work, but domestic service, childcare, and home maintenance. However, she insists on the happy sociability of the harvest field and in doing so, she reworks the stereotyped pastoral convention rather than simply inverting it. The mixing of work and leisure in pastoral poetry led to an idealized image of rural life, reassuring the polite classes that labourers were happy in their poverty. The harvest, for instance, was portrayed as a most delightful activity when, according to James Thomson, the ‘rural scandal’ and the ‘rural jest’ made time pass quickly and labour go ‘unfelt’.17 In The Thresher’s Labour, by contrast, the male farm workers lack the time, energy, and freedom to talk in the harvest field, while in The Woman’s Labour, female harvest workers are able to ‘chat’ ‘merrily’, but such social interaction exemplifies their resilience rather than their contentment. Nevertheless, Collier still sees the harvest field as a space of sociability, where conversation with other women mitigates the tedium of labour. In fact, this passage may well have been rooted in a concern to defend the gossip networks, which were fostered in such quasi-public arenas as the harvest field. Needless to say, these networks were regarded with great suspicion by men.18 Often criticized as nurseries of idleness, they made it possible for women to exchange news, rumours, and opinions with a degree of independence, and it is perhaps for this reason that Duck found the intertwining of conversation and female harvest work so threatening. In contemporary polite writings about the poor there prevailed a similar suspicion of gossip, alongside other forms of plebeian conversation. For some hard-nosed critics sociability even came to be seen as an impediment rather than an accompaniment to work. In the 1730s, for example, one spokesman for agricultural improvement alleged that the talkative female workers in The Thresher’s Labour bore a resemblance to the shiftless weeders he employed on his own farm: These Weeders are the same sort of People that Mr. Duck describes as Haymakers, their Tongues are much nimbler than their Hands; and unless the Owner, or some person who faithfully represents him […] works constantly amongst them, they’ll get their Heads together half a Dozen in a Cluster, regarding their Prattle more than the Weeds; great part of their Time they spend in Play.19 16 

Duck, Poems on Several Subjects, p. 21. See Thomson, Poetical Works, ed. by Robertson, pp. 138–39. 18  Capp, When Gossips Meet, pp. 49–68. 19  Tull, The Horse-Hoing Husbandry, p. 226. 17 

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Duck wrote with sympathy about male agricultural workers and did much to show that the supposed harmony between labourers, farmers, and landlords, as depicted in polite rural poetry, was a ‘cheat’. In his attitude to female agricultural workers, however, the thresher poet was on the side of the employing classes, and his association between gossip and idleness appealed to the very kind of authoritarian farmer he mocked. No doubt the weeders would have preferred Collier.

Plebeian Poets in Polite Gossip Throughout the eighteenth century, plebeian poets not only wrote about gossip; they also became subjects of gossip in polite society, where they were discussed with equal measures of enthusiasm and disdain. This took place orally and in letters, and there is a sense, too, in which reviews in periodicals functioned as a forum for the circulation of negative personal comments about their low social origins. Even from supporters, labouring-class writers were frequently the focus of wellmeaning but insulting remarks. As Hannah More wrote of a poem by Ann Yearsley in an excited letter to Elizabeth Montagu, ‘you will allow [it] to be extraordinary for a milker of Cows, and a feeder of Hogs, who has never even seen a Dictionary’.20 In response, plebeian poets often countered their treatment as literary novelties by accusing their detractors in polite society of indulging in idle gossip, using the old negative stereotype to their own advantage. This is the purpose of several poems by the brilliant satirist Elizabeth Hands. A servant in a small town near Coventry, Hands was discovered by a local clergyman, who helped her publish The Death of Amnon in 1789, her first and only volume. Two of the poems in this volume are satires on the closed world of polite conversation, or, as Hands classifies it, of polite gossip.21 Specifically, these poems denounce the superficiality of polite society through a mocking portrayal of the way in which an assembly of mostly women gossip about the author of a new book of poetry, who happens to be a servant. Needless to say, this servant/poet is a fictional version of Hands herself. ‘A Poem, On the Supposition of an Advertisement appearing in a Morning Paper, of the Publication of a Volume of Poems, by a Servant Maid’ ridicules the various polite prejudices against labouring-class writing. With an irreverent disdain for pretension, it undercuts the assumption that manual labour and intel20  21 

The Female Spectator, ed. by Mahl and Koon, p. 280. See Christmas, The Lab’ring Muses, pp. 228–29; Landry, The Muses of Resistance, pp. 187–88.

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lectual activity are incompatible by associating this assumption with gossip. In this instance, the mockers are a genteel company of ladies, who use their leisure to drink tea and talk about public novelties such as plebeian poets. Enjoying idleness rather than useful leisure, these polite women proceed to make pronouncements on the servant in question without even reading her poetry: I suppose you all saw in the paper this morning, A Volume of Poems advertis’d – ‘tis said They’re produc’d by the pen of a poor Servant Maid. A servant write verses! Says Madam Du Bloom; Pray what is the subject? – a Mob, or a Broom? He, he, he, – says Miss Flounce; I suppose we shall see An Ode on a Dishclout – what else can it be?22

The only half-defence of the literary activity of a labouring-class poet comes from one Mrs Candour, whose contribution to this gossipy exchange is a complaint about the gossipy behaviour of her own servant. Seeing poetry as an antidote to gossip, Mrs Candour remarks that she would ‘rather ten times’ see this servant writing than gadding about the marketplace.23 Like Mary Collier, Hands justifies her right to be a poet on the grounds that it is morally superior to gossip, and in doing so she discredits the condescending views of her imagined detractors for whom gossip is a central, though trivial, activity. The same theme is pursued in the companion piece, ‘A Poem, on the Supposition of the Book having been Published and Read’. But in this later poem, the gossipy assembly comprises men as well as women, suggesting that gossipy conduct is not so much a feminine as a polite quality, a product of class rather than gender. Gossip was attributed a similarly pejorative meaning by another satirist, the labouring-class writer Mary Leapor, whose two volumes of poetry were posthumously published in the mid-eighteenth century. Leapor lived in Northamptonshire, where she worked in a variety of capacities, as domestic servant or as cook-maid, for several affluent families.24 Like other labouring-class authors, she applied a negative meaning to gossip: to her it was trivial, even vulgar, conversation indulged in by people with imperceptive minds who sought to denigrate her literary ambitions.

22 

Hands, The Death of Amnon, p. 47. Hands, The Death of Amnon, p. 49. 24  Christmas, The Lab’ring Muses, pp. 162–63; Greene, Mary Leapor, pp. 10–19. 23 

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This depiction of gossip is evident in a poem from Leapor’s second volume, ‘The Epistle of Deborah Dough’. The poem is about the way in which labouringclass authors become subjects of gossip in their own communities, as their literary habits set them apart from their plebeian neighbours. At least, as Leapor views it, this singularity turns such poets into local celebrities, but their fame often comes accompanied by mockery. Accordingly, Leapor shows little sympathy for plebeian culture; she even participates in the polite denigration of the way it privileges pragmatic knowledge over intellectual pursuits.25 The satire begins with Deborah Dough, a rustic, writing to her cousin to provide an update of local events, only to run out of things to say once she has discussed the price of oats: But I’ve no News to send you now; Only I’ve lost my brindled Cow; And that has greatly sunk my Dairy: But I forgot our Neighbour Mary; Our Neighbour Mary, – who, they say, Sits scribble-scribble all the Day.26

This neighbour, Mary, is a proxy for Leapor, and her versifying is attacked by Dough for being an idle pastime. In particular, writing prevents the poet from performing the domestic labour, which is seen as her primary duty. According to Dough, it also gives this literary marvel a false sense of superiority over her neighbours: She throws away her precious Time In scrawling nothing else but Rhyme; Of which, they say, she’s mighty proud, And lifts her Nose above the Croud; Tho’ my young Daughter Cicely Is taller by a Foot than she, And better learnt (as People say): Can knit a Stocken in a Day: Can make a Pudden, plump and rare; And boil her Bacon, to an Hair: Will coddle Apples nice and green, And fry her Pancakes – like a Queen.27

25 

Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700, pp. 161–73. Leapor, Poems upon Several Occasions, p. 68. 27  Leapor, Poems upon Several Occasions, p. 69. 26 

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In this poem Leapor has no interest in defending gossip as a legitimate component of plebeian sociability. Rather, she draws on the negative stereotype of gossip as an idle, trivial activity to undermine the belief that writing poetry was inappropriate for a woman of her low social background. By presenting this rustic, Deborah Dough, as a gossip, Leapor discredits her argument that plebeian writing is tantamount to idleness. In the process, however, she distances herself from plebeian culture, depicting it as a repository of philistinism. Mary Leapor was not the only labouring-class author to repudiate negative views of plebeian intellectual activity by equating such views with gossip. To some extent, criticism of plebeian poetry lent itself to this assessment, for it frequently centred on the personal conduct of the writer as much as the content of his or her verse. There was much scrutiny of the morality of labouring-class authors and an insistence that their poetry should not be pursued at the expense of manual labour.28 Similarly, patrons fuelled gossip about their plebeian protégées by making enquiries about their private lives and circulating the results of such enquiries to friends, future subscribers, and readers. This issue was seen in the dispute between Ann Yearsley and her patron, Hannah More, in the 1780s. A milkwoman from Clifton prior to her ‘discovery’, Yearsley came to be known to More after she and her family were rescued from dire poverty by a local gentleman. For much of 1784 her new patron, a celebrated author herself, worked towards publishing a collection of poems by this talented labouring woman. Soon afterwards, however, a conflict broke out between patron and poet.29 The dispute resulted from More’s determination to control the profits generated by the sale of the poems, and relations rapidly deteriorated as each party accused the other of defamation. From the beginning, Yearsley’s character was important to More, as evident in her ‘Prefatory Letter’ to Elizabeth Montagu, who had supported the enterprise by offering advice and financial assistance. The letter, which was included as a preface to Yearsley’s Poems on Several Occasions, aimed to market the poet as a natural genius. But it was also concerned to promote Yearsley as a worthy object of charity. Of the poet, More insisted that she had made ‘diligent enquiry into

28 

Christmas, The Lab’ring Muses, pp. 64–65. For varying accounts of the dispute, see Felsenstein, ‘Ann Yearsley and the Politics of Patronage: The Thorp Archive, Part I’, pp. 347–92; Felsenstein, ‘Ann Yearsley and the Politics of Patronage: The Thorp Archive, Part II’, pp. 13–56; Christmas, The Lab’ring Muses, pp. 235–52; Waldron, Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton, pp. 48–78. 29 

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her history and character’, tapping into local networks of information.30 This had confirmed that the ‘Poetical Milkmaid’ was pious, humble, and content in her low social station. Receiving ‘unequivocal proofs that her morality’ was ‘fixed in a settled principle’, More concluded that Yearsley had no desire to devote her ‘time to the idleness of Poetry’, thereby neglecting her domestic and social responsibilities.31 For labouring-class writers, poetry was to provide an escape from immediate poverty, not a new vocation or a means of permanent advancement. The split between patron and poet became a common topic of conversation in polite circles, and it was regarded as a scandal that a labouring woman had rebelled against her benefactor. As Anna Seward wrote to a friend, the ‘milkwoman’s celebrity must have reached you […] She is said to have behaved most ungratefully to her humane and energetic patroness’.32 To salvage her reputation, Yearsley published a second edition, in which she included a new preface outlining her side of the story. This defence was necessary, she claimed, because More had spread slander about her supposed ingratitude and other moral failings. Whatever the truth of the matter, news of Yearsley’s conduct travelled quickly and widely. Reflecting on the event some years later, Joseph Cottle noted: The fearful tidings rapidly extended far and near! ‘Ann Yearsley has proved an ingrate!’ Her good name, with the rapidity of the eagle’s pinion, was forfeited! Her talents, in a large circle, at once, became questionable, or vanished away. Her assumed criminality also was magnified into audacity, in daring to question the honour, or, at least, oppose the wishes of two such women, as Mrs. H. More, and Mrs. Montague!33

Yearsley’s main grievance was the existence of a deed of trust, which prevented her from accessing income derived from her published work. According to More, this arrangement was intended to prevent the poet’s husband from squandering the money; but clearly she also thought it was necessary to protect Yearsley’s own moral probity. She believed that a sudden experience of prosperity might imbue the poet with an independence at odds with her duties as a labouring woman. In addition to fostering a potential rejection of deference, this might make her ‘idle or useless’, leading her to indulge in all sorts of plebeian vices.34 On the other 30 

More, ‘A Prefatory Letter to Mrs Montagu’, p. iv. More, ‘A Prefatory Letter to Mrs Montagu’, pp. x–xi. 32  Seward, Letters of Anna Seward, i, 121. 33  Cottle, Early Recollections, i, 75–76 34  The Female Spectator, ed. by Mahl and Koon, p. 280. 31 

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hand, Yearsley argued that the deed of trust prevented her from taking ‘care of her family’, thereby limiting her ability to discharge her domestic duties. In addition, she thought that by accepting this financial arrangement a ‘false’ representation of her ‘conduct and principles’ would be circulated around the polite reading public, since people would conclude that the measure was necessary because of her feckless behaviour.35 It was to prevent the circulation of such information that Yearsley sought to vindicate her actions, and she did so by accusing More of resorting to slander rather than listening to reason. In her published reply to More, Yearsley claimed that her patron had damaged her reputation through her control of public opinion. ‘Shielded by popular opinion’, the ‘ungenerous’ More targeted a ‘defenceless breast’ and used her connections to crush a powerless woman, as she swapped praise for ‘malicious detraction’.36 According to Yearsley, this reflected her patron’s absence of principle, and given that such lack of substance was associated with gossip, it was not surprising that More was condemned for descending to slander. As she wrote in an accompanying poem, More had become a tyrant, who rejected ‘Candour’ and demonstrated: A wish to share the false, tho’ public din, In which the popular, not virtuous live; A fear of being singular, which claims A fortitude of mind you ne’er could boast; A love of base detraction, when the charm Sits on a flowing tongue, and willing moves Upon its darling topic.37

In her version of the story, Yearsley became a victim of ‘much calumny’, as ‘many false representations’ spread through those information networks, which More herself had fostered in order to assess her protégée’s character and advertise her morality. This prompted visits by many ‘gentlemen and ladies’, to whom the poet recounted the ‘real’ facts of the affair. Even after finding a group of elite supporters, Yearsley accused More of continuing to ‘justify her conduct, by defaming mine’.38 She was labelled a ‘savage’ and a ‘spendthrift’, accused of having ‘a reprobate mind’ and of being a ‘bad woman’, and such recourse to ‘low scurrility’ was contrasted with her own restrained, even reluctant, response. The suggestion was 35 

Yearsley, Poems, on Several Occasions, p. xvi. Yearsley, Poems, on Several Occasions, p. xxiv. 37  Yearsley, Poems, on Several Occasions, pp. 59–60. 38  Yearsley, Poems, on Several Occasions, p. xx. 36 

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that the polite patron had resorted to vulgar gossip, while the plebeian poet had maintained a commitment to reasonable discourse. For her part, More also criticized Yearsley for spreading slanderous gossip. As she complained to Weller Pepys, there is ‘hardly a species of slander the poor unhappy creature does not propagate against me, in the most public manner’.39 Initially, there seemed no reason to doubt Yearsley’s deference. Her literary leanings appeared to be incompatible with the irreverent aspects of plebeian culture, including gossip. In a letter to Montagu, for instance, More wrote of being impressed by the way in which, during one meeting, Yearsley communicated through ‘silence’ and ‘tears’ rather than the ‘saucy and audacious Eloquence’ assumed by the polite to characterize labouring-class women.40 That is to say, the aspiring poet was assumed to be disinclined to gossip, being too sensitive to the feelings of others. In the end, however, Yearsley’s rebelliousness proved to her patron that she was incapable of regulating her intense feelings, with sensibility mutating into ‘fury’ and calm conversation transforming into intemperate ‘calumny’.41 From More’s perspective, Yearsley had resorted to the very kind of idle gossip that she had initially been praised for avoiding, and she was condemned for spreading ‘Scurrilities’ about her benefactor, which eventually found their way into the local papers.42 This publicity troubled More, since it involved losing control over her own image and reputation. In response, as if to distinguish her virtuous conduct from the slanderous behaviour of the ‘poetical milkwoman’, she mounted no public defence, preferring to discuss the affair in private correspondence. Gossip figured in similarly complex ways in the life and work of James Woodhouse, a shoemaker poet from Shropshire. Woodhouse wrote several volumes of verse in the second half of the eighteenth century as well as a long autobiographical poem, Crispinus Scriblerus, which went unpublished during his lifetime. After the death of his first patron in the early 1760s, Woodhouse was supported by Elizabeth Montagu, and she employed him, first as land bailiff, and then as house steward, over the next two decades. Intriguingly, however, the relationship broke down around the same time that Yearsley rebelled against More. Woodhouse’s period in Montagu’s employment was often marked by tension, and he was dismissed from service in 1788 for his radical social and religious views.43 39 

Roberts, ed., Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More, i, 387–88. The Female Spectator, ed. by Mahl and Koon, p. 277. 41  The Female Spectator, ed. by Mahl and Koon, p. 284. 42  The Female Spectator, ed. by Mahl and Koon, p. 286. 43  Keegan, British Labouring-Class Nature Poetry, pp. 57–60; Christmas, The Lab’ring 40 

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While working for Montagu, he had become a devout Methodist and had been influenced by the radical ideas that were then reaching a wide audience. By contrast, his patron was an arch-conservative on religious and social matters as well as being a celebrated writer and leader of the Bluestocking circle. A centre of polite sociability, Montagu’s household was an important site for the circulation of gossip, and Woodhouse focused on this in his critique of his patron and the elite culture she represented. For the most part, Woodhouse maintained a negative attitude to gossip, one accentuated by his anomalous position as a poet from a low social background. In his letters to Montagu during the mid-1760s, he contrasted his respectably quiet disposition with the trivial and coarse garrulousness of other members of plebeian society. After dining with his prospective patron’s sister, Sarah Scott, for instance, he recounted his disapproval of the vulgar speech he had to listen to in the coach on his way home. His companions in the coach, he informed Montagu, ‘were all Men (I wish I could have call’d them Gentlemen)’, but they had forsaken the pleasures of rational conversation, and were ‘continually dulling my Ears by insignificant Talk or, what was infinitely worse, offending it with Obscenity’. Here Woodhouse reversed the conventional gendered conception of gossip by associating ‘insignificant Talk’ with an unimproved masculinity — no doubt wishing to appeal to Montagu’s belief in the refining influence of that feminized mode of conversation practised by the Bluestocking circle. And yet he also acknowledged his own inability to participate, as an equal, in this polished style of conversation. In the company of Montagu’s sister, Woodhouse confessed, he was unable to regulate his speech, becoming a ‘tattling, silly Wretch’, whose ‘Simplicity’ made him excessively ‘talkative’.44 The implication was that he accepted his place as a deferential guest rather than a confident participant in elite cultural life. Woodhouse, then, depicted himself as prone to gossip, while at the same time distancing himself from the gossip of labouring communities. This latter tendency was influenced by the fact that his literary lifestyle made him a source of ridicule in his local area. Writing to Montagu in 1766, Woodhouse expressed great enthusiasm about his impending move to Berkshire to work on her country estate, because he had become a target of malicious gossip in his native town.45 Later in life, however, he remembered things differently, expressing enjoyment at

Muses, pp. 184–86; Rizzo, ‘The Patron as Poet-Maker’, pp. 254–58. 44  San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, MO 6784. 45  San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, MO 6786.

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the local fame his poetry had brought him and approval of the networks of gossip which enabled news of his celebrity to spread. As he wrote in Crispinus Scriblerus: With rapid progress fly all novel tales, Thro’ hankering villages, on hills and vales, Where hungry ears, agape, seize every sound That Rumours ready dispenses round. […] Each fond relation felt Self somewhat more, Connected with a Poet, ‘tho so poor!’46

Soon after he commenced as land bailiff on Montagu’s estate, Woodhouse once again became the victim of gossip, for his new employer used this mode of communication to police his conduct during her absence. While in London, Montagu heard rumours that her primitive bard and his wife had developed very unprimitive tastes, giving in to luxurious appetites as they allegedly began to lay claim to a polite social identity. Accordingly, she sent an intermediary to find out whether it was true that Woodhouse had taken on another maid. When he heard of this, the poet was irritated. ‘It would have been much more generous & friendly to have complain’d to me’, he asserted, ‘than to have sent for Atkinson, as it made a considerable noise in the Neighbourhood before we knew any thing of it’.47 Woodhouse resented the fact that Montagu’s inquiries resulted in him becoming the talk of the neighbourhood to which he had recently moved. In this way he felt trapped between overlapping circuits of gossip, one controlled by Montagu, and used as a form of surveillance, and the other activated by the local community in response to the intrusion generated by this surveillance. But gossip was also an important weapon in Montagu’s household, allowing domestic servants to express resistance to their employer, while also enabling this particular employer to undermine and control her domestic servants. This emerges as a theme in Crispinus Scriblerus, an extended condemnation of the celebrated Bluestocking writer, so defamatory that it could never be published while she was alive. Composed during the 1790s, the poem is influenced by the radical criticism which burgeoned in this decade, with Woodhouse regarding Montagu as an embodiment of tyranny. For example, he attacks his employer for unjustly accusing her servants of stealing valuable items from her house, including the berating of Woodhouse himself for taking books from her library. This led her to tighten the surveillance of her workforce, and to gossip about her refractory 46  47 

Woodhouse, The Life and Lucubrations of Crispinus Scriblerus, i, p. 67. Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 5433C, fol. 4.

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servants to her polite friends. ‘Investigating, daily, theft, or fraud’, the poet writes, ‘At home her study, oft her talk abroad’.48 Woodhouse believed that Montagu made supposed plebeian insubordination a subject of gossip in her polite circles to encourage other property owners to similarly increase the supervision of their servants. In her own home, Montagu’s surveillance became so intense, according to her former employee, that her attempt to suppress plebeian discontent resulted in an absolute denial, not just of gossip, but of free speech. ‘This was a pure, unmix’d, despotic, state, | Small room for council – none for free debate’.49 As represented by Woodhouse, it appears that Montagu sought to limit the sociable interaction of her servants, curtailing their freedom to gossip due to a fear that this would promote insubordination. But the servants are depicted in the poem as a gossipy bunch, quick to claim their right to criticize their employer. In his account of Montagu’s famous annual feast for chimney sweeps, for example, Woodhouse describes how the servants see through this version of aristocratic largesse and agree that it is no more than an attempt by their employer to conceal her mean-spirited personality beneath an outward show of benevolence. ‘The Groom stood grumbling’, Woodhouse writes, ‘the Coachman growl’d a damn, | And Maids and Footmen felt it all – mere Sham!’50 Intriguingly, Woodhouse once again reverses the conventional association between gossip and a fickle female identity. For him, the communication of subversive sentiments is allied to a masculine resistance to tyranny — in direct contrast to Montagu’s specious charity, which is linked to a supposedly feminine concern with appearances.

Popular Culture and the Politics of Gossip: Robert Bloomfield and John Clare In 1804 the most popular plebeian poet of the age, Robert Bloomfield, wrote a letter to his brother, George, about the political state of Britain. Bloomfield rarely wrote about politics, but in this instance he speculated on the benefits of the French Revolution and the despotic policies of the current British government. ‘I should like to gossip with you face to face’, he noted to his brother,

48 

Woodhouse, The Life and Lucubrations of Crispinus Scriblerus, ii,  3. Woodhouse, The Life and Lucubrations of Crispinus Scriblerus, i,  131. 50  Woodhouse, The Life and Lucubrations of Crispinus Scriblerus, i,  200. 49 

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particularly on the subject of englands boast ‘the liberty of the press’. I think two pints of Ale would make us talk very wisely on this head, and endeavour to find whither we have any thing to boast of or not.51

According to Bloomfield, with the repression of the popular radical movement and the introduction of legislation to restrict freedom of speech and assembly, it had become dangerous to express anti-authoritarian views in print.52 For this reason, the poet longed to talk to his brother in person, to engage in some political gossip in an alehouse, where he could speak his mind freely. It was an assertion not only that the liberty of the press had become a casualty of the counter-revolutionary climate of the early nineteenth century, but that this era had caused a politicization of gossip. This politicization of gossip gave new urgency to its denigration by the proponents of agricultural improvement. Among such proponents, as we have seen, an emphasis had long been placed on industriousness, leading to the development of forms of land and labour management, which aimed to reduce the opportunities for plebeian sociability. This thinking intensified in the late eighteenth century, informing debates on poor relief, attacks on popular customs, and even arguments about the enclosure of common land.53 In 1810, for example, Charles Vancouver contended that one advantage of the enclosure of open-field land was that it dispersed the community, forcing labourers to live on separate farms rather than congregate ‘together in gossips in […] country villages’.54 The gossips this improver had in mind were plebeian women, the guardians of customary lore, neighbourliness, and communal standards of morality. However, the attack on these custodians of popular oral culture constituted part of a broader criticism of customary rural life. It is in this context that we must turn to the significance of gossip in the writings of Robert Bloomfield and his contemporary labouring-class poet, John Clare. Both of these poets had been agricultural workers, and both wrote sympathetically about rural life in the early nineteenth century. In much of their poetry, they reworked polite pastoral conventions in order to defend customary rites and rights, the transmission of which relied on gossip, storytelling, and related forms of oral communication.55 And yet, like the plebeian poets they succeeded, Clare 51 

Fulford and Pratt, eds, The Letters of Robert Bloomfield and His Circle, online in Romantic Circles, [accessed 20 January 2012]. 52  For the repression of radical opinion, see Worrall, Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance and Surveillance, 1790–1820, pp. 59–61. 53  See Neeson, Commoners, pp. 25–34. 54  Vancouver, General View of the Agriculture of Hampshire, p. 505. 55  See Goodridge, ‘“The only Privilege our Sex Enjoy”’, pp. 159–77.

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and Bloomfield also found themselves to be the victims of gossip in polite circles as well as in their own communities. As a result, there were many occasions when they derided this mode of communication for its incivility, conceiving it as a practice inimical to their refined literary sensibility. After leaving rural Suffolk to become a shoemaker in London, Bloomfield shot to fame in 1800 with the publication of The Farmer’s Boy, a runaway best-seller. Owing a debt to the tradition of eighteenth-century pastoral verse, the poem evoked an image of rural social harmony. For obvious reasons, such an image held much attraction for polite readers, though Bloomfield tended to locate this harmony in the past, as if to offer a muted critique of contemporary elite attitudes to the labouring poor. Less muted were the radical paratextual remarks of Bloomfield’s patron, the polite Whig reformer, Capel Lofft. In a long preface, which provided an account of the author’s biography, there was a comment about the role debating societies had played in cultivating the new poet’s literary talents. To this, Lofft added a footnote, criticizing the fact that such societies had lately been ‘silenced’ by a repressive government intent on stifling free speech.56 The footnote irritated Bloomfield, not least because he was worried that it would lead to the circulation of rumours that he held radical political views. And so it proved. In 1802 the fear that his apparent disaffection would become a subject of gossip in polite society was dramatically realized when the conservative politician, William Windham, cited Lofft’s footnote during a speech in parliament. Associating Bloomfield with a perilous ‘Jacobinism’, Windham argued that the shoemaker poet proved that the diffusion of knowledge among the labouring classes posed a threat to the established order.57 This was not an isolated case. Rumours about Bloomfield’s political views circulated among the reading public throughout his literary career, so that in 1821, shortly before his death, even a professed supporter wrote to him to ask if it were true that the poet had imbibed ‘Republican principles’.58 The story had originated from Shefford, the town in which Bloomfield lived during this period, and he made it clear in his reply that he resented the negative publicity that his literary celebrity had brought him. Shefford, he wrote to his interrogator, was a ‘vile little town’, where people were idle and never ‘forget slander’.59 Having become the target of this slander, 56 

Bloomfield, The Farmer’s Boy, p. vii. Parliamentary History of England, ed. by Cobbett, xxxvi, 833. 58  Fulford and Pratt, eds, The Letters of Robert Bloomfield and his Circle, < http://www.rc.umd. edu/editions/bloomfield_letters/> [accessed 20 January 2012]. 59  Fulford and Pratt, eds, The Letters of Robert Bloomfield and his Circle, < http://www.rc.umd. edu/editions/bloomfield_letters/> [accessed 20 January 2012]. 57 

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Bloomfield developed a low opinion of his neighbours, condemning their malicious gossip and lamenting his lack of privacy in a provincial town in which news travelled fast and everybody assumed a right to comment on everybody else. In his poetry, however, Bloomfield defended gossip as a laudable source of sociability and a vital means of maintaining the fabric of customary agrarian life. There is no better example of this than ‘The Horkey’, from Wild Flowers, published in 1806. In this ballad Bloomfield used the harvest home as an excuse to celebrate those noisy, exuberant, and unruly aspects of the old festive culture, which moralists and improvers wanted to reform. And, as he noted in the advertisement to the poem, he did so in the style of a gossip: In the descriptive ballad which follows, it will be evident that I have endeavoured to preserve the style of a gossip, and to transmit the memorial of a custom, the extent or antiquity of which I am not acquainted with, and pretend not to enquire.60

The speaker of ‘The Horkey’ is not a solitary individual as was conventional in polite rural poetry, but a collectivized persona — a group of gossips who talk to each other about the pleasures of the harvest feast and its rituals. Like Mary Collier, Bloomfield regards gossip as a female habit, but there is nothing derogatory about this, since it has a vital social function, sustaining bonds of mutuality by ensuring the transmission of the customs that foster such a quality. By defending gossip in this way, and for representing in approving terms the unrefined aspects of popular recreational culture, Bloomfield offended polite taste, and his poem was criticized for being ‘beneath the standard […] of rustic grace’, a form of ‘chattering’ rather than improving poetic diction.61 No doubt the poet must have greeted this review with a mixture of pleasure and irritation, for, though he would have been annoyed by the condescending tenor of the remark, his aim was, indeed, to write a kind of ‘chattering’ text, which defended plebeian sociability as a customary right. This was one reason why the plebeian poet, John Clare, was so fond of Bloomfield, describing him as ‘our best Pastoral poet’.62 Born in an open-field village, Helpston, in Northamptonshire, Clare spent much of his life writing about his local environment and society before and after it was enclosed, criticizing this development for causing a decline in customary lore and practice. In his autobiographical sketches, he wrote fondly of the way in which, as a child, gossip pro60 

Bloomfield, ‘The Horkey’, in Bloomfield, Wild Flowers, p. 31. Critical Review, 8 (1806), p. 126. 62  Clare, The Letters of John Clare, ed. by Storey, p. 302. 61 

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vided a source of knowledge and also entertainment in his open-field rural community. As he went weeding with the old women in the village, it ‘shortend the day’ and softened his labour; and as he went walking in the fields and heaths, it enlivened his imagination with accounts of ‘haunted Spots’ and magical natural objects.63 These recollections were nostalgic, confusing the innocence of childhood with the innocence of village life before enclosure attenuated its sociability. But for Clare, gossip did bind people together in customary rural society, just as it gave work a communal dimension and invested the land with meaning. This was a recurring theme in Clare’s rural poetry. In ‘The Sorrows of Love or the Broken Heart’, the poet describes a hut on the edge of a wood, a retreat where lovers go to talk to each other in private, it being situated a ‘gossip’s minute’ away from the village.64 It is as if Clare conceived space in acoustic terms for, at least in this poem, he evidently regards distance as a function of the speed with which gossip could be transmitted from one place to another. More generally, the thriving of gossip is suggestive of a culture of sociability which enables a degree of intermingling of work and leisure. This is especially evident in The Shepherd’s Calendar, the poet’s attempt to reconstruct social life in an unenclosed village by reworking a host of stock pastoral idioms. Here, Clare depicts with warm approval the dense social interaction condemned by the advocates of enclosure, particularly when he describes how ‘gossips saunter […] from door to door’, disseminating news as they perform their work or visit their neighbours.65 For this poet, gossip is emblematic of a sociable form of work and a strong sense of communal solidarity; but such qualities are weakened by agricultural improvement, with its stress on individual ownership and labour discipline. Nevertheless, Clare frequently disparaged gossip. Partly this was because of the suspicion with which rural labouring people viewed his intellectual activity. According to his own account, soon after he started writing poetry, he began to be talked about, derisively, as a ‘good scholar’. ‘Scandal and Fame are cheaply purchased in a Village’, he complained, condemning the ‘nimble tongud gossip’, which caused him to feel alienated from, as much as attached to, local life in and around Helpston.66 This shows Clare using gossip as a foil against which to emphasize his own refined sensibility, differentiating his delicate emotions and perceptive 63 

Clare, By Himself, ed. by Robinson and Powell, pp. 9, 65, 68. Clare, ‘The Sorrows of Love or the Broken Heart: A Tale’, in Clare, Cottage Tales, ed. by Robinson, Powell and Dawson, p. 86. 65  Clare, The Shepherd’s Calendar, ed. by Robinson and Summerfield, p. 25. 66  Clare, By Himself, ed. by Robinson and Powell, p. 78. 64 

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powers from the more vulgar elements of plebeian culture. But in one revealing letter Clare explained that, though he became a subject of unwanted talk in his community, this meant that, for him, Helpston was, paradoxically, a more silent place. He had no choice, he wrote to his publisher, but to assume the persona of the solitary natural genius, since his neighbours dared not ‘talk in my company for fear I shoud mention them in my writings’. It was because these ‘silent neighbours’ were ‘insensible to every thing but toiling & talking & that to no avail’, that he sought solace in ‘wandering the fields’ alone.67 One cost of fame, it appears, was that Clare (in common with many plebeian poets) developed an ambivalent attitude to gossip — probably because he was excluded from the very networks of gossip which sustained the popular rural culture he wrote about with such empathy.

67 

Clare, The Letters of John Clare, ed. by Storey, p. 230.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Documents San Marino, California, The Henry E. Huntington Library, The Montagu Collection, MO 6784–6786 Aberystwyth, The National Library of Wales, James Woodhouse Correspondence, MS 5433C

Primary Sources Bloomfield, Robert, The Farmer’s Boy (London: Vernor and Hood, 1800) —— , Wild Flowers; or, Pastoral and Local Poetry (London: Vernor, Hood and Sharpe, 1806) Clare, John, By Himself, ed. by Eric Robinson and David Powell (1996; Manchester: Car­ canet Press, 2002) —— , Cottage Tales, ed. by Eric Robinson, David Powell, and P. M. S. Dawson (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1993) —— , The Shepherd’s Calendar, ed. by Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973) Cobbett, William, ed., Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, 36 vols. (London: T.C. Hansard, 1806–20) Collier, Mary, Poems on Several Occasions (London: J. Roberts, 1762) —— , The Woman’s Labour (London: J. Roberts, 1739) Cottle, Joseph, Early Recollections, 2 vols (London: Longman and Rees, 1837) Duck, Stephen, Poems on Several Subjects (London: J. Roberts, 1730) Fulford, Tim and Linda Pratt, eds, The Letters of Robert Bloomfield and his Circle, in Romantic Circles Hands, Elizabeth, The Death of Amnon (Coventry: N. Rollason, 1789) Leapor, Mary, Poems upon Several Occasions, 2nd edn (London: J. Roberts, 1751) Mahl, Mary R., and Helene Koon, eds, The Female Spectator: English Women Writers before 1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977) More, Hannah, ‘A Prefatory Letter to Mrs Montagu’, in Ann Yearsley Poems, on Several Occasions (London: T. Cadell, 1785) Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, ed. by William Cobbett, 36 vols (London: [n.pub.], 1806–20) Pigott, Charles, The Female Jockey Club (London: D. I. Eaton, 1794) —— , A Political Dictionary (London: D. I. Eaton, 1795) Roberts, William, ed., Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More, 4 vols (London: Seeley and Burnside, 1834) Seward, Anna, Letters of Anna Seward, 6 vols (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1811) Storey, Mark, ed., The Letters of John Clare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) Thomson, James, Poetical Works, ed. by J. Logie Robertson (London: Oxford University Press, 1908)

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Tull, Jethro, The Horse-Hoing Husbandry (London: G. Strahan, 1733) Vancouver, Charles, General View of the Agriculture of Hampshire (London: Richard Phillips, 1810) Walpole, Horace, The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. by Peter Cunningham, 9 vols. (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1906) Woodhouse, James, The Life and Poetical Works of James Woodhouse, ed. by R. I. Woodhouse, 2 vols (London: Leadenhall Press, 1896) Yearsley, Ann, Poems, on Several Occasions (London: T. Cadell, 1785)

Secondary Studies Capp, Bernard, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Christmas, William J., ‘“From threshing Corn, he turns to thresh his Brains”: Stephen Duck as Laboring-Class Intellectual’, in The Working-Class Intellectual in Eighteenth-Century and Nineteenth-Century Britain, ed. by Aruna Krishnamurthy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 25–48 —— , The Lab’ring Muses: Work, Writing, and the Social Order in English Plebeian Poetry, 1730–1830 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001) Felsenstein, Frank, ‘Ann Yearsley and the Politics of Patronage: The Thorp Archive, Part I’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 21 (2002), 347–92 —— , ‘Ann Yearsley and the Politics of Patronage: The Thorp Archive, Part II’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 22 (2003), 13–56 Fox, Adam, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford Uni­versity Press, 2000) Gelles, Edith B., ‘Gossip: An Eighteenth-Century Case’, Journal of Social History, 22 (1989), 667–68 Goodridge, John, ‘“The only Privilege our Sex Enjoy”: Women’s Storytelling in Bloomfield and Clare’, in Robert Bloomfield: Lyric, Class, and the Romantic Canon, ed. by Simon White, John Goodridge, and Bridget Keegan (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2006) —— , Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) Greene, Richard, Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women’s Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) Hindle, Steve, ‘The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley: Gossip, Gender and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change, 9 (1994), 391–419 Keegan, Bridget, British Labouring-Class Nature Poetry, 1730–1837 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008) Landry, Donna, The Muses of Resistance: Laboring-Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1730– 1796 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Major, Emma, ‘The Politics of Bluestocking Sociability: Public Dimensions of the Blue­ stocking Millennium’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 65 (2002), 175–92

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Mee, Jon, ‘Libertines and Radicals in the 1790s: The Strange Case of Charles Pigott’, in Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty and Licence in the Eighteenth Century, ed. by Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004) Neeson, J. M., Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) Rizzo, Betty, ‘The Patron as Poet-Maker: The Politics of Benefaction’, Studies in EighteenthCentury Culture, 20 (1990), 241–66 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, Gossip (New York: Knopf, 1985) Waldron, Mary, Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton: The Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley, 1753–1806 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996) Worrall, David, Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance and Surveillance, 1790–1820 (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992)

Index Adams, Thomas, The Taming of the Tongue: 13 Aeneas, mythical hero in Marlowe, Christopher: 3, 38–39, 55–60 in Ovid: 3, 38, 53–55 in Virgil: 1, 3, 10, 38–39, 42–55 Aeschylus, Eumenides: 44 Affaire des Poisons: 147 Alava, Spanish ambassador: 154 d’Albret, Jeanne, Queen of Navarre: 140 Almack, William: 192 Alston, Edward: 101 Alston, Susan: 101–02 Amalia von Solms, Princess of Orange: 166 Amboise, Peace of: 139 Amelia of Cleves: 120, 123 Angela, Venetian witch: 73 Anne, Princess of Denmark: 28–30 Anne of Austria, Queen of France: 162, 178–79 Anne of Cleves, wife of Henry VIII as ‘Flanders Mare’: 3, 115, 124–25, 133 Holbein portrait of: 3, 115, 116, 123–29, 132–33 marriage: 3, 115, 117–36 rejection by Henry VIII: 3, 124, 128–33 Anne Spencer, 5th Duchess of Hamilton: 187, 191–92, 197, 199–202 Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre: 139 Antoine de Navarre: 155 Antonia, Venetian witch: 74–76 Antwerp: 162, 167, 171–72, 174, 181 Aries, Philippe: 190 Arundell, William: 93 Aston, John: 94 Athens: 68 Atkins, J. W. H.: 55

d’Aubigné, Agrippa d’: 139 Augustus Caesar, Roman emperor in Ovid: 39, 52–54 in Virgil: 38, 41–42, 47–48, 50, 53, 56, 59 Auxonne: 142, 149, 151 Badoer, Giovanni: 65 Barchiesi, Alessandro: 46, 54 Barchino, Gaspar: 137, 154–55 Barclay, Katie: 5 Baskerville, Thomas: 21 Bätschmann, Oskar: 124 Batt, Robert: 104 Beard, Richard: 120 Bellany, Alastair: 20 Bennet, Alice: 17 Best, Catherine: 106 Best, Henry: 104, 106 Bèze, Théodore de: 139–40 Bingham, Richard: 13 Bloomfield, George: 224–25 Bloomfield, Robert: 224–27 The Farmer’s Boy: 226 Wild Flowers: 227 Bluestockings, and gossip: 209–11, 222–23; see also Montagu, Elizabeth; More, Hannah Boleyn, Anne, wife of Henry VIII: 118 n. 10, 121–22 Bonfield, Lloyd: 99 Botelho, Keith M.: 6, 16, 30, 117, 165 Bourbon, Charles de see Roche-sur-Yon, prince of Bourdillon, Maréchal de: 151 Brand, Elizabeth: 89

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Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille: 143, 145, 152 Briani, Paula: 74 Brome, Thomas: 93 Broomhall, Susan: 3 Brunehaut, French queen: 147 Brussels: 23 Buckingham, Duke of: 26 Buller, Francis: 93 Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury: 27, 30, 115, 124, 133 Butts, Dr: 132 Callimachus: 47 Callow, Rowland: 89 Calvin, John: 139–40, 154 Campra, Pietro: 77–78 Capern, Amanda: 4–5 Capp, Bernard: 21–23, 25, 29, 85 Catena, Emilia, Venetian witch: 76–80 Catherine-Marie de Lorraine: 154 Catullus: 47 Chapuys, Eustace, Imperial ambassador: 119, 122 Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine: 174 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor: 119, 128–29 Charles I, King of England: 24, 26 Charles II, King of England: 22, 162, 172, 177 Charles IX, King of France: 141 Charles Louis, Elector Palatine: 163, 169, 171–73, 175–81 Charlotte, wife of George III: 212 Chaucer: 1, 9–10 House of Rumour: 9–10 Wife of Bath: 29 Cheney, Patrick: 40–41 Christina, Queen of Sweden: 181 Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan: 121, 123, 126–28 Clapham, Yorkshire: 91–92 Clare, John: 211, 225 gossip in poetry of: 227–29 Shepherd’s Calendar: 228 Clarke, Edward, MP: 21, 26 Clarke, Mary: 21, 26 Coats, Mrs: 192, 194, 197, 199 Collier, Mary: 21, 227 The Woman’s Labour: 212–16

Condé, Prince de (Louis de Bourbon): 161 and Isabelle de Limeuil: 4, 137–41, 144–46, 151–55, 157 Contarini, Alessandro: 76 Corbiere, Mrs: 191, 197 Corona, Antonio: 73 correspondence elite reputation, role in: 166–77 of servants see under Salisbury, Dorothy Cottle, Joseph: 219 Cotton, Margery: 23–24 court cases and boundaries: 85, 96–98 and customary rights: 97–98 increase in: 99–100 and inheritance rights: 85, 90–92, 96–97, 105–06 and kinship links: 102–08 and memory: 95–97, 100 and slander: 92–95 and wills: 85, 89, 92, 96 Court of Chancery, English: 4–5, 86, 96, 100 and Danby family case: 105–08 and neutralizing gossip: 4–5 Court of Chivalry: 94 Court of Common Pleas: 95, 102 Court of King’s Bench: 95 Cressy, David: 93, 107 Cromwell, Thomas: 118, 124–25, 130–33 Cuérande, Béatrix: 14 Cullen, Elizabeth (Betty): 192, 195, 200–01 Cullen, William: 192 Cunningham, Christian: 190, 192–93 Cunningham, Margaret: 192 Cunningham, William: 190 Cusance, Béatrix de: 174 Cust, Richard: 17, 94 Danby, Anne: 103, 105–07 Danby, Christopher: 103 Danby, Francis: 103, 106 Danby, James: 87 Danby, John: 103, 106 Danby, Margaret: 98, 103–07 Danby, Thomas: 103–04, 106–07 Dandalo, Marco: 79 Dashwood, Lady: 196 Daybell, James: 22 Dean, Trevor: 19

INDEX Defoe, Daniel: 25, 30 Degenfeld, Marie Louise von: 173 Dekker, Thomas, Old Fortunatus: 14 Denney, Peter: 5 Desmond, Marilynn: 44 Dido, mythical Queen of Carthage in Marlowe, Christopher: 3, 38–41, 55–60 in Ovid: 3, 38, 53–55 in Virgil: 1, 3, 10, 38–39, 42–55 Dijon: 142 Dilettanti: 20 Duck, Stephen: 211 The Thresher’s Labour: 212–15 Düren: 123 Durrant, Jonathan: 67 Dusseldorf: 121 ‘earwitnessing’: 6 economic rights: 26 and kinship links: 102–08 and women: 91, 95 Edinburgh: 187, 191 Edward, brother of Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz: 162, 167, 169–71, 174–81 Edward I, King of England: 15, 121 Edward VI, King of England: 117, 126 Eichstätt: 68 Eidinow, Esther: 68 Elena, Venetian witch: 75–76 Eliot, George: 24 Elisabeth Charlotte, Princesse Palatine: 163 Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Marlowe’s Dido: 59–60 and rumoured bastards of: 26 and Virgil’s Aeneid: 55–56 Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia: 161, 166–70, 172–81 Elsam, Elizabeth: 101–02 Elsam, Thomas: 102 Épinay, Sieur de: 164, 172 Euripides, Bacchae: 44 Evans, Meredith: 18 Evenwood: 103 Eymeric, Nicolau, Directorium inquisitorum: 70–72 fama (general) and classical period: 37; see also under Homer; Ovid; Virgil

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definition of: 1–2, 11–20 as goddess: 1, 37–39, 42–60 meaning of: 20–27 Farnese, Alessandro, Cardinal: 131 Farnley: 105 Fatum: 39–40, 46, 54, 58–59 Female Jockey Club: 209 Fenster, Thelma: 18 Filer, Agnes: 86 Fitzwilliam, William, 1st Earl of Southampton: 120, 131 Florio, John: 17, 86 Flower, Jane: 87 Fox, Adam: 13, 17–18, 26, 87 Foxton: 95–96 Francis I, King of France: 119, 121–22, 129, 132 Francis of Lorraine: 130 Frédégonde, French queen: 147 Frederick V, King of Bohemia: 161 Fresnes, seigneur de see Robertet, Florimond Fryup, Yorkshire: 95 Furetière, Antoine: 156 Furlana, Lorenza: 74 Gager, William: 55 Gardener, Robert: 26 Garrioch, David: 19 Gaskell, Elizabeth: 24 Geertz, Clifford: 91 gender and gossip and defamatory language: 92–94, 98, 108 early modern: 28–31, 86, 88, 91–93, 164 and illegitimate births: 4, 128, 138, 142–45, 187–88, 191–99 and Louise of Hollandine scandal: 164–81 non-gendered: 2 and reputation: 98–108, 165; see also under Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz as women’s power: 2, 86, 211 see also under identity, social Ghent: 22 Gill, Roma: 59 Glissenti, Fabio, Discorsi Morali: 25 Gluckman, Max: 92 Goldoni, Carlo: 30 Gonzaga, Anna Maria: 169 gossip (general) and habitus: 89 news, relation to: 86–87

INDEX

236

as term: 12–17, 117 as tool to obtain information: 6, 66–67 Gouge, William: 13 Gowing, Laura: 19, 93 Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot de: 122 Griener, Pascal: 124 Grifalconi, Giovanni: 76 Hague, The: 28, 164, 166–67 Halliwell, Edward: 55 Hands, Elizabeth, The Death of Amnon: 215–16 Hardie, Philip: 38, 40, 45, 49, 60 Heane, Walter: 89 Helpston, Northamptonshire: 227–29 Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I: 162, 171 Henry VII, King of England: 126 Henry VIII, King of England: 6 Anne of Cleves, marriage to: 3, 115, 117–26 Anne of Cleves, rejection of: 3, 124, 128–33 excommunication of: 128 and Holbein portraits: 115, 123–29, 132–33 Herrup, Cynthia: 148 Hertel, Christiane: 128 Heyss, Cornelius: 126 Hindle, Steve: 29, 85, 88 Hohenzollern, Maria Elisabeth II van de Bergh op Zoom, Princess van: 166–70, 172, 175–77, 181 Holbein, Hans: 2 portrait of Anne of Cleves: 3, 115, 116, 123–26 portrait of Christina of Denmark: 123, 126–29, 132–33 Homer: 53 Iliad: 38, 42, 46–47 Odyssey: 42 Hopper, Andrew: 94 Horace, Odes: 54 Horodowich, Elizabeth: 4, 16, 19, 25, 27, 30 Hossack, Mr and Mrs: 192, 196–99 Houghton, John: 94 Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey: 55 Hudson, Thomas: 95 Hutton, John: 127 Huygens, Constantijn: 174 Hyde, Henry, Earl of Clarendon: 27, 30

identity social defining of: 24–25 gender and elite identities: 165–81 gossip and group identity: 89–90, 92–93 Ingleby, Anne: 24 Inglis, Alexander, Master of Horse for Duke of Hamilton: 5, 187–88, 193–203 Inglis, Robert: 193 Ingram, Martin: 19 James, 5th Duke of Hamilton: 187, 191, 198, 200 James, Heather: 39, 41, 49–50 James I, King of England: 26 James II, King of England: 27, 30 Jockey Club: 209 John III of Cleves: 115 n. 1 Joseph de I Urzi Nuovi: 65–66 Kelly, Jason: 20, 24 Kennedy, Duncan: 47 Kettering, Sharon: 19 Knatchbull, Mary: 22–23 Knowsley, Margaret: 14–15, 88 Kyrle, John: 101 L’Aubespine, Bishop: 155 La Beraudière, Louise de: 155 La Ferrière, Hector de: 144 La Marck, Charles-Robert de see Maulevrier, comte de La Rocque, Sieur de: 161–62, 178 LaGuardia, David: 152 Laton, Charles: 87 Lawson, Philip: 105 Leapor, Mary: 216–18 Leathley, William: 88 Lee, M. Owen: 47–48 Leicester, Earl of: 26 libel, early modern: 19–20 Limeuil, Isabelle de: 137 and cuckoldry: 138, 151–55 and gossip as verse: 142–45 illegitimate son, birth of: 4, 128, 142–44 and international scandal: 138, 154–55 marriage of: 157 poisoning, accusation of: 138–39, 145–51, 156

INDEX Lionino, Francesco: 74 Lipscombe, Susannah: 23 Lisandro, Lorenzo de: 74 Lisle, Lady: 201 Lochrie, Karma: 29 Lofft, Capel: 226 Logan, Robert: 60 London: 21, 25, 103, 105, 187, 191 Louis XIII, King of France: 19 Louis XIV, King of France: 147 Louis de Bourbon see Condé, Prince de Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz as Abbess of Maubuisson: 163 as artist: 163 Catholicism, conversion to: 4, 161–71, 175, 180 correspondence with Princess van Hohen­zollern: 166–70, 172, 175–77, 181 pregnancy, rumoured: 161, 163, 172–75, 181 reconciliation with family: 177–81 reputation, clearing of: 171–77, 181 Louise Mary, Abbess of Maubuisson see Louise Hollandine von der Pfalz Loxton, Edward: 86 Lucretius, De rerum natura: 47 Luynes, duc de: 19 Mackail, W.: 49 Madeglie, Santo dale: 73 Malton: 103 Mann, Catherine: 201 Mann, Dorothy: 87–88 Mansfield, Lisa: 3 Marguerite de France, Duchess of Savoy: 151 Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre: 143–44 Marillac, Charles de: 119, 121–22, 132 Marlborough: 14 Marlowe, Christopher Dido, Queen of Carthage: 3, 38–39, 48, 55–60 Ovid, compared to: 56, 59 and reputation: 58 Tamburlaine the Great: 59 Virgil, compared to: 55–59 Martin, Ruth: 68

237

Mary, Princess of Orange (Mary II, Queen of England): 28, 30 Mary II, Queen of England see Mary, Princess of Orange Mary of Modena, wife of James II: 27–30 Masham: 103 Masini, Eliseo, Sacro Arsenale overo Prattica dell’Officio della Santa Inquisitione: 71–72 Maubuisson: 162–63 Maulevrier, comte de (Charles-Robert de La Marck): 146–48, 150, 155 Maza, Sara: 189 McIlvenna, Una: 3–4 Mechelen, Archbishop of: 23 Medici, Catherine de ‘flying squadron’ of: 139 and Isabelle de Limeuil scandal: 4, 137, 139–45, 148, 150, 154–55 and rumour management: 156–58 as Lucina, goddess of childbirth: 145 Medmenham Abbey: 20 Meggs, Mary: 89 Michiel, Salvador: 76 Midelfort, H. C. Erik: 67 Milani, Marisa: 68, 70 Milbank, Mary: 97–98 Montagu, Elizabeth: 210–11, 215, 218 and John Woodhouse: 221–24 Montauban: 14, 23 Monter, William: 67 Montespan, Mme de: 147 Montespedon, Philippes de: 146 Montmorency, Anne de, Chief Constable of France: 121 Montmorency-Fosseux, Françoise: 143 More, Hanna: 210–11, 215, 218–21 Morrice, Roger: 29–30 Muldrew, Craig: 85, 96, 99–100, 102 Nantwich: 14–15 Nemours, Duke of: 144 Neubauer, Hans-Joachim: 11–12, 16, 148 newspapers: 17–18, 86 and social identity: 24 Nicholas, Edward, Sir: 22 Normand, Silje: 147, 149 Oakes, John: 94 Ogle, Ann: 99

INDEX

238

Olisleger, Henry, Chancellor of Cleves: 120–21 Oliver, H. J.: 60 Orléans, Françoise de, Duchesse de Longueville: 155 Ovid: 1 Chaucer’s retelling of: 9–10 and ekphrasis of Fama: 39, 52 Marlowe, compared to: 56, 59 Metamorphoses: 3, 9–10, 38–41, 48, 51–56 Virgil, compared to: 51–55 Paine, Robert: 188 Parkin, Vincent: 95 Parsons, Nicola: 29, 31 Passarina, Diana: 75 patronage networks: 2, 22–23 Paul III, pope: 128, 131 Penn, William, Sir: 25 Pepys, Elizabeth: 25 Pepys, Samuel: 21, 25 Pepys, Weller: 221 Percy, Elizabeth, Lady: 90 Percy, James: 90–91 Phaer, Thomas: 55 Phayer, Thomas, Book of Presidents: 91 Phillips, Susan: 12 Pigott, Charles: 209–11 Pincombe, John: 94 Pitcairn, William: 193 Platière, Imbert de la: 151 Plato: 47 poets, plebeian gossip, attitude towards: 5–6, 21, 210–16, 221–24, 226–29 gossip, as subjects of: 215–26 political views of: 211, 224–27 see also Bloomfield, Robert; Clare, John; Duck, Stephen; Hans, Elizabeth; Leapor, Mary; Woodhouse, James; Yearsley, Ann poison see Affaire des Poisons; Limeuil, Isabelle de political action: 2 and Mary of Modena’s pregnancy: 27–30 see also poets, plebeian, political views of Pontoise: 22 Popish Plot: 26–27 Potter, Lucy: 3

Proctor, Katherine: 92 Proctor, Miles: 91–92 Prust, Hugh: 94 Raw, Mary: 95 Read, Alice: 105 Read, John: 103, 105 Richelieu, Cardinal: 19 Richmond, Anne: 99 Ripley, Helen: 87–88 Robertet Florimond, seigneur de Fresnes: 138, 141–42, 151–52, 156 Roche-sur-Yon, prince of (Charles de Bourbon): 4, 138, 145–46, 149, 153 Rochester: 129–30 Rohan, Françoise de: 144 Roper, Lyndal: 67 Rouen: 162 Rowlands, John: 124 Roye, Eléanore de, wife of Prince de Condé: 139, 154 rumour (general) and customary rights: 97–98 and legal issues: 87–93 news, relationship to: 17–18, 66 personification of: 18 as term: 15–18, 117 as tool to obtain information: 6, 66–67 Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine: 170–71, 176, 178, 181 Rushworth, John: 105 Salisbury, Dorothy letters of: 5, 187–88, 190, 194–203 illegitimate pregnancy of: 187–88, 191, 193–94 Sandwich, Earl of: 20 Sanudo, Marin: 65–66 Sardini, Scipion: 157 Saulx, Claude de, seigneur de Ventoux et de Torpes: 149–50, 156 Savorgnan, Andriana, Venetian witch: 79 Sawyer, Jeffrey: 18 Scheuer, Hand Jürgen: 1 Schiavona, Santa, Venetian witch: 77 Schofield, Phillipp: 89 Scot, Reginald: 147 Scott, James C.: 17

INDEX Scott, Sarah: 222 Scroggs, Lord Chief Justice: 26 servants correspondence of, see under Salisbury, Dorothy ‘domestication’ of: 189–90 earnings of: 197–98 gossip in relations with employers: 5, 25, 187–203 and pregnancies, illegitimate: 191–99; see also Salisbury, Dorothy Seward, Anna: 219 Seymour, Jane, wife of Henry VIII: 117, 122 Shakespeare, William Hamlet: 60 2 Henry IV: 14, 18 King Lear: 14 Titus Andronicus: 14 Shefford: 226 Sidney, Philip, Sir, Apology for Poetry: 55 slander: 92–95, 108 Slavitt, David: 51 Smail, Daniel Lord: 18 Smith, Adam: 102 Smith, John: 95 Snape: 97 Soranzo, Mattio: 70 Spacks, Patricia: 21, 24–25 Spenser, Edmund: 40 Spreat, Grace: 21 Spreat, John: 21 Stanyhurst, Richard: 55 Stayley, William: 26 Stewart, Pamela: 17 Stout, William: 99 Stowe: 98 Strathern, Andrew: 17 Taraboto, Marco Antonio: 75 Tarrant, Richard: 51 Taylor, James: 194, 199–200 Taylor, Kitty: 192, 199–201 Temple, Hester: 98 Testament Politique: 19 theatre, and gossip: 13–14, 30 Thomas, Keith: 67, 85 Thorp, Perrow: 103–04 Thou, Jacques-Auguste de: 141 Timaeus: 44, 47, 53, 56

239

Toulson, Clement: 99 Trollope, Anthony: 24 Tunbridge: 30 Tunstall, Mary: 96–97 Tusser, Thomas: 99 Twistleton, Robert: 92 Val Calmonica, witchcraft in: 65–66 Valier, Giovanni Francesco: 74 Van Ghent, Jacqueline: 3 Vancouver, Charles: 225 Venice: 25 apothecaries and barbers as gossips: 30 and proverbs on gossip: 13 and witchcraft: 4, 65–81 Villers, Philippe de: 161 Virgil Aeneid: 1, 3, 9–10, 18, 37–59 Chaucer’s retelling of: 9–10 and ekphrasis of Fama: 37, 52 Fama as foul goddess: 37, 39, 55 Fama as monstrum horrendum: 1, 6, 10 Marlowe, compared to: 55–59 Ovid, compared to: 51–55 and reputation: 48–49 and Shakespeare: 14 Visitation of Ste Marie de Chaillot: 162 Vitry, Mademoiselle de: 144 Vivo, Filippo de: 30 Wakefield: 100 Walker, Claire: 2 Walpole, Horace: 211 Watlass: 97–98 Well: 97 Wharton, Edith: 24 Whyte, Nicola: 95 Wickham, Chris: 15–16, 23, 89 Wiesner-Hanks, Merry: 88 Wilkes, John: 20 Wilkinson, Sarah: 101 William (III) of Orange, King of England: 27 Winchcombe: 21 Winchester, Marchioness of: 97 Windham, William: 226 witchcraft in Brussels abbey: 23–24 categories of: 68–69

240

as heresy: 67–71, 73, 75 and inquisitorial handbooks: 70–71 and oral network of knowledge: 66–81 and reputation: 67–68, 72–74 in Venice: 4, 65–81 Woltman, Alfred: 124 women’s oral networks: 14–15, 21, 164 gossip as empowerment: 2, 86, 211; see also Salisbury, Dorothy and Mary of Modena’s pregnancy: 27–30 see also gender and gossip Wood, Mrs: 192, 195 Woodhouse, James: 221–24 Crispinus Scriblerus: 221, 223 Woodman, John: 93 Wotton, Nicholas, Dr: 119–20 Wriothesley, Charles: 129 Wriothesley, Thomas: 127 Wyatt, Elizabeth: 89–90 Wynton: 96 Yearsley, Ann: 6, 210–11, 215, 218–21 Poems on Several Occasions: 218–19 York: 101

INDEX

Early European Research All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series Sociability and its Discontents: Civil Society, Social Capital, and their Alternatives in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Nicholas Eckstein and Nicholas Terpstra (2009) Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period, ed. by Yasmin Haskell (2011) Giovanni Tarantino, Republicanism, Sinophilia, and Historical Writing: Thomas Gordon (c.1691–1750) and his ‘History of England’ (2012) Writing Royal Entries in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Marie-Claude Canova-Green and Jean Andrews with Marie-France Wagner (2013) Friendship and Social Networks in Scandinavia c.1000–1800, ed. by Jón Viðar Sigurðsson and Thomas Småberg (2013) Identities in Early Modern English Writing: Religion, Gender, Nation, ed. by Lorna Fitz­ simmons (2014)

In Preparation Understanding Emotions in Early Europe, ed. by Michael Champion and Andrew Lynch