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Chapter 3

Writing History: Anne Dowriche

nne Dowriche is the third author that my study deals with. Born

Edgcumbe, she is the first woman to write of contemporary French history

in English verse. She is similar to Locke in that the history of the

attribution of her text has not been smooth, and, like Whitney, there is very little that is

known about her biography. She was also related to Locke through Locke’s third

marriage to Richard Prowse.1 Patrick Cullen in his introduction to the Facsimile of her

texts draws the following three conclusions from the front matter of The French historie

(Figure 17): ‘Anne was born into the Edgecombe family (presumably in or near the place

to which her family gave its name); she married a Dowriche and she seems to have had a

lasting connection with the West Country.’ 2 Anne Dowriche was the daughter of Sir

Richard Edgcumbe (d. 1562) and Elizabeth Tregian, born probably a little before 1560

(her father’s will of 1560 mentions provision for the education of Anne and her sister,

and describes her as ‘under age’). The sister, Margaret Denny, later became maid of

honour to Elizabeth I. Although the Edgcumbes were an established and influential

family, the Tregians were possibly a little less so. Anne’s mother, Elizabeth, was probably

A

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the sister of Sir Richard Rogers. Elizabeth Tregian’s family came of Catholic stock, and

was allied in kinship to notorious recusants like Francis Tregian, and had undergone

religious persecution under Elizabeth.3 Her father was John Tregian who had been an

important official at court, ‘Esquire of the Body to Henry VIII, Steward of the Chamber

and Gentleman Sewer of the King’s Chamber.’4 The Catholic Elizabeth Tregian married

Richard Edgcumbe around 1535. Both Richard Edgcumbe and his son Pearse Edgcumbe

became Members of Parliament.5

The manner of the education wished upon her in the will indicate that the

Edgcumbe family was Protestant, and her writing, of course reveals ardent Reformist zeal,

although her background indicates a mixture. Interestingly, Anne’s birth coincides with

the time that Locke published her first book, and she grew up in a Protestant family,

whatever her mother’s religious beliefs, at a time when it was once again safe to be a

Protestant in England. She married Hugh Dowriche, 6 rector of Lapford, on 29

November 1580 at Exeter; their marriage licence declares that it is being issued to ‘Mr.

Dowrishe, Rector of Lapford, and Anna Edgecombe, gentlewoman.’7 The couple had at

least six children. In 1589, after a little more than eight years of marriage, Anne

published (in its full and rather long title with attribution) The French historie: that is, a

lamentable Discourse of three of the chiefe, and most famous bloodie broiles that haue

happened in France for the Gospell of Iesus Christ. Namelie; 1 The outrage called The wining

of S. Iames his Streete, 1557. 2 The constant Martirdome of Annas Burgeus one of the K.

Councell, 1559. 3 The bloodie Marriage of Margaret Sister to Charles the 9. Anno 1572.

Published by A. D (Figure 17).8

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Figure 17. Title page of Anne Dowriche’s The French historie [Imprinted at London by

Thomas Orwin for Thomas Man. 1589], STC (2nd ed.) 7159. The British Library,

shelfmark C.132.h.28. Scanned from Facsimile. Digitised in EEBO.

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This is a remarkable polemical text, every bit as ‘anomalous’ as Locke’s and

Whitney’s. It attempts to recount in 2,264 lines of alternating iambic heptameters and

hexameters three important incidents in the Protestant struggle in France: an attack on a

Protestant prayer meeting known as the affair of the Rue St Jacques in 1557; the trial and

execution of the Protestant martyr Annas Burgeus in 1559, and the murder of the

Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny whose death preceded the St Bartholomew’s day

massacre of 1572.

The text is based upon Jean de Serres’s Commentariorum de statu religionis &

reipublicae in regno Galliae libri (1572-75) translated by the minister Thomas Tymme as

The three partes of commentaries containing the whole and perfect discourse of the ciuill

warres of Fraunce,, vnder the raignes of Henry the Second, Frances the Second, and of Charles

the Ninth: with an addition of the cruell murther of the Admirall Chastilion, and diuers other

nobles, committed the 24 daye of August, anno 1572 / translated out of Latine into English

(London, 1574, published by Frances Coldocke).9 Another major source is François

Hotman’s A true and plaine Report of the Furious outrages in Fraunce (1573, reprinted as

Book 10 of Serres), which was also used by Christopher Marlowe in his Massacre at Paris

(c. 1592). Other sources include Innocent Gentillet's Discovrs, svr les moyens de bien go

werner et maintenir en bonne paix vn Royaume... Contre Nicolas Machiauel Florentin

(1576) widely circulated in the manuscript English translation of Simon Paterick called

the Contre Machievel (first published in English in 1602 and cited by Dowriche herself),10

and possible manuscript versions of political speeches. She uses Gentillet’s words for a

couple of shoulder-notes in the third and most complex section of her history in

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Catherine de Medici’s ‘Machiavel’ speech.11 The way in which she manipulates and

frames her source material is richly rewarding in itself and is discussed in greater detail

below. However, apart from textual sources, Dowriche’s lived experience might have

contributed in no small measure to her telling of the contemporary religious turmoil in

France.

Micheline White’s valuable research into literary circles of women based upon

what she calls ‘prioritizing geographical locality and seeking to excavate a region’s literary,

religious, and kinship networks’ revealed surprising connections with other literary

women deeply committed to the Reformist cause, not least among them Anne Vaughan

Locke herself, who had moved to Exeter after her third marriage, to Richard Prowse, and

from where she had published her translation of Jean Taffin’s Of the markes of the children

of God (1590) under her married name.12 After discussing the various ways in which the

activities of women’s (and men’s) literary coteries of the time and their products have

been read and theorised by scholars13 White traces connections among women living and

writing in the West Country at the time, discussing five women living in the vicinity of

Exeter. They are Anne Dowriche, Anne Vaughan Locke Prowse, Anne Lock Moyle,

Ursula Fulford, and Elizabeth Rous. White establishes the following connections through

archival research: ‘Dowriche and Lock were related through the Prowses, for Richard

Prowse’s daughter, Winifred, married Hugh Dowriche’s cousin, Thomas Dowriche, and

Prowse bequeathed money and goods to this daughter in his will. The women were also

related through the Carew family of Antony House: Richard Carew was Anne

Dowriche’s nephew, and he was related to the Locks through his wife, Juliana

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Arundell.’14 Locke and Dowriche would have known each other as kinswomen and

neighbours and the older woman, widely respected for her learning and theological

soundness would have doubtless influenced Dowriche in her own writing. This

connection might also explain Dowriche’s choice of verse for her project. As White notes:

Although Dowriche and Lock published works with different

generic characteristics, the women shared the same religious

outlook, and their works would have appealed to readers with

similar religious sensibilities; both women understand the true

church to be ‘under the cross,’ and they encourage the godly

to remain committed to the truth in spite of imminent

afflictions. […]There are also marked similarities between

Lock’s 1590 poem, ‘The necessitie and benefite of affliction,’

and Dowriche’s 1596 ‘Verses written by a Gentlewoman,

upon the Jaylors Conversion,’ and it is possible that Lock’s

poem may have inspired Dowriche’s. Both poems are written

in ballad meter (a repetitive but memorable verse form), and

both focus on the issue probably most pressing to the average

reader: the cause of and appropriate response to suffering.

Lock develops Taffin’s argument that God allows the elect to

suffer temporarily at the hands of the wicked in order to draw

them to repentance and obedience, while Dowriche develops

her husband’s argument that the elect should respond to

afflictions by repenting and renewing their faith.15

Anne Vaughan Locke’s daughter, and Robert Moyle’s wife, Anne Lock Moyle,16 was

another learned woman and religious activist whom Charles FitzGeffrey’s in his Affaniae

describes as ‘learned’ woman with a ‘manly heart’ and stresses her facility with ‘Greek wit’

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and ‘Latin song.’.17 Although there is no record of her having published anything, works

by both Anne and Robert Moyle were circulated in manuscript among this group.

Another participant of this circle was Ursula Fulford. She was the recipient of printed

dedications that praise her for advancing Protestantism in the West Country, and she was

probably also a poet, although never published in print. From the painstaking work of

recovery that she undertakes in her essay, White draws a couple of valid and valuable

conclusions. One of them is that ‘the discovery of evidence pertaining to the literary and

religious activities of previously unknown women such as Anne Moyle, Ursula Fulford,

and perhaps Elizabeth Rous reminds us that lists of extant printed works represent only

part of women’s literary activities, and that women’s religious writings should be

interpreted alongside non-literary forms of religious activism.’ Another is that, ‘quite

contrary to Woolf ’s description of the isolated Elizabethan poetess, we find that these

women were recognized as active members of vibrant religious and literary communities

and were connected to each other, to specific religious and literary goals, and to the same

patrons and preachers.’18

However, a network of similar outlines but with slightly different emphases could

also have informed Dowriche’s work. Just as literary circles and the circulation of ideas in

manuscript constitute an essential medium for the generation of literary texts, orality and

conversation, too, play a part in literary production that may not be ignored without

considerable loss to critical understanding.19 Especially in the early modern context,

where the family was a far more public structure with strict hierarchies and systems of

administration, the importance of the transmission of oral knowledge in domestic life

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and within kinship bonds cannot be denied. Indeed, Dowriche’s characteristic

dependence upon direct speech in her historical retelling could probably be seen as a

legacy of this culture. It might be well, therefore, to wonder if Anne Dowriche’s extended

family could have provided ideas and material for her project.

In a very recent blog post (January 22, 2011), Julie Sampson reconstructs a web

of family relationships of the Devonshire Edgcumbes with a view towards establishing

just this.20 She cites her article in the Devonshire Association’s Transactions of 2009 and

re-presents her facts in the blog, illustrated with photographs of Dowriche House, the

Dowriche coat of arms and Mount Edgcumbe. Sampson believes that Dowriche’s poem

‘may well include narration of some of the events there [at the Bartholomew’s Day

massacre], which she [Dowriche] absorbed through talking to individuals who had been

present, particularly during the turbulent days around the massacre itself. Her position at

the heart of a complicated intersection of familial threads may have meant that she was

close to several of those individuals who were passionately engaged with the historical

developments of the French dramas, who then related to her their own responses and

reactions to what they had seen. Or, possibly, she heard stories from a close relative of

one of those involved. Perhaps, as a women [sic] recognised for her writerly and poetic

gifts, she was asked to work on a narrative of the massacre.’ Sampson’s post reads as

fascinating family history and it would not be irrelevant to trace the three major French

links she provides in her recreation of the complex pattern of relationships that might

provide insights into the writing of The French historie.

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The three major links Sampson traces are a sister, a sister-in-law, and a niece; all

serving as ladies in waiting at the French and English courts. They were Catherine

Edgcumbe Champernowne, Mary Carew Dowriche and Margaret Edgcumbe Denny.21

Catherine Edgcumbe, one of Dowriche’s older sisters married Henry

Champernowne. Henry raised a troop of gentry from his part of the country, including

his cousins Gawen Champernowne and Walter Raleigh, for an expedition to support the

French Huguenots. He died in battle in Rochelle, France, in 1570. Roberta or Gabrielle,

the daughter of the Count of Montgomerie (exiled by Catherine de Medici for

accidentally killing Henri II in a friendly joust in 1559, later leader of the Huguenots in

France and staunch supporter of the Prince of Condé and Admiral de Coligny), married

Gawen Champernowne in Normandy in 1572, thus establishing the links between the

Edgcumbes and the Montgomeries. 22 Anne was probably Roberta and Gawen’s

contemporary (Gawen was born in 1555), and might have known Roberta and the

Montgomeries after the couple came back to England upon the execution of the Count

in 1574 at Domfront by the Guises, and Roberta bore eleven children at Darlington,

their home. Anne Edgcumbe might even have met the Count himself during his decade-

long exile, much of which had been spent at the Champernowne estate.

The next link is Gawen’s sister Elizabeth, also first cousin to Henry, and thus

sister-in-law to Dowriche’s sister Catherine. In 1576 Elizabeth married Edward Seymour,

first Baronet of Berry Pomeroy. Edward was the grandson of the notorious Edward, first

Duke of Somerset, and Lord Protector, who had been the brother of Jane Seymour and

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the equally notorious Thomas Seymour (Catherine Parr’s second husband, linked in

scandal with the young Princess Elizabeth), and King Edward VI’s uncle. The three

Seymour sisters of Hecatodistichon (first published 1550, France) fame had been the

offspring of the Lord Protector Somerset’s second wife, Anne Stanhope, and therefore the

younger first Baronet’s step-aunts.23 While Gawen’s sister could have linked Dowriche to

the Seymours and their élite Protestant literary activities and French connections,

Catherine and Henry’s son Richard Champernowne who, in 1581, married Elizabeth

Popham, daughter of Sir John Popham (judge of recusants who officiated in the trials of

Mary Queen of Scots, Robert Southwell and Walter Raleigh) provided other privileged

reformers. Another interesting influence could have been Walter Raleigh’s mother and

Henry Champernowne’s aunt, Catherine Champernowne Carew (d. 1594). She had

probably been in her sixties during the French religious wars but had a strong Reformist

history. She had refused to recant under Mary’s reign and had publicly supported the

Protestant martyr Agnes Prest, sitting up with her the night before her execution. She

might have had a great many stories to tell Dowriche, and she was very much alive when

The French historie was published.

The third connection is on Dowriche’s husband’s side of the family, although it is

once again strikingly, a female link. Mary Carew Dowriche was the wife of Walter

Dowriche, Hugh’s brother. She came from the ardently protestant Carew family and

possessed a number of significant connections. She was related to the Duchess of Suffolk,

Mary Queen of France; her cousin George Carew had renounced his Catholic upbringing

and supported protestant groups. His wife, Mary Norrys, had been maid of honour to

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Anne Boleyn, probably to Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, and Catherine Howard. She

later on married Richard Champernowne and gave birth to the abovementioned Gawen.

It was a small world indeed. Again, Margaret Edgcumbe Denny, Anne’s niece, had Joan

or Jane Champernowne as a mother-in-law. Joan, or Jane, had been maid of honour to

Catherine of Aragon and had taken the responsibility of caring for the young Princess

Elizabeth in 1548 at the Denny home in Chelsunt. Although she died in 1553, she could

not have failed to live in family anecdotes. There is also the possibility that the famous

Katherine Ashley, Elizabeth Tudor’s tutor and dangerously implicated in the Seymour

scandal, could have been Joan’s sister. Margaret Edgcumbe Denny herself became one of

the Queen’s favourites. Sampson also mentions the mysterious ‘Lady Edgcumbe’ who

had been prominent at court (named lady of the Privy Chambers of both Anne of Cleves

and Katherine Howard) and who disappears from record after the execution of the latter

Queen, as well as the earlier Lady Edgcumbe who had been Anne Boleyn’s maid. These

might be one or two individuals, she or they could have been Anne’s mother Elizabeth

Tregian, or Anne’s father’s step-mother: nothing concrete has been established about her

or their identity. However, since such a figure or figures did exist, the family would have

been aware of the facts and there had probably been a wealth of stories about these female

ancestors who were intimate with both French and English royalty. As Sampson points

out, ‘It seems possible that the Elizabethan daughter of the Edgcumbes, born circa 1550-

55, began to absorb tales of courtly intrigue and renaissance humanist doctrine, often

about the country across the channel, when she was very young and that over the years

the stories became entrenched in her mind.’24

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Although it is easy to overestimate the intensity of such influences on the poet’s

art, the climate of the upbringing that this detailed elaboration of background suggests

could perhaps be employed as a useful tool in reading Dowriche. Moreover, a highly

interesting pattern emerges from a delineation of these relationships, which also throws a

little light on the social dynamics of the time. It appears that although the nodal figures

are the males of the family with their often dramatic public careers, it is the women that

are given in marriage who weave the actual fabric of relationships, who forge the

connections and create the contexts. Masculine achievement is bold but solitary, the

network of feminine relationships marginal, subtle, but with the strength to provide

safety nets in times of familial distress. These links would have had their own histories

and generated a special kind of historical awareness not explicable merely through

theories of religious, partisan or textual politics. The personal is very important in such

female networks and echoes of this complex web of relationships could very well have

informed the creation of The French historie. Especially, as the author informs us, since

she had taken a long time to compose the poem, building it up through many years of

editing,25 the habit of thinking through the network of mothers, aunts, daughters, nieces

and sisters of various kinds might have become subterranean impulses informing

Dowriche’s highly conscious editing and reworking of the available source material.

There was possibly another poem published by Dowriche the same year as The

French historie. George Boase’s Bibliotheca Cornubiensis attributes her with A Frenchman’s

Songe, made vpon ye death [of] ye French King, who was mvrdered in his own Courte, by a

traiterovse Fryer of St Iacobs order, 1st Avg. 1589, licensed to Edward Allde in 1589,

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although no copy of the poem is extant.26 Anne Vaughan Locke published her translation

of Taffin the next year. A decade later Dowriche wrote commendatory verses for her

husband’s book The Jaylors Conuersion27 entitled ‘Verses written by a Gentlewoman,

vpon the Iaylors Conuersion’ which is signed ‘A. D.’ and Patrick Cullen has attributed

the commendatory acrostic on ‘Valentyne Knightly’ referred to by Hugh as his ‘first

friend’ in the same volume, although unsigned, to her.28 The Knightley acrostic reveals

Dowriche’s facility with the form and the verses on the Iaylor’s Conversion repeat the form

of the proselytising narrative of The French historie, although the emphasis is more on the

trials that God sends to test the faith of the godly. Scourge and pain are considered signs

of God’s love and the faithful heart bears all affliction with fortitude, living in the hope of

the eternal joy of Christ. It is only human nature to falter, but the man who can realise

the error of his ways and repent is a happy man indeed. The poem uses only one

example, that of Paul, to show how he changed and became the best of the champions of

the faith. The jailer of the title is compared to Paul. He had delighted to torment god’s

elect but has had a change of heart. The poem now moves on to describe the power and

the glory of god who ‘makes the haughtie hils,/ And Libans Cedars shake’ (33-34). The

44-line poem ends with a prayer in keeping with the theme of the poem: Dowriche asks

God to give us grace so that we might ‘frame our liues anew’ (44). There are no records

of Anne Dowriche between the two publications, nor indeed for the rest of her life. The

date of her death is not known, but she was still alive in 1613 since she is mentioned in a

letter of that year.29

The publication history of The French historie is also intriguing. It was published

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simultaneously from London and Exeter by the same printer. Dowriche’s printer,

Thomas Orwin, printed the book for Thomas Man (active from a little before 1578-

1634)30 in London and for William Russell in Exeter in the same year. William Russell,

‘dwelling at Exeter’ in 1589 probably moved shop to Plymouth by 1631 as later books

printed for him testify.31 Thomas Orwin was a prolific printer with an Exeter connection,

like Locke’s famous publisher John Day (most notable for publishing Foxe’s Actes and

Monuments). He first started printing some time before 1587 and was probably not

established in the trade when he printed Dowriche. The last year in which books with his

imprint appear is 1593 (eight volumes in all).32 Joan Orwin, his widow, produced one

volume in 1592, three volumes in 1593 until she last printed four volumes in 1597.

Thomas Orwin and Thomas Man published eight editions, from 1590-1635, of Locke’s

Markes as well. This printerly connection between Locke and Dowriche lends more

evidence to Micheline White’s findings, but the evidence of the two surviving imprints of

Dowriche remain intriguing.

The London imprint was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 16 June 1589 and

reads as follows: ‘Thomas man. Entred for his copie vnder th[e h]andes of the byshop of

LONDON and wardens A booke entitled the Ffrench history menconninge the outrage

vnder the name of Wynnunge Sainct James street. The martyrdom of ANNAS BURGENS.

and the bloody mariage of MARGARET sister to CHARLES the 9 late French king .... vjd.’33

Whatever else might have been the reason for the dual imprint; it certainly implies the

popularity of Dowriche’s work. The extensive network within which Dowriche

presumably wrote would have warranted a local imprint for the circle of family and

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friends, who would probably have looked forward to the publication. The dual imprint

also suggests that Dowriche was not the Woolfian figure of a solitary female author

battling a hostile society to write and publish. Like Locke, and presumably Whitney, she

had a support system. Undoubtedly operating in different ways for all three women, it is

this network that enabled them to see their work into print.

Although what she is attempting in her verse is unarguably rooted in religious

activism, thereby immediately taking on deep political shades, Dowriche is nevertheless

also working in the tradition of history-writing of her time and implicitly linking her

own work on French martyrs to Foxe’s influential Book of Martyrs. The Renaissance sense

of history and the past is thus important for understanding Dowriche’s work. As Megan

Matchinske observes, the tradition of chronicle writing in England was a long one, with

its most famous practitioner, Raphael Holinshed, publishing his definitive work in

1577.34 History had always been linked with morality, historians considering it their

responsibility to impart through their accounts the lessons learnt from the past in order

to understand the present. It is much later that the writing of history would become

attached to a stance of ‘objectivity’ and classification and ‘historians’ would begin to

distinguish between ‘history’ and the fictionalised accounts of history as seen in books

and plays. This view echoes the thesis of F. J. Levy’s classic work on the subject.

Levy argued that over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a

change occurred in the way Englishmen thought of history. With political upheaval and

civil war, the writing of history became overtly politicised and yielded the first

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glimmerings of the modern view of history.35 Women, generally, did not take part in the

moral and ethical projects of dealing with the past and were apparently not much affected

by the shift in perspective. Dowriche is the only woman of the time who does undertake

a chronicle, that too in verse. History connoted a great conglomeration of ideas and

numerous ways of dealing with the past when Dowriche started work. As Paulina Kewes

puts it, ‘[e]arly modern writers never tired of enumerating the lessons of history. From

Bale, Foxe, Hall, Stow, Grafton, Norton and Holinshed in the sixteenth-century to

Heywood, May, Hobbes, Clarendon, Bolingbroke, Hume Burke, and Godwin in the

seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth, the didactic dimension of history was endlessly

exploited, reviewed, debated.’36 Yet, even with the gradual decline of the authority of the

past, the belief in its usefulness persisted. Moreover, an entire gamut of genres and belief

systems could fall under the aegis of history; a categorisation that modern historical

thought is unable to support. This unwillingness led Tudor historian A. G. Dickens’ to

dismiss Dowriche’s work as containing ‘far more piety than [artistic] inspiration,’37 and

deny it the status of history, despite the hybrid generic characteristics of history at the

time. Just as there were many genres in which history could be written, there were also a

great many reasons for writing it. One reason, of course, was the emulation of classical

writers. Asking whether there was a ‘profession’ of the historian in the Italian

Renaissance, and arguing that such a profession might have been linked to the rise of the

profession of the humanist pedagogue and civil secretary, Eric Cochrane concluded in

1981 that ‘what permitted some of the writers of fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy to

be identified specifically as historians was not their membership in a particular

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‘profession.’ It was rather their acceptance of one of two historical ‘paradigms.’’ 38 He

provided a concise and exceptionally useful tabulation of the kinds of history written by

Renaissance humanists.39 According to these categories, Dowriche’s work falls undeniably

in the genre of sacred history. The secular and sacred division in historiography, however,

was relatively new. It was unknown in the medieval period when monks or friars wrote

local history, connecting such chronicles of municipal history with specific instances of

universal history. The emergence of sacred history took place in the fifteenth century, but

it was only in the late sixteenth century, at the time Dowriche was writing, that it takes

its place as a fully autonomous form of history-writing.40

The structure of Dowriche’s chronicle derives from well-established formats

surviving from Middle English practice. Although, as Peter Burke argues, the sense of

history as we know it was lacking in the middle ages, being born only with the

Renaissance;41 it is common knowledge that there was a flourishing medieval tradition of

religious poetry. Douglas Peterson, analysing the structural aspects of the medieval lyric

in both didactic and eloquent styles, discusses the framework of the French ‘chanson

d’aventure.’ ‘The poet,’ he elaborates, ‘begins by relating an account of a walk in the

country during which he encounters a person whose lament, either overheard or

addressed directly to the poet, he then relates and comments upon. Narrative framework,

like other methods–allegory, personification, and fable–meets the important didactic

requirement that the abstract be employed concretely. The concrete appeals directly

through the imagination to the emotions, whereas the abstract must first be understood

before it becomes a principle of action. Furthermore, narrative framework simplifies the

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poet’s problems of progression, since narrative establishes the sequence of events

according to an established time scheme.’42

This summary could almost perfectly describe what Dowriche does in her work.

Tellingly, Peterson provides his examples from Carleton Brown and F. A. Patterson’s

early anthologies of fifteenth-century English religious lyrics.43 Even before becoming a

matter of Puritan concern, the ‘plain’ or ‘uneloquent’ style, considered ‘non-literary’ in

the late middle ages and late into the sixteenth century,44 had been a mainstay of early

didactic or religious poetry. And women wrote from within these conventions of

masculine textual production. Indeed, sixteenth-century women writers might possibly

be called ‘feminist’ in action but very rarely in avowed intention (if she were not a Jane

Anger), especially since an awareness of a literature of their own was largely lacking in

women of all social classes and textual precedents were, of course, invariably masculine.

Thus Dowriche’s attempts at Puritan poetics, despite its ambitions, remain firmly fixed

in established practices, just as Whitney’s verse conforms to the traditions of popular

verse. It is only Locke’s first text that might be considered as radical in both form and

content since she engages with a format that was quite new and unexplored at the time of

publication. Perhaps this aspect of novelty, as I have argued in the case of Whitney’s

participation in the ‘newfangled’ fashion of printing poetic miscellanies modelled on

Tottel’s bestseller, is what was enabling for all three women. Their work is as new as it is

entrenched in tradition and that might perhaps account for the possibility of its existence

and survival, in however marginalised and minor forms.

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As the foregoing discussion suggests, categories of sacred and secular,

providentialist and objective/scientific, early modern and modern, are far from watertight

and Dowriche’s text falls in this in-between space which was more the norm than

otherwise. As David Womersley eloquently puts it:

If providentialism withered away in the late 1500s and early

1600s [according to ‘historical revolution’ theorists like F.S.

Fussner, F.J. Levy and A. B. Ferguson], how are we to explain

the writing of full-blown providentialist history in the

eighteenth century by as central and popular figure as William

Robertson? If the sixteenth-century was really the moment

when an authentically modern historical consciousness

emerged, when the process of secularization got underway,

and when dispassionate inquiry first established itself as a

scholarly virtue, how are we then to explain the discovery of

these elements in medieval historiography?45

The most important author in the writing of providentialist history is, of course,

John Foxe, who identified the market for Protestant history-writing, helped in generating

it, and almost single-handedly dominated it. Written with collaborators but printed

under his name, Foxe’s Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Dayes, touching

matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great persecutions and

horrible troubles, that haue been wrought and practised by the Romish Prelates, speciallye in

this Realme of England and Scotlande, from the yeare of our lorde a thousand, vnto the tyme

now present. Gathered and collected according to the true copies & wrytinges certificatorie as

wel of the parties them selues that suffered, as also out of the Bishops Registers, which wer the

doers therof, by Iohn Foxe [STC (2nd ed.) 11222 (1563), 11222a (1563, selections),

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11225 (1583), 11226 (1596) and others] more popular as the Book of Martyrs, was first

published in 1563, and went through seven editions by 1631. It was ordered to be set in

all collegiate and Cathedral churches by 1571. It was also the inspiration for many

spiritual autobiographies (such as Lady Margaret Hoby’s Diary) and played a key role in

the formation of the national religious consciousness.

As the exceptionally long full title explains, this book is supposed to be a

Protestant record of facts which are culled from authentic sources and are therefore true.

In the prefatory matter, too, the ‘truth’ of the accounts is emphasised and the projected

readership echoes the motif of truth, distinguishing between ‘true’ and ‘false’ readers. In

the second edition Foxe revised his front matter and in the second Latin address, Ad

Doctum Lectorem, the compiler, reacting to public censure, admits the envy and criticism

his book has attracted because of its ‘foundation of history,’ ‘a structure in working,’ ‘the

bulkiness of this work,’ or ‘the rationale behind the arragement of time.’ He denies the

charge that his work resembles a collection of ‘fabulous’ saints’ lives and reproves readers

who accept the ‘lies and most ridiculous fictions in the martyrological legends and

transcribed lives of saints as true narratives.46 Just as there are true and false narratives, so

are there true and false readers. This vast tome of ecclesiastical history contains a

bewildering number of texts of miscellaneous genres such as martyrologies,

proclamations, letters, heresy examinations, poems, dialogues and monologues.47 There is

a wealth of prefatory material in both Latin and English and Foxe takes great care to

explain the reasons for writing the work in the vernacular. The texts are moreover

fortified with notes and comments, a practice followed by Dowriche as well. As John

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King observes, ‘not only did these ancillary materials encourage a ‘transactional

hermeneutic’ 48 whereby readers could acquire skill and understanding sufficient to

interpret texts, but they also identified particular reading practices with membership of

an audience of elect Christian believers.’49 This is the community of ‘true’ readers that

Dowriche too wishes to address. The vast heterogeneity and unprecedented popularity of

the book generated the inevitable abridgements one of which was published the same

year as Dowriche’s text: Timothy Bright’s An Abridgement of the Book of Acts and

Monuments of the Church (1589).50

The most immediate poetic inspiration for Dowriche was probably another

historical compendium, this time in verse, and equally well known to Tudor readership,

A Myrroure for Magistrates. Wherein may be seen by example of other, with howe grevous

plages vices are punished: and howe frayle and unstable worldly prosperitie is founde, even of

those, whom fortune seemeth most highly to favour. Foelix quem faciunt aliena pericula

cautum.51 (1559, 1563, 1578 and 1587), edited and partly authored by William Baldwin

(it was based, in turn, chiefly upon Edward Halle’s 1548 chronicle The Union of the two

noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre & Yorke). The Myrroure was aimed principally at

teaching the ‘magistrates’ of its title the lessons of history through poetry. Famous

characters of history rise up from the grave and recount the events that led to their fall

and readers are invited to draw lessons from them. The complaints or speeches are

connected to each other and to the general theme with Baldwin’s prose links and the

various poems work together in a form of conversation or dialogue. In the space between

tragedies, the compilers discuss each other’s methods, whether these are historical or

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poetical (some think that while writing history ‘it is lawful for poets to feign what they

list’52), but agree on their purpose, which is ‘to dissuade from vices and exalt to virtue,’53

and to use such things that would further it most.

Dowriche’s work uses the methodology of both these extremely popular works to

frame her own writing, but there is another possible literary precursor to her work.

Margaret Tyler’s translation The Mirrour of Princely Deeds and Knighthood (1578)54 from

Diego Ortu nez de Calahorra’s Spanish romance Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros, was an

unusual work in its subject matter. When most women translated religious works, Tyler

chose to translate and publish a romance and her book carries a highly interesting

preface, ‘M.T. To the reader,’ in which she asserts her right to write romance since so

many men dedicate their romances to women. It has been argued that Tyler regards

translation as collaborative authorship55 although she denies agency in her translation.

Although written in prose, this text is the only precursor Dowriche has in narrative

writing by a woman and Tyler’s romance may have influenced the undertaking of her

own project.

It is not surprising that Dowriche’s engagement with her source texts should

reveal a great deal about her own work. Her use of characters or biography (a typical

humanist genre of history-writing), narrative, speeches and orations, and set pieces,

however, derived directly from both humanist historical narratives, and medieval

chronicle, both regional and continental. Style was as important for the humanist

historian as a lofty subject when he embarked upon his imitatio of Livy or Thucydides

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(Dowriche, being a woman, writes in imitation not of the ancients but of her

contemporary Thomas Tymme). ‘[S]peeches,’ says Burke, ‘were quite a convenient

literary device for the historian to explain what he thought the motives of his characters

were.’56 So were language and rhetoric. However, the movement against humanist history

as too literary took off with Johann Sleidan (1506-56) who wrote contemporary history

in the Commentaries on the reign of Henry V. This trend, the general ideas of which have

survived in the bases of modern historical thinking, too, looked back to the ancients but

instead of Livy, the writers modelled themselves on Polybius since he made fun of

historians who provided their characters with speeches, calling them tragedians. Perhaps

this had something to do with the fact that these men were writing recent history and

had to be more cautious since such histories tend to be more politically charged and open

to risky interpretation.

Walter Raleigh is very clear on this. Commenting on the writing of contemporary

history in his preface to the History of the World (first published 1614) he declares, ‘Many

will say, a Story of my own time would have pleased better: But I say, He which in a Modern

Story shall follow Truth too near the Heels, it may chance to strike out his Teethand no

Mistress hath led her Followers into greater Miseries.’57 (Dowriche, of course, armed with

Puritan righteousness sets out to do just that.) Thomas Tymme himself, in his epistle to

the reader, shows a similar bent of mind although he writes quite a few years earlier.58 He

concludes, ‘least any man should thinke that it is our purpose, to write and sette foorthe a

iust and true Historie of the state of the Churche of Fraunce: wee giue to vnderstand,

that it is neyther our purpose, nor yet agreeing to the time.’ (Sig. Aiii v, emphasis mine).

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William Camden, official historian and another of Dowriche’s contemporaries, promises

in his preface to the 1615 Annales of Queen Elizabeth to refrain from writing speeches and

asserts that he believes that the duty of the historian is the explanation of incidents (like

Polybius). However, he refuses to look for hidden motives which he calls ‘the

unsearchable intents of princes’ and defends the oft-repeated phrase ‘dignity of history’

(‘to run through the most eminent actions, and not to dwell upon small ones’) As Burke

notes echoing Raleigh, ‘he is careful not to follow truth too near the heels.’59 For all the

emphasis on plain speech, like Locke, Dowriche’s work is exceptionally literary although

it is a contemporary history like Sleidan’s and Camden’s. Moreover, like Whitney and

Locke, she uses verse for her purposes, which is of course the more privileged genre. In

this, unlike Whitney who is transgressive in undertaking the composition of secular verse

despite her gender, Dowriche is in correct form theoretically but not in practice since

very few humanist histories were actually written in verse. Her work silently invokes the

conventions of chronicle composition. In this, as in her plot-making, Dowriche

incorporates medieval practices into her project. The manner of her writing, therefore, is

a piquant amalgam of the medieval and the early modern. In this respect Dowriche is like

the fourteenth century Florentine chroniclers, who were ‘concerned not to venture into

originality in a field in which they knew themselves to be amateurs, but to set down the

events with which they were familiar and to place these in a general historical scheme that

would graft their age meaningfully within the texture of time,’60 but through the works of

whom the largely unconscious slide towards a more objective approach to history

was achieved.

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Not that Dowriche’s work contributes towards an objective approach: hers is an

unabashedly partisan history and she unambiguously presents herself as a Protestant

writer. However, she seems similar to Continental medieval chroniclers in the fact that

her work appears to be an amalgam of the older and the more recent practices of

historiography. She seems to occupy a medial position in the theories about history-

writing popular with her contemporaries. This is as much a throwback to the older, pre-

Reformist chronicle tradition as it is in tune with the popular drama (Shakespeare’s

Henry VI was first performed in 1590-91). I’m arguing, therefore, that Dowriche’s work,

like that of the two other authors in this study, is poised at a middle and transitional

point in the respective genres they write in. It is because they have a genre to tweak that

what they write is both startlingly new and successful. They find acceptance with their

audience because their work is solidly based upon widespread practice, safeguarding them

from the risks and censure of invention. Even keeping gender out of the equation, it

could perhaps be said that without Wyatt, Locke’s work would not have been possible,

Whitney could never have published without Tottel, and Dowriche would not have been

able to think of publishing her very personal reworking of Jean Seres through Thomas

Tymme without her contemporaries’ usages of history

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3.1.1 ‘This my recreation’:

Prefatory matter to The French historie

Dowriche’s construction of her authorial self is defined by the way she engages with Seres

and Tymme, and the way in which she presents herself. There is confident use of her

signature (seven times) throughout the 1589 volume and in the 1596 commendatory

acrostic she signs with her initials: she does not believe in anonymity or pseudonimity,

which argues for a degree of self-assurance unusual in a woman writer of the time.

Although, like Whitney, she pays lip-service to the conventions of modesty and draws

attention to the limitations of her gender, there is very little that is truly reticent or

obfuscatory about her voice in the prefatory matter to her poem (although the question

of voice is fascinating in the main text, involving a proliferation of narrrators, of which

more below).

Tymme had set out to justify his work in his dedicatory epistle to Sir Richard

Baker (preceded by an acrostic on the name of the dedicatee, which Dowriche imitates

with her own acrostic on Pears’ name). After invoking the names of authorities of sacred

history (from Christ himself, through Moses, St Luke and Sleidan to John Foxe ‘in our

time’ paying particular attention to Peter Ramus ‘the Authour of these Commentaries of

the state of the Common wealth and Religion of Fraunce’), Tymme sets forth the

rationale for his translation and indulges in customary flattery of his dedicatee:

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I thought it good to translate the same into our English

toung, both for that I thought it should generally profit our

countreymen, (and not those alone which vnderstand the

Latin toung, as your worship doth:) and also for that I

thoughte it a meete occasion, wherby I might testifie my good

will and meaning towardes your worship, for the freendly

inclination and willingnesse to benefit me, that I haue

heretofore found in you. Desiring you to accept the

dedication hereof, although not for the worthinesse of the thing

giuen, yet as a sure testimonie of such a well willing mynd, as

by this which he here presenteth, declareth what he would do,

if he had any thing of more price to giue: and also to suffer

my trauaile to passe forth vnder your fauourable protection

and garde, to the common profitte of our countreymen, and

the glory of God, who send you long life, increase of worship,

and the perfect felicitie of the life to come.

(Sig. Aii v, emphasis mine)

Dowriche’s dedication to her brother Pearse, as we shall see below, employs similar

conventional rhetoric, although she makes but passing reference to her sources, casually

citing an entire body of literature merely as the ‘French Commentaries’ (Sig. A4). She is

utterly convinced of the worth of her project and believes that the hortatory and didactic

qualities of her work validate her speech. As Kim Walker puts it, Dowriche ‘makes use of

her edifying Reformist subject to authorize her poesy and draw attention to her

writing.’61 She highlights the speeches in the work, emphasising her difference from her

sources. She even alludes to Foxe’s book, acknowledges its importance, and attempts to

draw validation for her own work form his project without once taking his name: ‘The

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noble Martirs of England are knowen sufficientlie almost to all; these excellent French

Histories were seene but of few, being in worthinesse nothing inferior vnto

the other’ (Sig. A4v).62

The prefatory epistle to her brother Pearse, who must have become MP by that

time, is short and trenchant. She does not waste words and the words she uses show that

a lot of care had gone into their choosing. ‘When I had ended this present Pamphlet,’ she

says, ‘I saw that the simplicitie of it required a Patron; & the often remembrance of your

former curtesies inforced me to make bolde with you. Consider not therefore the

worthinesse of the worke, but rather the will of the worker: for although the one maie

iustlie be condemned, yet the other deserues to be accepted’ (Sig. A2). The confidence of

tone rings out loud and clear. She continues: ‘This Booke which proceedes vnder your

protection, if you consider the matter, I assure you it is most excellent and well worth the

reading: but if you weigh the manner, I confesse it is base & scarce worth the seeing’ (Sig.

A2, emphasis mine). The sentence is cunningly constructed so that the last half of it takes

the sting out of the first half and seems to say the same things that Tymme had done.

However Dowriche’s prose is more pointed and spare. It is, also, personal and intimate.

Tymme addresses his patron and social superior, Dowriche addresses her superior in

gender who is also, nevertheless, kin. Thus she can use a touch of familiarity that hints at

an intimacy consciously curbed for the purposes of the formal dedication. The

conclusion of the dedication is very personal and individualistic although it utilises

conventional rhetoric:

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If I were sure that you would but take halfe so much pleasure

in reading it, as I haue in collectiong and disposing it:63 I

should not neede anie farther to commend it. If you finde

anie thing that fits not your liking, remember I pray, that it is

a womans doing. The thing it selfe will sufficientlie prooue

this to be true. Thus committing the patronage of this my

recreation vnto your protection, and you withmy [sic] good

sister in law your wife, & all your children to the Lord’s

tuition, I cease to troble you.

(A2v)

Her disclaimer of gendered incapability has been much cited64 but apart from playing

along with contemporary expectations of the inferiority of the woman writer, this

deprecatory comment about her gender signals also towards the lower status of the

younger sister in need of a big brother’s protection.65

The language of the passage sends out complicated signals. It is a formal plea for

patronage, but somewhere beneath it lies the little sister’s ‘recreation’ or ‘play,’ not serious

work at all, a mere trifle, but which is to be protected and indulged by the elder male

sibling. The implied intimacy of the reference to his wife and children and her own

relationship to them clinches this sense of the personal and the familial running

throughout the dedication without infringing upon the formality or rhetorical correctness

of the address. The dedicatory epistle is a masterstroke in the manipulation of language

for the creation of multiple layers of tonality. It uses self-deprecation as a means for

wresting the privilege of informality from a figure who is superior both in terms of

gender and in the rules of textual economics, and the piece is an index (as is the epistle to

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the reader) to the complexity of the poem proper which is the alleged subject of the book.

An acrostic on her brother’s name follows (strengthening the effect of the

dedication), prefaced by a warning couplet fracturing and punning on the names of both

dedicator and dedicatee (Figure 18): ‘The sharpest EDGE will soonest PEARSE and

COME unto AN end./ Yet DOWT not, but be RICHE in hope, and take that I doo

send’ (A3). Sidney Sondergard sees in this the introduction of the violence with which

the text engages for rhetorical effect,66 but it also reinforces the element of play that the

author speaks of in the dedication. The following acrostic is another example of lexical

play and as such it both intensifies the effect and anticipates the point made in the epistle

to the reader about her project being poetic practice. The acrostic echoes the one spelling

‘RICHARDBAKER’ in the prefatory material of Tymme’s 1574 edition, signed T.T.

(Ai) in form and content although it follows the dedicatory epistle instead of preceding it.

It also dilates upon and repeats the admonishment of the couplet. Pearse is exhorted to

renounce all worldly attachments, the lures of ‘this glittering glose,’ and put his faith in

God and Christ, and thus ‘be sure to liue againe’ (A3).

Sondergard argues that ‘within the rhetorical construct of a loving sister

embedding wisdom in a cautionary narrative to be decoded through careful reading,

Anne Dowriche presents an explicitly feminist poetic to express her perspectives on

spiritual conflict; employs rhetorical violence as amplification to compel reader reflection

on those perspectives and the costs of disregarding them; exploits an overtly theatrical

structure to aid her presentation of a revisionist or alternative historical model for

England and finally suggests that with ‘due regard’ the reader may recognise the political

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Figure 18. Anne Dowriche’s acrostic on her brother’s name in The French historie [Imprinted at

London by Thomas Orwin for Thomas Man. 1589], STC (2nd ed.) 7159, fol. A3. The British

Library, shelfmark C.132.h.28. Scanned from Facsimile.Digitised in EEBO.

243

dangers associated with a punitive position toward spiritual conflict and become part of a

opposition to sectarian violence.’67 However, there are other dimensions to the text’s

prefatory matter (and the general text) as well. The dense ‘To the Reader’ in prose which

follows the acrostic and is itself followed by a stanza in verse ‘To the Reader that is

friendlie to Poetrie’ urging the reader to overlook the ‘want of learned Skill’ when

weighed against her ‘will’ (A4v), imply a distinction between the general reader and one

who loves reading poetry. This is significant because it echoes the stress on pedagogy over

documentary evidence in her telling of history. For the former she constructs a detailed

logical argument for her work in accomplished prose; four lines of poulters measure

suffice for the latter who would presumably also be concerned with the quality of the

verse, and its power to delight, over and above the moral validity of the textual purpose

and content. According to Puritan practice, then, the morally righteous reader is

privileged over the stylistically nitpicking one.

Set throughout in close-set elegant italics, the prose epistle is important in that it

provides the apologia for both the form and the content of Dowriche’s work and is

erected along more objective and universalised lines than in the dedication. She bases her

argument upon the Pauline injunction ‘let all things be done unto edifying’ (1 Cor. 14:

26) and argues that her ‘onlie purpose in collecting & framing this worke, was to edifie,

comfort and stirre up the godlie mindes unto care, watchfulnesse, Zeale, & firventnesse in the

cause of Gods truth,’ which the reader can ‘easilie perceiue’ by the ‘chusing and ordering of

the singular examples which hereafter insue’ (A3v). This choosing and ordering is more

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than apparent to any reader familiar with Tymme. Dowriche chooses three episodes out

of the more than thirty landmark events that Tymme, following Hotman, records.

Although chronologically ordered, Dowriche chooses two episodes from the

beginning of her source text and the third from a point thirteen years and over nine

hundred pages later. At the outset, then, Dowriche highlights her editorial role, as do

both Locke and Whitney and in similar terms. The three ‘speciall circumstances’ that are

described ascribe all villainy, like Tymme, to the workings of Satan and provide the

moral, as it were, of each of her stories in a nutshell. Her Satan, however, is much more

fleshed out than Tymme’s and he even has speeches assigned to him. The situations are

self-supporting accounts but also work together to create Dowriche’s personal attitude

towards history. They posit Satan as the arch-villain, moving the ‘possessed’ masses and

the individuals in seats of power alike to acts of cruelty and villainy. This also engenders

martyrs, as Annas Burgeus’ story will tell. The author uses these exempla to teach

watchfulness, strength and wisdom: ‘watchful in praier, that we be not taken sleeping;

strong in faith, that we be not ouerthrowen by Sathans might; wise as serpents, that we be not

deceaued by the diuels allurements’ (A3v). Anticipating Anne Locke’s unease in the Markes

dedication, Dowriche warns her countrymen to take heed of foreign political and

religious threats to the peace of the kingdom despite the Armada triumph of the

previous year.68

Next she justifies her use of speeches: all the orations in her book, she says, are

created imaginatively so that the villains speak as although they are given tongue by the

devil (which they are, in spirit), and the speeches of the martyrs, the King, the Queen and

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the Guise and other characters ‘marke that of purpose the nature both of the person that

speaks and also the matter that is spoken, are liuely set downe’ (A4). This is remarkable

indeed because through this statement Dowriche accords verisimilitude to imagination

and reveals sensitivity to literary theories from Aristotle to Sidney. Such orations are

necessary, she adds, following the practice of the compilers of The Myrrour for

Magistrates, ‘so that here are not bare examples of vertue and vice, but also the nature and

qualities of those vertues or villainies are manifestly depainted to them that will seeke for it’

(A4r). The ‘true’ reader is as important to Dowriche as he/she is to Foxe. She does her

best to educate and sensitise her reader by giving them both broad hints and direct

advice. But why French history? Because it is pertinent to the present condition of

England but not well-known. Apart from proclaiming her faith in her own judgement,

this declaration also privileges her reading habits: she has read and is using as her source

material what is ‘seene but of few.’

The next section of the epistle moves on to the most topical of questions: why

verse? In her answer, Dowriche evinces very little, if any, of the timidity and self-

effacement expected of the woman writer. Again she logically orders her reasons into

three parts. Firstly, it is because she is a novice in the art of poetry she has written in verse

to practise her hand. Placing this as the first reason could either mean that it is the most

important or the least. Dowriche, however, doesn’t hierarchise her causes, deliberately

keeping the weight of this point ambiguous. The second reason is even bolder: ‘to restore

againe some credit if I can vnto Poëtrie, hauing been defaced of late so many waies by wanton

vanities’ (A4). This is no small ambition for a ‘learner’ in verse. The third reason is less

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curtly expressed and elaborated upon. It is the novelty of the thing that has encouraged

her to write in verse, ‘framed to the better liking of some mens fantasies’ (A4). This verse

treatment does not really depart radically from the commentaries, she asserts: ‘here is no

more set downe, than there is signified’ (A4). But she has added a great network of

textuality indicative of much research. She has diligently collected ‘for the more terror vnto

the wicked’ like William Baldwin and his friends ‘the great plagues and iust iudgements of

God shewed against the persecutors in euery severall History, & haue set them downe so in

order, and amplified them by the like iudgments against sinners out of the word and other

histories, that euery proud persecutor may plainly see what punishment remaineth due vnto

their wicked tyrannie’ (A4). Documentary research is not as unimportant for this kind of

historiography as has been assumed, although the emphasis on the use of documentary

and material proofs in works such as Camden’s is different. Research here is used

selectively and used for openly partisan purposes, for Camden and others of the

documentary school it is ideally posited as serving only disciplinary goals. For both

methodologies, ‘truth’ is the end. It is only in the ways in which that truth is approached

that they differ.69

The French commentaries, effectively, become Dowriche’s springboard as she

launches into didactic verse historiography. She does not stop with these repeated

assertions of self-worth but goes on to state that her work is unique and without parallel:

‘To speake truly without vain glorie, I think assuredlie, that there is not in this forme anie

thing extant which is more forceable to procure comfort to the afflicted, strength to the weake,

courage to the faint hearted, and patience vnto them that are persecuted, than this little worke,

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if it be diligentlie read and well considered’ (A4). This is unrepentantly and triumphantly

non-modest and would tip over into arrogance without the support of the faith. The

authority of Puritan didacticism and its disapproval of false modesty loosens the rigours

of gender, allowing Dowriche to make a virtue of her self-assertion. The way in which she

asserts the uniqueness of her text is remarkable. More than either Whitney or Locke,

Dowriche seems to be aware of and revelling in the anomalous nature of her text. She

even declares that her work would undertake to make the excellent wits of England realise

how much of a waste it is not to write of the glory of God and human salvation, which

would give their names ‘a perpetuall memorie’ (A4v). If writing of God’s chosen, His

church and His glory gives immortality to the writer then is Dowriche appropriating

immortal fame for herself? Dowriche does not answer this; she does not need to. Like

Whitney, again, she ends her epistle with the promise of more work if she finds enough

reader acceptance. This epistle is thus extremely important as a frame for the framing that

goes on in the main body of the text. It places within discourse much that is extra-textual

in the generation of the text and reveals a female authorial voice that is confident in its

identity as author and poet.

3.1.2 ‘All things done unto edifying’: Dowriche and

the Play of History

The 2400-line poem begins in an almost pastoral setting, although fraught with danger.

The speaker, while walking in the ‘woods and forests nie’ (2, B)70 suddenly hears a

mournful cry which greatly disturbs him and roots him to the spot, ‘as one in traunce’ (4,

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Br). He thinks that this might be an unfortunate traveller robbed by thieves since such

incidents are common ‘where men did vse to ride’ (8, Br). Having thought of the

possibilities of peril, he casts aside his fear and runs towards the place from where he has

heard the cry. Contrary to expectation he sees ‘[a]lone, no peril nigh, within a bushie

dale,/ A stranger sate: I got aside to heare his dolefull tale’ (13-14, Br). The opening scene

itself acts as an allegorical setting for the story. England is idealistically pastoral, although

not without the possibilities of peril, and the Englishman who runs to the aid of a

lamenting stranger figures the country’s ideal attitude towards political refugees. The fact

that Protestant England is not idyllic is borne out again when the Englishman, before

making his presence known to the stranger and fulfilling his role as a Good Samaritan,

must step aside to eavesdrop on his monologue. The dramatic quality of the opening

narrative is more akin to romance than providential history.

The narrative now smoothly transfers to the stranger’s speech. He is in the midst

of addressing France and lamenting her fate. The marginal note provides the stage

directions, as it were, and announces that the ensuing passage contains ‘The pitiful

Lamentation of a godlie Frenche Exile, which for persecution forsook his Countrie’ (B).

The godliness of the exile is stressed and his nationality provided even before he identifies

himself as a Frenchman. The exile apostrophises the former glory of France and laments

the fallen status of the country, so that ‘al the Realmes of Christendome thy falsehoods

do detest’ (18, B). This highly biased hyperbolic censure (only Protestant countries

comprise the Christian realm in the eyes of the godly exile) leads to an eloquent passage

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dotted with rhetorical questions and metaphors whose aim is to describe the lost fame,

peace and ‘smiling cheere’ (21, B) of France.

By framing the questions (all eleven of them in succession) the current state of the

country is evoked and a concept of the ideal commonwealth emerges. It is one in which

there is peace, happiness, fame, ‘youthlie’ (23, B) troops and nobles, true faith ‘without

the which, no realm can euer stand’ (24, Bv), mutual love between the king and his

subjects, which is a ‘noble vnion’ (26, Bv) and , not least, the fitting concern, pity and

mercy of a king that protects his people from tyranny. This political model is set as ideal

and future narration elaborates and establishes with incidents from recent history just

how severely these principles were being flouted in the present state of France. From

lament the tone of the exile’s speech now takes on shades of warning and prophecy. In a

typically feminine simile, extending the traditional gendering of a country as female, the

exile prophesies that ‘[l]ike as a widow comfortlesse thou shalt be left alone’ (34, Bv). The

corruption of France explains why her godly children have fled from her shores to seek

mercy in foreign lands. The lament then moves on to providing causality for the

country’s current pathetic status. It is because , like so many biblical precedents, she has

cast aside God that she must bear His judgement.

The exile provides a wealth of exempla to prove his point and Dowriche as editor

inserts the sources in the margin (Jeremiah 9.12, I Samuel 15, Exodus 17.4, Numbers

24.20) before making it clearer still in a shoulder note: ‘France compared with Iuda,

Egipt, Agipt, and Ierusalem’ (B2). It is because France seeks to slap Moses in irons and is

a cruel nurse to God’s elect that she will be punished with the widow’s fate. France has

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killed God’s prophets by destroying Jerusalem, and if God’s wrath did not save ‘wilfull

Egipt’ (82, B2), the ‘blinded pride’ (85, B2) of Jerusalem or the land of Amalek, ‘What

shall become of thee thou blinde and blooodie land?’ (87, B2). Having acquired some

comfort from the examples he provides that God’s wrath will visit just punishment for

the sins of France, the Frenchman gives thanks to God for his escape and in logical

succession launches into an apostrophe of England, ‘O happie England, thou from God

aboue are blest,/ Which hast the truth established with peace and perfect rest’ (94, B2v),

and showers blessings upon her. This brings him back to present matters and he declares

his intention in ‘this pleasant Ile’, in true Puritan fashion, of looking for ‘some simple

slender staie’ (100, B2v). It is now that the Englishman reveals himself to the exile and

the fact is imparted to the reader embedded in the exile’s monologue, ‘But is that not an

English-man that I haue yonder spide?’ (102, B2v) and the speech ends.

This line is annotated with a lower case ‘a’ and the note is another stage direction:

‘The French pilgrim hauing espied the Authour, cometh to him’ (B2v). The Englishman

is identified as the author, and Dowriche’s voice is suppressed here but the Englishman’s

voice too is suppressed, giving the Frenchman’s voice greater prominence. Perhaps it

would be too hasty to assume here that the sole reason for Dowriche suppressing her own

voice and ventriloquising not one, not two, but many voices is due to modesty. As we

have seen in the prefatory material, Dowriche does not feel the need to justify her writing

too much, and she makes no attempt to obfuscate her authorship of the text. While

marking the Englishman out as the ‘Authour’ is useful for directing attention away from

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the controversial gender of the real author, the framing use of his voice is probably a

tribute to Dowriche’s source and a response to generic demands as well.

The Englishman greets the stranger in the next line, which is also annotated, but

with a lower case ‘b’ and the marginal note corresponding to it reads ‘The talke between

them’ (B2v). The next portion uses name tags to indicate the portions in which each

character in the ‘talke’ speaks. The stranger introduces himself and his circumstances, the

Englishman slips into his role as godsend to the godly and offers the exile his hospitality

because he is very interested in hearing all about the recent wars in France from which

the stranger is a refugee. Moreover, playing his authorial role to the hilt, he outlines the

way in which the stranger should relate his tale, ‘thy wit and tongue prepare,/ The cause

of all these bloodie broiles in verse for to declare./ And first of all describe the matter, and

the man,/ The place, the time, the manner how this Ciuill war began’ (15-18, B2v). The

‘plot’ having been established by the Englishman, the exile embarks upon the first cause

of the wars. Although such an act of memory is painful for him, he cannot deny his host

and the two of them sit down in the ‘bushie dale’ and the Frenchman begins his tale.

Causality is very important in this verse history and the exile traces the cause of

the unrest in France to 1557, the reign of Henri II. With the rise of Protestantism in

Germany God’s truth began to appear in France, but the land, like the Jews who despised

God’s prophets, set her face against it. Because it was newly sown, emerging green and

tender, France took it upon herself to ‘raze it cleene’ (142, B3) by force, fire and sword.

But the number of God’s people, of all estates, increased in spite of this, and noblemen

were raised in the new faith to defend the reformed poor. This led to strife among kin

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and friends and France was divided with Protestants in the minority. Here the figure of

Satan is introduced as a character who is at this moment depicted as irked at the loss of a

part of his kingdom to the elect. He contrives to keep the king and administrators

blinded and agency is denied to royalty and to the élite, making them mere puppets of

Satan’s machinations. With great dramatic effect the exile switches to the present tense as

he describes Satan’s beleaguered state. Satan has to marshal his wits to come up with a

strategy for fighting the godly and he heads, so to speak, for the heads of state, the king,

the Queen Mother and the court of Paris, who are his servants.

Thus ensues the first of Satan’s orations voiced by the exile as reported by the

Englishmen through Dowriche. Gathering his servants around him Satan forms his

Machiavellian strategy to spread false rumour, undermine the new faith, mark the

Protestants as conspirators against the king and strive to wipe them out with physical

violence. The ‘filthie Cardinall’ (212, B4), Charles de Guise agrees to be Satan’s spy at

court with the Guises wielding their swords and the Catholic friars taking on the task of

sowing false rumour. The Queen Mother agrees first to Satan’s proposal. This is the first

reference to Catherine de Medici, who is an important figure in Dowriche’s work. From

the beginning she is given prominence. Apart from this, the ease with which Satan

manages to win her over perhaps adds echoes of Eve’s gullibility to the Machiavellian

female and makes her sinfulness a symptom of her gender. Having established the

principal villains of the story, the exile goes on to describe ‘The first outrage and horrible

murder of the Godlie, called The winning of Saint Iames his Streete’ (B4v).

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3.1.3 Episode I: The St. James’ Street Massacre

The first incident recounted by Dowriche’s nested narrators is the one known as St

James’ Street. In 1557 a private house on Rue St Jacques, in which a group of Protestants

had gathered for worship, was suddenly surrounded by raging Catholics and those who

could not escape were imprisoned and burned at the stake if they did not recant.71

Dowriche begins with Tymme, describing how the king of Spain came to

Sanquintines (adding in marginal note ‘a’ the date and the name of the current French

king) and imprisoned the Constable of France (marginal note ‘b’ here elucidates that

Philip of Spain had married Marie of England and that the incident of the Constable’s

overthrow came to be known as Laurence Day). This renewed proof of pan-European

Catholic conspiracy made the Protestants doubly afraid and they took recourse to prayer

meetings (note ‘c’ comments ‘The godlie in danger fall to praier, as their best refuge’

[B4v]). With the storming of the prayer meeting Dowriche amplifies Tymme and dwells

on the merciful providence that allowed some of the people in the meeting to escape

through an open door, just as Peter was once freed from imprisonment by an angel.

Dowriche stresses that the people that escaped were the weaker ones, thus consolidating

the thesis that God takes mercy on the weak but tries the faith of the strong

with afflictions.

The description of those who were imprisoned is gory and vivid, justifying

Dowriche’s reputation for rhetorical violence. ‘For they that death deserude were taken

from their clinke,/ And in their colde & vglie pits which breathd a deadly stinke/ These

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men were thrust & bound & kept with watch and ward,/ That accesse of worldly ioy

from them might quite be bard’ (255-258, C). Crammed together they start singing and

the prison rings with the sound of psalms as the prisoners begin to pray for king and

country. For this offence, and the narrator waxes slightly satirical, they are abused with

‘fained lies’ (gloss, Cv) spread by Satan and his ministers. These lies are markedly

salacious, imputing to the Lutherans (as Satan calls them) participation in sexual orgies,

unrestrained feasting, wife-swapping and, worst of all, infanticide. The devil’s

ambassadors, the ‘Monks and Legates of Plutoes bloodie minde’ (289, Cv), who

themselves daily commit the sins they accuse the godly of committing, spread these

rumours among the common people. These ‘seelie soules’ (295, Cv), knowing no better,

start hating the Protestants, and what is worse, the rumours ‘assailes the Noble men, and

strikes the Princes throne’ (298, Cv). The king, of course, immediately decides to take

steps and, as an aside from the verse narrative, the gloss comments quoting Revelation

12.7, ‘Princes are many times abused by lying Parasites’ (C2). In the meantime the

incarcerated ‘godlie’ fast and pray (fasting is added to prayer as the only recourse of the

afflicted elect) and are comforted by the stronger in faith walking among them trying to

bolster their morale. They write a letter to the king praying for justice and a fair trial to

no avail, and successive efforts also fail. The content of the letters is reproduced as

orations (indicated by double quotation marks set before each line). Dowriche

compresses Tymme’s account of the letters into a few lines of warning, leaving out details

and only keeping the reference to the fall of the Constable intact ‘as a looking glasse’

(C2v) predicting the punishments accorded to those that betray God. Unlike the

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narrator, the Lutherans place the blame roundly upon the king. Martyrdom, they assert,

is the basis of the Church, and their own deaths will do the same for the Protestant

church in France.

Dowriche, revealing an advanced sense of the dramatic, waits until this point to

introduce Munerius, whom Tymme mentions far earlier in his narrative as an evil

magistrate.72 His testimony, however, is discarded, since the council later convicts him of

false witness in a separate affair. Dowriche skips a long section of legal detail in her

original and makes a beeline for the outcome. The Protestants are tried and burned at the

stake, the woods ringing with their cries. The section ends with the oration of the

Protestants as a group, voicing their masochistic exultation in martyrdom. This, as

Dowriche’s gloss reminds us, is the triumph of the godly. The collective speech draws

from biblical exempla showing God’s revenge upon the ungodly and the speakers rejoice

in the knowledge that they will ‘sup with Iesus Christ, and ease receaue againe’ (428,

C3v). The oration ends with the speakers’ prayer to God and is echoed by the narrator

who speaks from within the voice of the community although he is still separated from it.

The next section, actually a thematic subsection, drives home the moral of the

incident recounted. It is titled ‘The iudgements of the Lord shewed vpon these bloodie

persecuters in this first outrage, by the example of manie the like out of the Scriptures’ (C4). It

lists just desserts received by religious persecutors from Genesis to Eusebius’ Ecclesiatical

History, before moving on to the details reported by her source. Tymme tells of the

deaths of numerous judges and councilmen after the burning of the martyrs and records

Munerius’ admission that his later disgrace and fall were due to his testimony against the

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Lutherans. Dowriche, not content with Tymme’s restraint, builds up the case with

extratextual references before she speaks of the judges that were killed suddenly in the

sight of all, the judge who repented of his guilt and two others that killed each other

upon returning from the burning. The purpose of this section is to reassure the reader,

much in the way that the stronger-minded of the imprisoned Protestants comforted their

brethren in prison. This summing-up, using textual predecesssors to educate and

prophesy, is repeated for each incident reported by the narrator and serves the same

purpose. It consolidates with textual documentation the community of the godly in

Dowriche’s causal reading of contemporary history.

3.1.4 Episode II: The Martyrdom of Annas Burgeus

The next section is titled ‘The notable, famous, and constant Martirdome of Annas Burgeus,

which, being one of the Kings Counsell, was burnt for the Gospel of Iesus Christ’ (D). The

shoulder note clarifies that this is the second example of the ‘French crueltie’ (D),

although it is by no means the second example in her source. She completely ignores

references to the Synod of Paris and the King’s rejection of the petitions of German

ambassadors on behalf of the Huguenots. Dowriche begins with the imminence of war

between France and Spain although, like Herod and Pilate, they agree to ‘murder Iesus

Christ’ (504, D). The increase of the reformed congregation is compared to growing grass

and is said to grieve Satan, who, losing his composure ‘frets,’ ‘fumes,’ ‘raves’ and runs to

the king for help. The king, in response, calls an assembly to be made, as the gloss tells

us, ‘to consider of the Edict of Castellobrian’ (Dv). The king’s attorney exhorts the senate

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to exterminate Lutherans, showing his reason to be the king’s desire to end religious

strife. This is part of Satan’s ‘subtill’ plan to ‘bewray such of the iudges, as were suspected

for Religion’ (Dv) but despite this plan ‘some freely spake their minde’ (531, Dv) against

mass murder, reasoning that the king desired only heretics killed.

Satan ensures the silence of these free and courageous voices by sending two

councillors to the king with the false report that some among his senate were not heeding

his edicts and proclamations and were deriding religion. Struck by such disobedience the

king hastens to the senate and utters his first speech. Although he is still Satan’s puppet,

this is the first time that he is given direct speech. Asked to speak their mind by the

monarch, many hitherto ‘free’ voices reconsider, and ‘doubted much the danger of their

life’ (572, D2). The setting is important because it introduces Annas Burgeus as chief of

the courageous who thinks it correct to speak ‘freely’ without considerations of self-

preservation. Burgeus’ long oration follows, and using it before the point that Tymme

inserts it again reveals the highly developed sense of character and the dramatic brought

by Dowriche to the telling of the story. Burgeus builds up his position with a tissue of

scriptural allusions and references and manipulates it to directly criticise the king,

warning him of the consequences of his Satanic folly. Burgeus’ fire and brimstone

sermonising is psychologically poised to make any monarch see red since it works on the

basis of the utmost supremacy of God and Christ before which all men are equal:

For those whom you doo hate, and push with heauie hand;

In verie truth are godlie men, the best in all your land.

Whose faith you doo not see, whose life you doo not know;

Take heed least you in them doo seeke the Lord to ouerthrow.[..]

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But if to this (ô King) you stoppe your princelie eare:

Lest God with blindness strike your hart, your frends may justly feare.

(667-670, 677-8, D2v-D3)

Although the dire warnings are derived from Scripture and the speech ends with wishing

peace and prosperity to the king, this democratic stance is bound to have its

repercussions. The king, unable to contain his fury, bursts out with a dramatically

convincing reply:

Indeede, and is it so? Well then we knowe the worst:

To speake or thinke as we haue heard we deemd no subject durst.

(697-8, D3)

The dialogue is crisp and Dowriche’s facility with creating tone is apparent despite the

severe limitations of the metre. The king wonders why the nobles of the country have

supported this infectious seed, implying that this is a disease of the masses, although the

poem had insisted earlier that people of all estates formed the community of the godly.

He promises that the seed of Luther will shortly ‘feele the waight of Princes ire’ (718,

D4v). It is around this point in Tymme’s narrative that the irony of the king’s death

shortly after Burgeus’ murder is mentioned. His eye was pierced in a joust by the lance of

the same man (Gabriel Montgomery, Captain of the king’s Scottish Guard) whom he

had commanded to take Burgeus away for execution. Dowriche reserves this rich morsel

of vindicatory information to discuss at a moment when its true dramatic potential might

be realised. After this speech the king turns to leave but hesitates, as if in doubt but his

mind is made up and he orders Burgeus’ arrest and incarceration. The narration of

physical action is as vivid as the astute psychology of the orations. Burgeus is put on trial

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before unsympathetic judges but he asks to be tried by the senate. He is ordered to voice

his beliefs upon the Papal mass, saints, purgatory and other articles of current belief.

Echoing the earlier section, he ‘spake his minde’ and ‘freelie did protest’ (743, E) (the

words are an echo from Tymme) denying them as ‘toyes.’ Next follows Burgeus’ short

words against ‘Poperie, and Popish ceremonies’ (E), asserting his faith only in Christ. He

is sentenced, but after repeated appeal, availing nothing, he takes refuge in prayer

to Christ.

Having manipulated events to his satisfaction, Satan re-enters the scene and

thwarts Burgeus’ appeals. Unlike the godly of the first incident, Burgeus gives thanks for

being able to shed the taint of his Catholic past and almost eagerly asks for his sentence.

The four lines versifying the sentence of burning at the stake as a herectic passed against

Burgeus is glossed in the margin thus: ‘The sentence of death against Annas Burgeus

pronounced by the B. of Paris, the 20. of December 1559’ (Ev). The king had died in

August 1559 and the fifteen-year-old Francis I, first husband of Mary Queen of Scots,

was on the throne with his mother Catherine de Medici appointed as Regent. Dowriche,

deviating from Tymme, suppresses the fact and the effect that the death had on the court.

A long section of speeches by Burgeus follows, responding to his sentence with joyous

fervour. He addresses the senate of Paris in ‘Patheticall speeches’ (E2) running for 125

lines. The oration follows Tymme in its repeated use of rhetorical questions (the first

twenty-two lines contain ten of them) and is among the rare passages in the poem not

bristling with glosses. Burgeus asks the senate whether they can logically deny that his

faith is true: ‘And will you be so bold to saie that we doo straie,/ Which haue for vs the

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written word, & Christ our only way?’ (821-22, E2). He vehemently denies the

cowardliness that would keep silent when it sees truth being trod underfoot. He points

out the illogic of rushing to condemn those who uphold truth and faith in Christ as

rebels. Changing his subject of address he asks God why He delays in smiting the

ungodly, and prays:

Restraine them yet (good Lord) least they doo go too farre;

For they against thy godlie Saints intend a cruell warre.

And till thy pleasure be for to destroie them quite;

Withhold their cruell laws (ô Lord) with thy most mightie Bitt

(863-66, E2v-E3)

The subject of address switches back to his present audience. He asks whether it

is right to credit saints that men have made with the honour that is due only to the Lord:

‘Which is the best; to serue the Lord, or follow sinfull man?’ (894, E3). He accuses his

hearers of bearing malice to Christ and prophesies their downfall. Satan, apart from being

identified with the pagan Pluto is allied to the Greek tyrant Phalaris, infamous for his

cruelty. This epideictic oration, apart from being a model of classical rhetoric used to

both move and teach, is also a prototype of the dramatic monologue. From Burgeus’

speech we learn that the senate members have started weeping: ‘But what; me thinks I see

the tears tril downe your cheeke?/ What, haue I spoken that which now your conscience

doth mislike?’ (900-901, E3v). He uses his audience’s response to roundly scold them

again and warn them of damnation. Nearing the end of his oration he integrates himself

within the ever-important community. He speaks of how the elect embrace death for the

true faith in the plural. This is little pain, for which he will be recompensed with greater

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pleasure, but however much the pain, it will never be able to budge him from Christ.

Using violent imagery of physical fragmentation, he asserts that nothing will make him

recant, ‘although you teare my flesh, and heart to pouder grinde’ (917, E3v). Since he

knows that he has lived as a Christian and will die as one, he also knows that he will live

again in Christ. He addresses the hangman, asking him to take him quickly to his death,

granting forgiveness to all for this foul deed. So moving is his speech, and his impatience

to die for his faith, that ‘the stoutest heart that heard, for griefe began to bleed’ (928, E4).

Thus ends the last speech of Annas Burgeus and he is taken under guard to the place of

execution.

This oration is an extremely well-crafted bit of verse, well able to stand on its own

as an effective dramatic poem and has been little studied, most attention being seized by

Catherine de Medici’s Machiavel speech. Although not Dowriche’s original creation, it

throbs with the main concerns of her providential poetry and argues the case with rare

eloquence. The structure is almost like a legal oration, which in a sense it is, with the

criminal playing advocate for himself, although not to seek pardon. The telos of this bit

of classic classical oration in popular verse measure is missionary, seeking to convert and

reform, and in Burgeus’ ability to manipulate his audience’s emotions we have a very

early example of a woman bringing all the artifices of the writer (play with voice,

rhetoric, language, structure, imagination, emotion) to confidently bear upon the matrix

of her creation.

Dowriche deems the setting of the execution as necessary as Tymme, and

describes how the streets of Paris were closed for this event, adding that this suggested

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that the tyrants were afraid. The ‘godlie man’ (944, E4) readies himself for death with

remarkable bravery and good cheer. His last words to the world are, ‘The cause why I am

come (good people) to this death:/ Is not for murder, theft, or wrong; but for a liuelie

faith’ (949-50, E4) and the gloss explains that ‘Burgeus vseth but this short speech to the

People, for so he had promised before: wherevpon the vse of his tongue was permitted

vnto him, which to others was denied.’ Contrary to her reputation of bloody-mindedness

(and diverging from Tymme), Dowriche does not clarify that the denial of the use of the

tongue was literal for other criminals: their tongues were cut off before they arrived at the

stake. The last words of Annas Burgeus are extremely important in the pedagogic thrust

of this project of deterministic and providential history-writing, a fact that both Tymme

and his imitator realise and presumably so does the printer. The words, set in italic, leap

out from the page and draw attention to the fact that this execution is different from

others. This is a martyrdom perpetrated by the blindness of the powerful and through

this distinction the authority of government is undermined.73 This is a flawed crime and

punishment scenario and it is contrasted to the true structure of sin and retribution that

Dowriche’s providential reading of history seeks to provide.

Dowriche’s narrator skips Tymme’s description of Burgeus’ strangling and

burning, being content with a dignified ‘he yielded vp his life’ (958, E4v). The closing

lines of this section follows Tymme’s narration of Burgeus’ background, although it does

not inform the reader that apart from being born in a respectable family and possessing a

good education Burgeus had also trained as a lawyer and had steadily risen in honour

until he was selected for the senate. The narrator dwells more on Burgeus’ honourable

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death and what it signifies for the godly before closing with a resigned ‘[w]ell, he is gone

before,’ (974, E4v) and a prayer that those who survive might be as steadfast in their faith

as the martyr. The pedagogic pressures of the incident are sought to be relieved in the

next short section entitled ‘The iudgements of the Lord which fell vpon King Henrie the

second after he had caused Burgæus to be imprisoned Anno 1589. Dilated by the examples of

Ahab, Amaziah, and Zedechiah, wicked Kings, which vsed the like crueltie against the word’

(F). Using these judiciously chosen exempla Dowriche styles Annas Burgeus as a latter-

day prophet, as righteous as his biblical counterparts. The example of Zedekiah is the

most telling. By comparing Burgeus to Jeremiah, the narrator implicitly compares Henry

to Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, who enjoyed one of the shortest reigns in history and

was responsible for the occupation of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian forces.

After Zedekiah was overthrown, he escaped but was captured on the plains of Jericho,

taken to Riblah, his sons killed before him and his eyes put out (2 Kings 25.1-7).

The motif of blindness is persistent and made to operate on both symbolic and

literal levels. Henri II was also blinded in an eye leading to his death, and he is blamed

for making his country vulnerable to foreign invasion leading to its downfall. The

blinding of Zedekiah is ‘deserude’ (1002, Fv) because he would not see God’s ‘truth and

shining light’ (1001, Fv). This leads to the trump card. The manner of Henri II’s death

has been withheld till the very end because it provides most impact in both dramatic and

pedagogic sense. The workings of divine justice are emphasised with details about the

marriage feast and the joust, with a whiff of disapproval at the king’s vain desire to show

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off his manhood in warlike sport. The description of the physical injury is drawn out and

the action takes place almost in slow motion:

He chose among the rest (the challenge now begun)

Montgomerie Captaine of his gard against him for to runne.

Which he did oft refuse, and wiselie did withstand,

Till that the King the fatall speare put in his Captaines hand.

Where charging with their speares, & forcing might & main,

A splinter pierst the Princes eie, and ranne vnto his braine.

(1013-1018, Fv)

Confined to his sickbed the king repents of his sins and the gloss informs us that

through this direct-speech couplet ‘A guiltie conscience bewraies itselfe’ (Fv). However,

Elimas (another note reminds us that by this name is meant the aforementioned Cardinal

of Lorraine, servant of Satan, who will be safely out of the way in Rome during the

Bartholomew’s Day massacre), dissuades the king from repenting fully. It is only at this

point that narrator repeats Tymme’s comments about the irony of the king’s death. The

crowning touch to the vindication of the elect is, however, the fact that the king, who

had many times expressed his desire to see with his own eyes Burgeus burn, was deprived

of that pleasure and both his vision and life snuffed out before the godly Burgeus met

his death.

3.1.5 Episode III: St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

The next section is the longest of the poem, a full 1000 lines in length, and it describes

the most important of the three atrocities recounted. From an account of generalised

persecution of the godly, to the martyrdom of an individual French Reformist, the pitch

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of the poem escalates towards its climax: the horrors of St Bartholomew’s Day that so

distressed both mainland Europe and England, and gave rise to so much anti-Catholic

literature not least known of which is Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris (1594). It is titled ‘The

bloodie marriage, or butcherlie murder of the Admirall of France, and diuers other noble and

excellent men, at the marriage of Margaret the Kinges owne sister, vnto Prince Henrie sonne to

the Queen of Navarre, committed the 24. of August in the citie of Paris Anno 1572’ (F2).

This part has its own structure and organisation, comprising the prologue, the ‘plaie’

(divided into two further subsections) and the judgment. This playlet leaps over a decade

of history and begins with Tymme’s tenth book. The prologue begins by enumerating

those of the nobility who were committed to the Huguenot cause, and by virtue of rank

and class became the leaders of the reformed masses. Henry of Navarre, of course, is the

sovereign of this field, followed by his brother the Prince of Condé, Admiral Coligny and

his brother Captain Francis D’Andelot. The principal players introduced, Satan’s second

oration to the Queen Mother, the Guises and ‘the rest of the Papists’ (F2v) commences.

Seeing so many of the nobility supporting the Reformists’ cause, Satan is

disturbed and marshals his servants for counsel and delineation of strategy. This would be

a treacherous war, since the two preceding civil wars had shown the uselessness of force,

and victory would be assured by Machiavellian guile. The ‘secret’ strategy that Satan as

Machiavel has in mind is to lull the Reformist leaders into a false sense of security with

‘louing letters, words, and cheere’ (1089, F2v). The king (Charles IX) will be the chief

player in every sense of the word. He will dissemble contrition and love and condemn the

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enemies of the Huguenots, chiefly the Guise. The Guises must retire from court to give

the king’s feigned displeasure verisimilitude.

The Queen Mother too must play a part in this. As Randall Martin argues, the

treatment of Catherne de Medici by Marlowe and Dowriche reveal the processes of

gendering the text undergoes.74 While Marlowe does not use her at all in The Jew of

Malta (1589-90), he makes Catherine a biddable female in The Massacre at Paris, under

the control of the Guise, whom he also makes her lover. Dowriche follows the

contemporary belief that the Queen Mother was perhaps the greatest master politician of

her court and infuses Catherine’s role in her text with a great deal of agency. At this point

the devil coaches the Queen Mother in her part and hammers out the details of the plan.

Putting Satan’s plan into action, the king sends a letter to Coligny asking him to gather

his troops with the monarch’s so that they might ride against the King of Spain, his

longstanding enemy. The Admiral, although suspicious of the king’s apparent grace

towards his faction, reasons that the king’s word could not be false and agrees to the

king’s proposals. In return he is given land and goods, much favour is shown to his

friends and even the Guise is persuaded into showing friendship for the Admiral,

although this friendship is feigned. The final touch to the winning over of the Huguenots

is the declaration of the betrothal of the king’s sister to Henry of Navarre. And so the

fatal gathering in Paris begins.

The Queen of Navarre, ‘a rare and vertuous dame’ (1202, F4) goes to Paris but

suddenly dies (possibly poisoned by a pair of gloves) leaving her son king of Navarre and

the betrothal completed. The narrative now moves to the day of the ‘bloodie’ marriage.

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The ceremony is performed outside the church after which the bride enters the church

for Mass, her husband waiting outside for her. The court erupts with gaiety and Admiral

Coligny is forced to stay in hostile Paris amidst ungodly and mad merry-making because

he has church business to see to. Five days go by and the court settles down to discuss

policy for the ‘fained’ war in Flanders. On the way back from the meeting at midday

Coligny is shot with a ‘harquebusse’ from the opposite side of the street. He is wounded

but retains his military presence of mind to send officers to enquire about the business.

He sends word to the king, and the news enrages the monarch. Coligny retreats to the

castle of Henry of Navarre for treatment. While under treatment he requests the king to

visit his simple dwelling saying that he is expecting death and has a secret to impart

concerning the safety of his majesty. The king arrives with Catherine and her train and

makes sympathetic speeches and Coligny, like a second Burgeus, moves the company by

his calm assurance and dignity in the face of death.

Then he calls the king aside and makes the ‘secrete’ speech (G2), warning him of

a conspiracy to ‘ingraffe a strange Italian weede,/ Which may in France most surelie

choake the Princes royall seede’ (1316-17, F4v). He identifies this as the true cause for

the religious wars. From this point Dowriche’s discourse slowly moves towards the

atmosphere and politics of court intrigue and prepares the ground for the Machiavellian

references that abound later. The Duke of Anjou, acting under the king’s orders for the

safety of the Admiral, assigns a guard, Captain Cossin (ironically punning on ‘cousin’ as

kin and ‘cozen’), who actually loathes Coligny, and the sick man is left well guarded.

This ends the ‘Prologue’ and Dowriche self-consciously labels the next part of the poem a

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‘plaie.’ This is an elaborate conceit that the language sustains at length to give the horrors

of the massacre maximum impact. Dowriche does not reproduce texts of letters and

edicts within her work, like Tymme, nor is she content to merely tell the story; she must

move her readers. Her choice of genre as well as medium indicates her belief in the

capacity of dramatic verse to most affect the emotions. The first to appear on the stage is

the Queen Mother. She is given priority and prominence and, even apart from the prior

date of the text to Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and The Massacre at Paris, her role justifies

Randall Martin’s observation that she is probably the first Machiavel in

English literature.75

The setting is one of Catherine de Medici’s chambers, a ‘close and secret place’

(1377, G3). She gathers the king and his advisors to herself and speaks her first oration

(Figure 19). Like Annas Burgeus’ monologue, this too begins with a series of rhetorical

questions. The Queen Mother asks them the reason for their procrastination: ‘Good

fortune (loe) hath brought them [Protestants] al, & laid them in our lap’ (1391, G3v).

The gloss for this portion indicates that Catherine de Medici is speaking in Machiavellian

rhetoric and teaching the wicked counsel of the author of The Prince. She uses the lion

and fox metaphor, urges the king to dissemble and uses images of infection and

putrefaction to rouse her audience. The marginal gloss at this point grows acerbic: ‘This

is a wholesome scholemistres for a yong King’ and ‘These be the pillars, & this the fruite

of Popish religion’ (G3v). The much-quoted passage in which she strives to raise their

courage by scolding them for being lily-livered can indeed be fruitfully compared to Lady

Macbeth’s famous speech of similar content:

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Figure 19. Beginning of Catherine de Medici’s ‘Machiavel speech’ with marginal glosses in

Anne Dowriche’s The French historie [Imprinted at London by Thomas Orwin for Thomas

Man. 1589], STC (2nd ed.) 7159, fol. G3. The British Library, shelfmark C.132.h.28.

Scanned from Facsimile. Digitised in EEBO.

270

Plucke vp therefore your sprites, and play your manlie parts,

Let neither feare nor faith preuaile to dant your warlike harts.

What shame is this that I (a woman by my kinde)

Neede thus to speake, or passe you men in value of the minde?

For heere I do protest, if I had bene a man;

I had my slefe before this time this murder long began.

Why do you doubting stand, and wherefore doo you staie?

If that you loue your peace, or life; procure no more delaie.

(1410-17, G4r)

Judged from the speaker’s perspective, which is a kind of sinister obverse of the

Huguenots, Catherine de Medici does possess surpassing ‘value of the minde.’ Her logic,

from a political and military point of view, is perfectly sound and is the dark twin of the

carpe diem philosophy. The time to bring down your enemy, she preaches, is when you

have got them together in one place and under your control. If they disperse, you will

never be able to wipe them out and they will grow stronger. This opportunity will not

come again, she stresses, and you need to take advantage of it. She ends with yet another

allusion to her sex, ‘This is a womans minde, and thus I thinke it best (1434, G4), and

asks their opinions. There is great arrogance in the way Catherine de Medici uses her

gender in public debate. Whereas Lady Macbeth’s is a private speech, Catherine’s oration

is most definitely public although the close and womb-like description of the chamber

provides some sense of privacy. There is force and energy in large amounts in her rhetoric

and it succeeds in rousing a large number of men to do her bidding. Admittedly, she

utters what is already there in their hearts, but she does possess the catalytic force of

character that can extract action out of will. As Randall Martin succinctly concludes:

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Dowriche successfully redefines personal agency in anti-

Machiavellian terms on two levels: transhistorically as

nonaggressive self-possession and communitarian humanity in

her idealized portraits of Huguenot martyrs, and historically

through Catherine de Medici's gender-specific and rhetorical

activism. While she unavoidably had to rely on male historians

for most of her basic facts and, given her deep Reformist

commitments, for certain shared approaches to presenting her

material, by also ‘chusing and ordering’ various analogues of

independent female action, Dowriche wrests a high degree of

autonomy for herself as a writer and historian. Her work thus

established a new generic direction for later female historians

such as Elizabeth Cary. Because Dowriche took the original

step of poetically ‘amplifying the circumstance[s]’ of her own

more prosaic chronicle-sources (‘Epistle to the Reader,’), Cary

was in a stronger position to ‘strive to please Truth, not Time’

by rejecting ‘the dull character of our Historians’ and

‘amplify[ing] more than they infer, by Circumstance’ (‘Preface

to the Reader,’ History of Edward II). The exposition and

critique of Machiavellian patriarchy, the theatrically inflected

orations, and the richly metaphorical writing of both writers

constitute significant regenderings of a genre hitherto defined

exclusively by male standards and values.76

Back in the narrative, it is decided that Navarre and Condé are to be spared but

Coligny should be killed. This is the ‘first part plaide’ (1456, G4v), and the narrator

moves on to lament that his ‘slender skill wants fitted phrase the sequele to depaint’

(1457, G4v). Neverthesless, apology over, he goes on to make quite a decent job of it.

The Duke of Guise, put in chrge of affairs instigates riots in the streets with his troops in

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the night. Coligny asks the king whether he knows of this and Charles hastens to assure

him that all is well. The Duke of Guise appoints Provost Carron to address the troops.

Carron, ‘with stomacke stout and bolde’ (1482, H), tells the troops that it is his majesty’s

wish that they kill the rebels and that ‘[t]heir leader and their guide lies wounded in his

bed,/ And therefore as the chiefest foe, we’ill first haue off his head’ (1503, H).

Accordingly Guise storms to the castle. The pathos of the situation is intensified and the

king’s treachery doubly underscored by Coligny’s faith in the promises of the king, his

mother, and his brothers; ratified by public records; embodied by the recent marriage

witnessed by the Queen of England, the Prince of Orange and the German heads of state.

The invocation of documentary and international witness along with verbal promise

consolidates the enormity of the treason. Cossin’s treachery leads to the Guises breaking

in and attacking Coligny’s friends. The Admiral finally realises the truth of the situation

and immediately accepts his coming death with dignity. ‘Then standing on his feet his

night gown on his back’ (1568, H2) he speaks of his contentment with his lot, thanks

God for his coming death, like the St James’ Street Lutherans and Annas Burgeus, since

it will allow him to look upon the face of Christ, and warns the individuals in the

treacherous conspiracy of God’s judgment. When attacked by three cavaliers Coligny asks

them to stay their hand out of respect for his age and infirmity, ‘[t]o which by treason

wrought by trust I haue bin drawn of late’ (1633, H3). These words, set in italic,

emphasise the utter inhumanity and ghastly cruelty of what ensues:

But beastlie Benuise would to this no answere giue:

But swearing, to this Noble man his pointed sword let driue,

And thrust him to the heart: but yet not fullie dead,

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With force he laid a mightie blow & strake him on the head.

With that came Attin in with Pistoll in his hand,

And shot him in the wounded breast; yet did he stoutlie stand:

Till Benuise came againe with third repeated wound:

And slasht him on the thigh: which done he fel vnto the ground

Where he gave vp the ghost [...]

Then Benuise with his mates to put them out of doube,

Tooke vp his bloodie corse: & so from window cast him out.

Where from his wounded head sprang out so fresh a flood,

That vizard-like his face was all imbrued with goarie blood.

(1634-42, 1650-53, H3v)

The description is graphic and detailed. The difficulty of killing the Admiral

almost acts as a metaphor for the hardiness of the new faith which, even in a weakened

state, can withstand repeated blows. The Guises celebrate the death and embark on the

extermination of the ‘Rebels.’ The mission brief is that all Huguenots, whether young or

old, must be slain without show of mercy. The massacre begins with the fatal tolling of

the tocsin in the Guise’s hand, spreading among the people the false news that traitors are

about to assassinate the king. In the meantime the Admiral’s body is hideously mutilated.

His head is chopped off and sent to Rome as a gift for the Pope following the cardinal of

Lorraine’s orders. His hands are ‘cut off by some, by some his secrete parts’ 1696, H4),

his mangled body dragged around the streets during the ensuing mob frenzy, and finally

hanged at the common gallows by the legs.

The next section uses a separate title to record the rioting and massacre proper,

intensifying the violence that had slowly crept into the narrative. Coligny’s death and

mutilation sets off the orgy of death. The troops go hunting for Huguenots in every

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house and chamber, cutting off the heads of people who are sleeping or hiding. Even

nobility is not immune. De Nance, captain of the guard is ordered to kill the Count of

Rochefoucauld, formerly on good terms with the king. He refuses the king’s orders,

invoking, among others, the inevitable King David story. He will not act like Joab, who

killed Uriah on David’s orders, because he does not wish to lose his soul. De Nance is

one of the rare individuals in this story with a conscience and some shade other than

black and white. He is loyal to the king by profession and choice but he is, above all,

most loyal to his own ethical code; he will not do what he considers to be wrong. This

comparatively long oration (44 lines) for a hitherto unintroduced character sets this

speech apart as important in the content of the story. It is probably because De Nance is

a comparatively objective observer of events, a servant of the king merely doing his job,

that his stance towards the Huguenots once again drives home the moral superiority of

the beleaguered Reformists and undermines the king’s authority.

Another striking aspect of De Nance’s speech is his use of a female figure from

scriptural store. Jezebel is a powerful political force in 1 and 2 Kings, notorious for her

persecution of Elijah, slaying of the innocent landowner Naboth, and slaughter of

prophets. Catherine de Medici is a perfect type of Jezebel. It is also striking that Jezebel

suffered death by being thrown out of a window. To any contemporary reader of

Dowriche, mention of Jezebel would have effected an immediate connection with the

Admiral’s post mortem defrenestration. De Nance is one of the characters in the poem

who have only a few lines or an isolated oration, although his oration is not very brief.

This enables the context of the narrative to be fleshed out, but in the process, we are also

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left with piquant character sketches presented through monologue. But everyone, of

course, is not like De Nance and another ambitious and unscrupulous officer carries out

the order. The Admiral’s son-in-law, Theligny, is the next target and in his speech he

blames himself for believing in the king and assuring his father-in-law of the king’s good

intentions, and he quietly accepts his death.

The theme of the massacre is voiced by the Duke of Guise, the mobile and

frenzied mirror of the Queen Mother’s contained energy, ‘Kill, kill the knaues, this is the

princes wil’ (1813, I2). Responding to his fury the soldiers wreak havoc in the city:

‘[t]hey spared none they knew, no sex could pitie finde,/ The rufull crie of tender babes

could not asswage their minde’ (1818-19, I2v). Bodies are thrown out of windows and

begin to pile up on the streets. Just when the reader might start asking what had

happened to the King of Navarre and his brother in all this, Dowriche begins her answer.

The two noblemen had been away from their castle visiting the king when the Admiral

was killed. The soldiers broke into the castle and killed all their retinue, their tutors and

friends. The next oration is that of Monsieur de Pilles, a prominent Huguenot, who is

dragged out of the castle after De Nance is sacked and realises that his time on the earth

is limited. He berates the king’s false heart with bitter words in a longish oration and

prophesies a dire fall and God’s just punishment for the evil monarch and ends with the

epigrammatic ‘That this our blood by shedding of thy blood shalbe repaid’ (1893, I3v) set in

italic. He gives his costly cloak to a friend as a token of his murder.

The point of this moving episode is clarified by the narrator: ‘This was the cruell

ende of that most famous man;/ To read the same without remorse, I thinke no creature

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can’ (1902-3, I3v). The remarkable thing about the couplet is the slippage of the nested

narrative structure of the poem. By using that telling word ‘read,’ Dowriche for a

moment speaks in her own voice. This is one of the extremely rare moments in the

history of sixteenth-century women’s verse that the author openly speaks in her own

persona, without mask or subterfuge. Her preface had made it amply clear that she did

not believe in suppressing her identity. Because this couplet becomes the point at which

the ‘I’ enters the discourse and Dowriche herself speaks, the fiction of the two narrators

loses validity for other parts of the narrative as well, and one could place the

responsibility for all textual voices with impunity upon the author. It is rarely that a

student might, without qualms, take the name of her author without having to cautiously

import a ‘speaker’ or ‘voice’ into the equation of meaning-generation, and this is just

such an uplifting moment. Moreover, although (and because) probably unintended, the

slip of language and consequent entry of the reader into the format of auricular history

cements the intense textual nature of the poem. However much other voices are

employed and the orality of the story stressed (as mentioned above, Dowriche, unlike

Tymme, does not present her data in documents, everything is subsumed under speech

and oration), the liminal and extra-textual web of meaning generated in the margins of

the page collapse and is absorbed within the text proper. How terribly fascinating it

would be if one could ever prove that this slip were not unintentional.

The story returns to the sacking of four hundred houses in Paris and the king’s

command to other cities to follow in the footsteps of the capital. The incident of the

hangman at Lyons prison follows. This echoes the mass imprisonment and murder of the

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St James’ Street martyrs with the twist that when asked to hack the prisoners to death

with his axe, the unnamed hangman refuses in a 5-line first person speech, and the gloss

comments that ‘[t]he common hangman of Lions, had more grace & honestie than

Mandelot the Gouernor’ (I4). He is like a De Nance, although far lower in estate.

Favourably compared to the upper-class Governor, he is used to reinforce the republican

values that the text seems to profess. The Governor, significantly, is given no speech and

is thwarted by the soldiers of the city as well who refuse to kill chained and passive men

in cold blood. The butchers of the city, however, make no demur and the ghastly

massacre is carried out by the cutting off of hands and other physical mutilation. Their

cries, like those of the burning martyrs in the first part, echo throughout the city and the

subsequent lines dilate upon utter human misery to generate deep pathos as the streets

run with ‘smoking bloud’ (1983, K):

The mournfull mothers wept, whom nature did compel,

To see these hounds before their face their louing babes to quell

The tender infant doth for help to father crie,

The wofull father cannot helpe his childe before he die.

The husband to his wife, the frend to frend doth call,

(19968-1972, I4v)

The next oration is by a Protestant merchant of Lyons, Francis Collute. In his

speech he exhorts his two sons to embrace this death by axe as sent from God and prays

for strength. His speech is significant in that it incorporates within the text proper the

content of the pair of identical woodcuts framing the book. He says that all pain and

scourges of fire, sword and rack belong to Truth and describes her as always naked with a

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whip tied to her back. This is a historically and biblically proven fact, he says. The echo

of the woodcut in the poem enhances the organicity of the volume as a whole. It

confirms that this is a well-crafted publication in the preparation of which a lot of

deliberation and thoughtful care has been lavished. The gruesomeness of the deaths of

the merchant and his sons add point to the allegory. Their bodies are fragmented and

shattered by the butchers’ blades but they lie on the ground joined together bleeding to

death. Pears Edgcumbe and Anne Dowriche’s names had been fragmented in the heading

of the acrostic at the beginning of the book, but they, too, had been joined together

in a couplet.

The next section is titled ‘A cruell, cowardlie and traitorous murder, committed in

Angiers in France, vpon one Masson de Riuers a famous and godlie preacher, by a wicked

enemie called Monsorrell, who was sent by the King to Angiers in post, to commit the like

murder there, as was in Paris’ (K2). This is the counterpart of the Lyons massacre and is

dealt with in a separate section although not at greater length. This section ends the

narrative, leaving the concluding subsection to teach the moral of the story and reveal

divine justice. This section deals with a single murder. It recounts the death of Masson de

Rivers, a well-known Protestant preacher, and comprises mostly his dying speech.

Monsorrell, one of the king’s officials, is sent to Angiers to kill de Rivers. He dissembles

and does not reveal his true purpose even after he enters the preacher’s house. He acts like

a courtier, full of flattery and fancy speech. He salutes de Rivers’ wife with a courtly kiss

(it is like the kiss of Judas, the gloss comments) and asks her where he may find her

husband. Innocently she tells him that he is in the garden, ensuring his death. Monsorrell

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addresses the preacher as friend and very courteously informs him that he must be killed.

Before he can use his pistol de Rivers implores him to wait until he has said his

final prayers. This prayer, which is really much more than a prayer, forms the bulk of this

section. The preacher condemns the king, asks for the blessing of God, entreats

Monsorrell to take pity on his weeping wife and children, warns him of eternal

damnation, and when it is clear that nothing will avail, he gives thanks to the Lord and

accepts the shot in his breast after kissing his family goodbye. This is another dramatic

monologue. Through the preacher’s speech the reader gets to know that his wife and

children have come into the garden and have started weeping and wailing, and that

Monsorrell denies all his requests. The major point of this oration is to showcase the evil

inherent in murder that is committed in cold blood, not only in mass frenzy. All the

other incidents had related men acting under the stress of rage and fury. The Duke of

Guise, whatever his faults, is not depicted as cool and objective. He kills and commands

to kill in the heat of the moment. Monsorrell is a remarkably cool customer and the

murder he commits is a bold and crafty assassination, untainted by emotion of any kind

and therefore more inhuman. This cold murder is perhaps even more heinous than

massacre in hate and fury. By extension, this episode comes to signify that the killing of

innocent and non-threatening human beings cannot have any excuse or justification.

This is wickedness that cannot be exonerated and could perhaps only be assimilated in

terms of crime and punishment, in the very Old Testament-like and un-Protestant thirst

for an eye for an eye. Otherwise such cruelty and senseless violence becomes

unendurable. This is borne out by the very title of the next section.

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3.1.6 The Judgement of God

The poem closes with ‘The Iudgement of the Lorde against this bloodie and periured King of

France, Charles the 9. Dilated by the Sentence of God in the lawe against murder; by

examples both out of the Scriptures, & other Authors, concerning the horrible end that hath

fallen vpon wilfull murderersand lastlie, the bloodie death of this blood-sucking King himself’

(K4). This is the first time that the king is named, and unlike King Henri II, blame is

roundly placed upon his head. Although Satan is there to instigate, the really inventive

cruelties and bloodthirst is the king’s alone. The poem progresses from a position of

tolerance for the wrongdoing of a monarch and assertion of the right to censure him, to a

burning hatred of kingship channelled through the castigation of a particular king.

The section begins with anticipation, looking towards the future (that is, what

comprises the future from the moment of the previous section, not from the temporal

point of writing which is more in the future still). It announces its intention of tracing

the end of the story to the death of the king but begins with various exempla worked out

in detail. First is Abimelech who killed his seventy brothers to inherit but was

accidentally killed by a woman throwing down a millstone from the top of a wall. Lest

people say that he was killed by a woman, a dagger is put through his heart by his page.

This is the fruit of murderous ambition. The next example is that of Triphon and his

betrayal and murder of Jonathan and since it deals with treachery and feigned friendship,

it forms the heart of the comparison with the king. The marginal gloss provides the story

in detail. As she had cited the Contre Machiavel for Catherine de Medici’s speech,

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Dowriche here references Josephus’ Antiquities, 13:10 and points out that Tryphon is

comparable to Charles IX. Tryphon gets his just desserts when Simon, Jonathan’s

brother, kills him in revenge. The French narrator of the poem says that he has also read

of one Aristobolus who killed his mother and brother but himself was overtaken for his

sins by a terrible disease, inflicted upon himself by the pangs of conscience, and so he

died. ‘Our Charles’ (2184, K4v) died likewise in tremendous agony with blood issuing

out of every orifice. This man, who had not heeded others’ cries for mercy, could not

expect mercy for himself. The king’s body is hacked up in language in a macabre blazon:

the proud heart feels bitter pain, the ears that were deaf to others’ entreaties are now

stopped up with blood, the mouth that would not speak out to help his brother ‘[i]n

steed of words doth vomit out the clottes of filthie blood’ (2199, L), the nose that

detested the pleasant smell of truth expels filthy stinking blood from the heart. The

speaker uses a Latin saying attributed to Loius XI and provides the original in the gloss:

‘Qui nescit dissimluare [sic] nescit regnare, he that cannot dissemble, knoweth not howe

to raigne’ (L). A spate of quick examples follows, which includes Mithridates, and then

the scene returns to the present. The French exile blesses England and her Protestant

queen, ‘chiefe Pastor of thy sheepe’ (2227, Lv). He uses France and the discourse that he

has just established as itself an exemplum for teaching England to beware: ‘And where

our wound is seene as yet so fresh to bleede, / Lord grant to England that they maie in

time take better heede’ (2232-33, Lv). Anne Locke will express the same apprehensions

in her second publication which is still a couple of years away. The Englishman invites

the exile to stay with him but we are not provided with his answer. As the narrative began

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in the first person voice of the Englishman, so it ends with the him bidding the exile

farewell, wishing him good luck and praying that ‘Lord shield thee from annoy,/ And

grant vs al that we may meete with Christ in perfect ioy’ (2242-43, Lv). After an ‘Amen,’

there is still a couplet to go before the book will end and it is signed with Dowriche’s full

name ‘Anna Dowriche.’ Set in italic, this corresponds to the prefatory matter and it is a

touching and self-conscious prayer, almost childlike in its simplicity and brevity: ‘Lord

Iesus Christ, the praise be thine:/ For blessing of this worke of mine’ (Lv). The nursery-

rhyme quality of the couplet echoes the motif of juvenile recreation that had been a

major aspect of the prefatory material. This is followed by the woodcut emblem ‘Veritie

purtraied by the French Pilgrim’ (Figure 20). Truth is seen to descend from the heavenly

abode of Jove and immediately fall battling against Satan, sin and the fleshly needs of

human beings. All of them torment her and bind scourges to her back but nothing can

subdue Truth, ‘She wounded, springs; bedeck with crowne of Peace.’ With this uplifting

message, then, the book ends.

The French historie is a stimulating and disturbing poem. It engages energetically

with issues of textuality and the methodology of textual documentation for the purposes

of reporting events. It uses the ‘dobleedged’ sword of citation and gloss to weave a textile

of texts, pulsing in constant conversation with each other, and through this it both

generates and participates in a communal discourse. It is a text deeply interested in

textuality although it negotiates its concerns thorough the conventions of orality. It uses

its female authorship to take numerous liberties with form and content. It creates the

earliest Machiavel, that too female, and whips up a prototype of the dramatic monologue.

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Figure 20. Woodcut emblem at the end of Anne Dowriche’s The French historie

[Imprinted at London by Thomas Orwin for Thomas Man. 1589], STC (2nd ed.)

7159, fol. G3. The British Library, shelfmark C.132.h.28. Scanned from Facsimile.

Digitised in EEBO.

284

It indulges in descriptions of violence, death, mutilation and blood with a fascination and

affect that is as disturbing as it is serious.

This is no mere recreation, very deep emotion forms its bedrock, although it

presents itself with gusto as a Puritan history. There is enjoyment in the creation, in the

exercise of imagination, but it is serious in its desire to reach a wide readership, at all

levels of the social hierarchy. Anne Dowriche’s revisionist historical poem is many things

but it does remain a bit of an enigma. It is interesting to ponder about the possible

symbols or ciphers that Dowriche might have used to encode messages other than what

the text seems to be talking about.77 Julie Sampson rightly suggests that the experiential

reality of Dowriche’s recusant maternal family, brutally persecuted during her lifetime,

could not have failed to have affected the writer in some way. Although Dowriche’s poem

is unabashedly Reformist, perhaps the words uttered by Coligny, when he has his secret

chat with the king could be regarded as part of a key to a different kind of agenda.

Perhaps what he says in the king’s ear is what Dowriche says in the reader’s as well. It

seems unusual that a hardcore militant Huguenot should suddenly reduce the generation

of two bloody and traumatic religious civil wars to exclusively political motives. Perhaps

one message of the text is that kings and queens use religion as tools in the deadly game

of politics they play and Dowriche’s text warns against the fickleness of monarchy rather

more than the evils of papacy. After all, England had seen innumerable examples of kings

using religion to further their own political ambitions, most blatantly in Henry VIII’s

antics with faith, leading to the deaths of masses of people.

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It is undeniably true that Dowriche’s text indulges in violence and dwells on gory

details. But the aim of all this bloody-mindedness is, obviously, to bring home to her

readers the exact horror of such experiences and thus enable them to desist in indulging

in such destructive violence in the future. Dowriche‘s emphasis might possibly be on the

‘truth’ depicted in the emblem that brackets the body of the text (it needs also to be kept

in mind that the same emblem was embroidered by Mary Queen of Scots in what later

came to be known as the Oxburgh Hanging)78. Especially in the context of the defeat of

the Spanish Armada, Coligny’s words resonate with some dimension other than the

overtly Reformist. Keeping the sufferings of Dowriche’s maternal family in mind, it

might perhaps not be too amiss to see Dowriche’s text as teaching against the tendency to

‘quicklie finde a path to perfect peace’ (1678, H4) through indiscriminate slaughter. The

poem could perhaps be seen as rebelling against religious persecution in general rather

than persecution against Protestants in particular. This rebellion is, of course, being

effected through the manipulation of language and intensive soul-searching and in this

paying its allegiance to Puritan philosophy. Seen from this perspective, the poem would

become a more intensely political text than is usually assumed, with its politics being

deeply engaged with issues of language and the written word. And the crowning message

would be that expressed in the final line of the emblem, the irrefragable fact that truth

can only flourish in peace.

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Notes

1 Micheline White, ‘Women Writers and Literary‐Religious Circles in the Elizabethan West Country: Anne Dowriche, Anne Lock Prowse, Anne Lock Moyle, Ursula Fulford, and Elizabeth Rous,’ Modern Philology, Vol. 103, No. 2 (November 2005), pp. 187-214. 2 Patrick Cullen’s introductory note on Dowriche in the Facsimile, p. xi-xiii. The basis for these are: ‘1) according to the title page, The French historie ‘was published by A. D.’ in 1589; 2) the author dedicates her work to ‘her loving Bro[ther] Master Pearse Edgecombe, of Mount Edgecombe in Deuon’; 3) she signs this dedication ‘Anne Dowriche’ and inscribes it ‘Honiton [Devon], the 25. Day of Julie. 1589.’ Intro. p. xi. I have followed the biography in the abovementioned edition and the revised ODNB entry, ‘Dowriche, Anne (d. in or after 1613)’ by Kate Aughterson [URL: http://0-www.oxforddnb.com.catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/view/article/7987], accessed June 2011. See also Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson eds. Early Modern Women Poets (1520-1700): An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) for a recent biographical account. Stevenson et. al. note that Hugh Dowriche was rector of Honiton first in 1587 and then of Lapford in Devon. This fact, however, flies in face of the text of the marriage licence quoted from Suzanne Woods et. al. above, and the dates, too, seem to be wrong. The 2001 book also mentions that Anne and Hugh had four children instead of the six documented in the 2004 ODNB entry: Elkana, Walter, Mary (1587), Elizabeth, Anne (1589), and Hugh (1594). See also Diana Robin, Anne R. Larsen, and Carole Levin, eds. Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England (California: ABC-Clio Inc., 2007), p. 115 for a short biographical note. 3 Julie Sampson, ‘Anne Edgcumbe/Dowriche and The French Historie (2 parts),’ Devonshire Association Transactions, Vol. 141, 2009, pp. 93-152, p. 101. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Sampson for sending me a copy of her article by post and saving me immense trouble. 4 Ibid., p. 102. 5 See Stevenson et. al., op. cit., p. 109 (however, no sources are cited). This is the Pearse to whom Dowriche dedicates her work. 6 I have refrained from rehearsing the older view, found in the earlier entry of the DNB, that Anne’s second husband was Richard Trefusis and from narrating how this misapprehension was corrected by Elaine Beilin’s work. Beilin’s clarification that there had been two Anne Edgecombes, one the poet and the other her niece, has been silently incorporated into the ODNB and I follow the revised version, as well as the editorial introduction to the Facsimile cited above. See Elaine Beilin, ‘‘Some freely spake their minde’: Resistance in Anne Dowriche’s French Historie’ in Mary E. Burke, Jane Donawerth, Linda L. Dove and Karen Nelson eds. Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000) for details. This misunderstanding was also the reason why excerpts from Dowriche’s work were anthologised under the name of Anne (Edgcumbe) Trefusis in Betty Travitsky ed. The Paradise of Women: Writings by Englishwomen of the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). Incidentally, and very interestingly, Dowriche is treated as a secular author in the anthology. 7 Suzanne Woods, et. al., op. cit., p. xi. 8 The rest of the title page reads as follows: “All that will liue godlie in Iesus Christ, shall suffer perse-/cution. 1. Tim. 3. 2./ [oval woodcut of naked female figure of truth wearing crown and covering her modesty with a leaf held in the left hand, right hand raised away from the body, with a flail attached to her back and the legend ‘Virescit Vulnere Veritas’ (‘Truth flourishes through a wound’).]/ Imprinted at London by Thomas/ Orwin for Thomas Man./ 1589.” This is STC (2nd ed.) 7159, held at the British Library, shelfmark C.132.h.28, published in the

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Facsimile.

This is my working text and is subsequently referred to as The French historie. Copies of STC (2nd ed.) 7159 are also held at the Huntington Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library. The other instance of the book is STC (2nd ed.) 7159.3, a variant issue, a copy of which is held at the British Library. It has a variant imprint: ‘T. Orwin, London for W. Russell, 1589, Dwelling at Exeter,’ and must have been published, as Michelin White observes, for the benefit of the West Country Puritan coterie. Interestingly, the motto of the woodcut on the title page of the book is also that of the contemporary London printer and bookseller Thomas Creede. Creede uses the woodcut for Elizabeth Carey’s The Tragedy of Miriam in 1613 as well (see Patricia Demers, Women’s Writing in English: Early Modern England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005) p. 136). Creede’s emblem is different in that his figure of truth turns to the left with right leg outstretched to cover her modesty instead of to the right with left leg placed backward; carries a book in both hands instead of the leaf; a hand from the clouds at the top left corner of the woodcut emerges with the flail to strike her back; the design of the ornamental oval border is different and ‘virescit’ is spelt ‘viressit.’ 9 The following are detailed bibliographical notes of the two extant copies digitised in EEBO: For STC (2nd ed.) 22241.5 (1574, University of Illinois Library copy, UMI reel number 1841:11): “Translation of ‘Commentariorum de statu religionis et reipublicae in regno Galliae’—Cf. NUC pre-1956 imprints. ‘Seconde parte of Commentaries’ and ‘Thirde parte of Commentaries’ each has special t.p. and separate pagination. Attributed to Jean de Serres by STC (2nd ed.) and NUC pre-1956 imprints; inaccurately ascribed to Petrus Ramus in Tymme's dedication. ‘The tenth booke’ ([75] p. at end) is a translation of Hotman's De furoribus gallicis--Cf. NUC pre-1956 imprints. ‘Seene and allowed.’ Signatures: a-b4 A-2M4, [par.] 4 *4, 2A-2K4 22L2 [pi]2 3A-4P4 4Q2, 3A-I4 3K2. Contains indexes. Title within ornamental border. Numerous errors in paging.” [URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&res_dat=xri:p qil:res_ve r=0.2&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:24042794] accessed July 2011. For STC (2nd ed.) 22242 (1574, Huntington Library copy, UMI reel number 397:06): “A translation of parts 1-3 of ‘Commentariorum de statu religionis et reipublicae in regno Galliae libri’ by Jean de Serres. Part 1 is actually an abridged translation of ‘Commentaires de l'estat de la religion’ by Pierre de La Place. Misattributed in the introductory verses to Petrus Ramus. ‘The cruell murther of the Admirall Chastilion’ is sometimes attributed to François Hotman. Colophon, 4Q2v, reads: Imprinted at London, by Henry Middleton: for Frauncis Coldocke, and are to be sold at his shoppe in Powles Church-yard, at the signe of the Greene Dragon. Part 2 has separate dated title page, register and pagination; part 3 has separate dated title page and pagination; register is continuous. ‘The tenth booke treating of the furious outrages of Fraunce, with the slaughter of the Admirall’ (caption title) begins new register and foliation.The page between 306 and 307 is numbered 491; p. 309 misnumbered 494. Includes indexes. A reissue of STC 22241.5, with quires 1A-2M reprinted. A1r line 1 ends: commenta-.” [URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&r es_dat=xri:pqil:r es_ver=0.2&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:99852373] accessed July 2011. 10 A discourse vpon the meanes of wel governing and maintaining in good peace, a kingdome, or other principalitie. Divided into three parts, namely, the counsell, the religion, and the policie, which a prince ought to hold and follow. Against Nicholas Machiavell the Florentine. Translated into English by Simon Patericke [London: Printed by Adam Islip, 1602], STC (2nd ed.) 11743. Dowriche, of, course, refers to Gentillet’s original French. 11 See Randall Martin, ‘Anne Dowriche’s The French History, Christopher Marlowe and Machiavellian Agency,’ SEL, Vol. 39, No. 1, The English Renaissance (Winter, 1999), pp. 69-87. JSTOR [URL:

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http://www.jstor.org/stable/1556306], accessed July 2011. 12 See Micheline White, op. cit. 13 See, for example, Margaret J. M. Ezell, The Patriarch’s Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); Louise Schleiner, Tudor and Stuart Women Writers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Susan Frye and Karen Robertson, eds., Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 1999); Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, eds., Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Susanne Woods, ‘Anne Lock and Aemilia Lanyer: A Tradition of Protestant Women Speaking,’ in Form and Reform in Renaissance England: Essays in Honor of Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, ed. Amy Diane Boesky and Mary Thomas Crane (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000), 171–84; Susan Felch, ‘‘Noble Gentlewomen famous for their learning’: The London Circle of Anne Vaughan Lock,’ ANQ Vol. 16 (2003), pp. 14–19. 14 Micheline White op. cit. p. 197. 15 Ibid. p. 198-99. 16 There is conflicting evidence about this point. Anne Vaughan Locke had three children, as Micheline White shows: “Robert Moyle’s will confirms that his wife was the daughter of Henry Lock and Anne Vaughan: it refers to his ‘wife’s uncle Stephen Vaughan’ and to his wife’s brother, Michael Lock. PRO Ward 7/37/147. Anne Vaughan Lock had a brother, Stephen Vaughan, and her surviving children, Henry, Anne, and Michael, were baptized in 1560, 1561, and 1562. Registers of St. Mary-le-Bowe, Cheapside, ed. W. Bruce Bannerman (London: Harleian Society, 1914–15), 6–7,” ibid., fn 55, p. 205. However, Susan M. Felch provides documentary evidence from the Livre des Anglois, à Genève that AnneVaughan Locke’s daughter had died in Geneva in 1558. See the biographical section on Locke in the present study for details of Felch’s evidence. It is possible that Anne Moyle was another daughter and not identical to the one who died in Geneva. 17 Charles FitzGeffrey, Caroli Fitzgeofridi Affaniae: Sive Epigrammatum Libri Tres: ejusdem cenotaphia. [Oxoniæ: Excudebat Josephus Barnesius, 1601], STC (2nd ed.) 10934, pp. 123–24. Translation of the phrases from the original Latin by Shane Hawkins, provided in Michelin White, op. cit., p. 206, fn 59. 18 Micheline White, op. cit., p. 214. 19 D. R. Woolf, ‘A Feminine Past? Gender, Genre, and Historical Knowledge in England, 1500- 1800,’ The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 3 (Jun., 1997), pp. 645-679. Among other things, Woolf stresses the importance of mnemonic recollection and oral transmission of facts about the past in the establishment of the culture of history by women. 20 Julie Sampson, ‘Anne Dowriche /Edgcumbe’s ‘The French Historie’ & its Westcountry Connections,’ [URL: http://scrapblogfromthesouth-west.blogspot.com/2011/01/anne-dowricheedgcumbes-french-historie.html], accessed July 2011. See also, Julie Sampson, op. cit. 21 See Appendix III for a diagram of the relevant parts of the social network discussed below. I am grateful to Professor Helen Hackett for suggesting that I add a chart as visual aid to my description of this network. 22 For an entertaining account of the family see the articles on Captain Francis Champernowne in Albert H. Hoyt ed. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol XXVII, 1874 (Bowie, Md: Heritage Books, 1995, Facsimile Reprint). See also Tudorplace Genealogy [URL: http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/CHAMPERNOWNE.htm#Gawen%20CHAMPERNOWNE%20 %28Esq.%291], accessed June 2011 for a detailed genealogy. 23 See Brenda M. Hosington, ‘England's First Female-Authored Encomium: The Seymour Sisters' ‘Hecatodistichon’ (1550) to Marguerite de Navarre. Text, Translation, Notes, and Commentary,’ Studies in Philology, Vol. 93, Issue 2 (Spring, 1996) p.117-163 for details.

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24 Sampson, weblog entry op. cit. 25 ‘This hath beene my ordinarie exercise for recreation at times of leasure for a long space togeather.’ ‘The Epistle’ to Pearse Edgcumbe, Sig. A2v. 26 George Clement Boase and William Prideaux Courtney, Bibliotheca Cornubiensis: A catalogue of the writings, both manuscript and printed, of Cornishmen, and of works relating to the county of Cornwall, with biographical memoranda and copious literary references (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1874-1882, 3 vols.), Vol. 1, p. 118. Cited in Jane Stevenson et. al. op. cit. 27 STC (2nd ed.) 7160, full title: “The iaylors conuersion. Wherein is liuely represented, the true image of a soule rightlye touched, and conuerted by the spirit of God. The waightie circumstances of which supernaturall worke, for the sweete amplifications, and fit applications to the present time, are now set downe for the comfort of the strong, and confirmation of the weake. By Hugh Dowriche Batch. of Diuinitie.” It was printed by John Windet, “dwelling at Pauls wharfe, at the signe of the crosse keyes, and are there to be solde.” 28 Suzanne Woods et. al. eds. op. cit. p. xiii. 29 This is the same letter that proves conclusively that Anne Dowriche and Anne Trefusis were two different women and close relatives. 30 See Paul G. Morrison, Index of Printers, Publishers and Booksellers in A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475-1640 (Charlottesville, Virginia: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1950). 31 These are: A catechisme, composed according to the order of the catechisme in the Common prayer booke. Containing a briefe exposition of I. the Creed. II. the ten Commandements. III. the Lords prayer. IV. the sacraments. By M. N. B. D. P. P. [London: Printed by R. Y(oung) for I. Boler, and are to be sold by W. Russell Book-seller in Plimmouth, 1631], STC (2nd ed.) 18531. Deaths deliverance, and Eliahs fiery charet, or The holy mans tryumph after death. Delivered in two sermons preached at Plymouth, the one the 16. the other the 19. of August: the former at the funerall of Thomas Sherwill, an eminent and pious magistrate of that place. 1631. By Alexander Grosse, Pastor of Plympton S. Mary [London: printed by I. D(awson). for Iames Boler, and are to bee sold by William Russell booke-seller in Plymouth, 1632], STC (2nd ed.) 12393.5. A true and certaine relation of a strange-birth, which was borne at Stone-house in the parish of Plimmouth, the 20. of October. 1635. Together with the notes of a sermon, preached Octob. 23. 1635. in the church of Plimmouth, at the interring of the sayd birth. By Th. B. B.D. Pr. Pl (Thomas Bedford) [London: Printed by Anne Griffin, for William Russell in Plim mouth, 1635], STC (2nd ed.) 1791.3. The voyce of the Lord in the Temple, or, A most strange and wonderfull relation of Gods great power, providence, and mercy in sending very strange sounds, fires, and a fiery ball into the church of Anthony in Cornwall neere Plimmouth, on Whitsunday last, 1640, to the scorching and astonishing of 14 severall persons who were smitten, and likewise to the great terrour of all the other people then present, being about 200 persons: the truth whereof will be maintained by the oathes of the same persons, having been examined by Richard Carew of Anthony, Esquire, an Arthur Bache, Vicar of Anthony [Imprinted at London: By T(homas). P(aine). for Francis Eglesfield, and are to be sold by William Russell bookeseller in Plimmoth, 1640], STC (2nd ed.) 24870.5 32 These are STC (1st ed.), 100, 5152, 6737, 7202, 10678, 17914, 22942, 24288. See Morrison, op. cit. p. 56. 33 Stationers' Company (London, England) A transcript of the registers of the company of stationers of London (London: Birmingham: Priv. Print., 1875-77; 1894. Electronic reproduction, vols. 1-5. New York: Columbia University Libraries, 2007). JPEG use copy available via the World Wide Web. Master

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copy stored locally on CD#: Cubl_2006-007_2of2_Tifs. Columbia University Libraries Electronic Books. 2006. This quotation from Vol. 2, p. 523. [URL: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6177070_002/pages/ldpd_ 6177070_002_00000531.html?toggle=image&menu=maximize&top=-5px&left=880px], accessed June 2011. Anne Locke’s Markes was entered under Thomas Man’s name on 26 March 1590 (p. 541). Incidentally, Richard Jones, Whitney’s publisher was also active at this time. 34 Megan Matchinske, Women Writing History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). In her study Matchinske expands the term ‘history’ to include texts like Elizabeth Grymeston’s legacies to her son and argues that written formalised history lost much of its moral compass in a move towards method and proof and explores the ways in which the concept of history is affected by gender and genre through case studies of four women writers, including Dowriche. She offers one of the rare readings of the text (Julie Sampson’s article does it too) and my own reading is much indebted to their work. 35 F. J. Levy, Tudor Historical Thought (Huntington Library, 1967, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Renaissance Society of America Reprint Text Series, 2004). 36 Paulina Kewes, ‘History and its Uses,’ in Paulina Kewes ed., The Uses of History in Early Modern England (San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 2006). This is a useful volume that tries to revise the progressive and teleological views of the history of early modern historiography, calls for a blurring of divisions between history and literary studies and advocates more cross-disciplinary effort and evaluation of individual texts in historiography. 37 A. G. Dickens, ‘The Elizabethans and St. Bartholomew,’ in The Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Reappraisals and Documents, Alfred Soman ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), pp. 52-70, 59. 38 Eric Cochrane, ‘The Profession of the Historian in the Italian Renaissance,’ Journal of Social History, Vol. 15, 1981, pp. 51-72, p. 60. 39 The passage is reproduced below: “One of these paradigms consisted of the surviving or recently rediscovered historical texts of ancient Greece and Rome, from which the humanist historians drew inspiration and guidance in their own creative endeavors in accordance with the humanist principle of imitatio. The Renaissance historian was free to write about any subject about which a known ancient historian or another Renaissance humanist historian had not already written. [… H]umanist historians invariably wrote according to one or another of nine distinct genres of historical writing: Municipal history (the history of a single political entity) on the model of Livy; commentaries (the history of a single event or a series of events) on the model of Caesar or Salust; regional or national history on the model of Justinius or Orosius; historical-geographical descriptio on the model of Ptolemy or Strabo; biographical history on the model of Plutarch, Suetonius, or Diogenes Laertius; antiquarian history on the model of Varro (or of what they knew of Varro through Augustine)and sacred or ecclesiastical history on the model of Eusebius. […] the other paradigm to which Renaissance historians subscribed consisted of the chronicles that had risen spontaneously in the monasteries of southern Italy and in the communes of the north during the four centuries of preceding the advent of humanism and that had been elevated to the rank of a distinct literary genre in such works as the chronicle of Florence by Giovanni Villiani. […] Some well trained humanists, on the other hand, consciously reverted to the medieval paradigm – in everything, that is, except the language, which remained faithfully Petrarchan or Brunian – in order to take account of subjects, like economic affairs, that were excluded by the humanist paradigm, or in order to set forth a rigorous chronological scheme upon which eventually to construct an orthodox humanist work of history.” Ibid, pp. 60-62. 40 Ibid. See p. 68 for statistical figures substantiating this claim.

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41 Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (London: Edward Arnold, 1969). Burke, following Levy, defines the ‘sense of history’ as comprising three factors: the sense of anachronism, the awareness of evidence, and the interest in causation (p. 2). He cites numerous examples to show that none of these factors were present in medieval historical thought, although he admits that critical awareness of the past increased during the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries until the Renaissance sense of history was born with Petrarch. Later in the book he argues, quoting Calvin, that this new sense of history lay at the heart of the Reformation because ‘it implies an awareness that the church has changed with time.’ (p.40). Christopher Collingwood in his posthumously published famous book notes Machiavelli’s commentary on the first ten books of Livy as symptomatic of humanist historiography. He criticises Bacon for making memory the ruling force of history, although he lauds what he perceives as the overall humanistic triumph over medieval erroneous historiography. See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, T. M. Knox ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), p. 57-58. 42 Douglas L. Peterson, The English Lyric from Wyatt to Donne: A History of the Plain and Eloquent Styles (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 18-19. 43 Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939) and F. A. Patterson, The Middle English Penitential Lyric (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942). 44 Peterson, op. cit., p. 19. 45 David Womersley, ‘Against the teleology of Technique,’ in Paulina Kewes ed. op. cit., pp. 91-104, pp. 95-96. 46 1563 edition, sigs. B3r-B4r. 47 John N. King, ‘Guides to Reading Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,’ Paulina Kewes ed., op. cit., pp. 129-145. 48 Susan M. Felch, ‘Shaping the Reader in the Acts and Monuments,’ in David Loades ed., John Foxe and the English Reformation (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), p. 55. 49 John N. King, op. cit., p.129-130. 50 An abridgement of the booke of acts and monumentes of the Church: written by that Reuerend Father, Maister Iohn Fox: and now abridged by Timothe Bright, Doctour of Phisicke, for such as either through want of leysure, or abilitie, haue not the vse of so necessary an history [Imprinted at London: by I. Windet, at the assignment of Master Tim Bright, and are to be sold at Pauls wharf, at the signe of the Crosse-keyes, 1589], STC (2nd ed.) 11229. 51 The Latin sentence, loosely translated, means ‘happy are they who are made conscious by the perils of others,’ (translation mine) and following contemporary practice, indicates the volume’s didactic purpose within the title itself 52 Lily B. Campbell ed., The Mirror for magistrates (1938, reprint New York: Barnes and Noble 1960), p. 110. 53 Ibid., p. 154. 54 The mirrour of princely deedes and knighthood: wherein is shewed the worthinesse of the Knight of the Sunne, and his brother Rosicleer, sonnes to the great Emperour Trebetio: with the strange loue of the beautifull and excellent princesse Briana, and the valiant actes of other noble princes and knightes. Now newly translated out of Spanish into our vulgar English tongue, by M.T. [Imprinted at London: By Thomas East, (1578)] This is the first part of Part 1. Further parts of Part 1 are STC (2nd ed.) 18862-5. I have not consulted the other volumes as I’m chiefly interested in the prefatory material. 55 See Deborah Uman and Belén Bistué, ‘Translation as Collaborative Authorship: Margaret Tyler's The Mirrour Of Princely Deedes And Knighthood,’ Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2007), pp. 298-323. Also see Helen Hackett, Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 57-63, for a discussion of the book and the preface. Interestingly,

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the only known fact about Tyler’s life is that she was a servant in the household of Lord Thomas Howard (ibid., p. 57), implying that she shared a background similar to Isabella Whitney’s. Perhaps class could be seen as influencing choice of literary genres in women writers before 1600. 56 Burke, op. cit. p. 117. 57 An abridgment of Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the world, in five books. 1. From the creation to Abraham. 2. From Abraham to the destruction of the temple of Solomon. 3. From the destruction of Jerusalem to Philip of Macedon. 4. From Philip of Macedon to the race of Antigonus. 5. From the establishment of Alexander until the conquest of Asia and Macedon by the Romans. Wherein the particular chapters and paragraphs are succinctly abridg’d according to his own method, in the larger volume. To which is added, his Premonition to princes [London: printed for Mat. Gillyflower, and sold by Andrew Bell, at the Cross-Keys and Bible in Cornhill near Stocks-Market, 1698], Wing (CD-Rom, 1996), R151. See ‘His Premonition to Princes,’ Sig. c3. Emphasis reproduced from text. 58 “For who, not knowing as yet what would come to passe dare take vppon him to set foorth openly a whole Tragedie or Comedie, without manifest daunger to loose his labour, or at the least to séeme to lose it? Furthermore, who séeth not, that it is a thing at this time full of perill, and procuring enuie and displeasure? And beside all this, such laboure at this time seemeth almost vnprofitable. For those matters are as yet freshe in memorie, and more sensibly felt of a great manie, than were to be wished, and are noysed abroade by others in forreine Nations. To conclude, this thing seemeth almost hurt full.

“For when as these controuersies haue ben stirred vp tho rough diuers opinions of religion, which controuersies burst/ forth into so great perturbations and troubles, the rehersall now of these thinges, shall not only seeme pernicieus, but also vntimely and out of order. The which also seeme to bee other causes which haue discouraged learned men (who no doubt did diligently note and marke the reasons and falling out of those matters, which wonderfully hapned in these our dayes) from labouring to set forth this history. For either the hast is vnprofitable, or else the vntimely comming forth ridiculous, of this so speedie & vnseasonable labor’ (Sig. Aiii r-Aiii v).” This and all subsequent quotations from STC (2nd ed.) 22241.5. 59 Quotes from William Camden above and this from Burke, op. cit., p. 127. 60 Louis Green, Chronicle into History: An Essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 3. 61 Kim Walker, Women Writers of the English Renaissance (New York: Twayne, 1996), pp. 53-55. 62 From ‘To the Reader.’ The entire epistle is set in italics and I have reproduced the format in this longer quotation as I wanted to preserve the look of the sentence in which the word ‘England’ leaps to the eye. Other non-italicised words in the epistle are the names of [St] ‘Paul’ and ‘Annas Burgæus,’ the words ‘First’ ‘Secondlie’ and ‘Thirdlie’ to visually demarcate the respective passages explaining the content of each section of the poem, the teaching of St Paul ‘Let al things be done vnto edifying;’ and the title of the poem’s all subsequent sections. These are obviously set in different typeface for emphasis. Marginal notes are also set in italic, probably due to shortage of space. I do not reproduce italicisation in my quotations from the glosses. 63 Incidentally, all three of my writers express pleasure in their work. If their writing is a duty, it is a joyful one and all three women confess that they have enjoyed both reading their source texts and writing on or over them. Dowriche’s language, too, is reminiscent of Whitney’s culling of Plat’s flowers. The avowed roles these women take upon themselves in relation to their respective source authors is that of the editor and presenter more than that of the author. 64 For example, Elaine Beilin compares Dowriche to Isabella Whitney in her discussion of Dowriche’s work in Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University, 1987) pp.101-107. She quotes this passage, as does Patrick Cullen in Suzanne Woods et. al. op. cit., and sees this as the

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deliberate self-deprecation and downplaying of their work which was symptomatic of the majority of the women writers of the period. See also Micheline White, op. cit. pp. 199-200, who does not believe in the sincerity of the humility. 65 Dowriche’s choice of dedicating her work to her brother is perhaps significant given the Countess of Pembroke’s recent publications which were validated by her literary relationship with her famous brother. See Margaret P. Hannay, Philip’s Phoenix, op. cit. 66 Sidney Sondergard, Sharpening Her Pen: Strategies of Rhetorical Violence by Early Modern English Women Writers (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, London: Associated University Presses, 2002), p. 67. 67 Ibid., p. 68. Sondergard uses Mieke Bal’s theory of thematic and differential codes to read Dowriche’s strategy. She sees Dowriche employing Bal’s ‘thematic code’ to ‘contextualize her efforts as distinctly feminine—compassionate and maternal: she argues that her text seeks ‘to procure comfort to the afflicted, strength to the weake, courage to the faint hearted, and patience vnto them that are persecuted’ (A4v),’ p. 69. However, the comfort that Dowriche speaks of is not so much maternal in context as it is Protestant. Nonconformists, irrespective of gender, would aim to ‘comfort’ those afflicted by misfortune and persecution (which was political reality as well as allegorical truth) with the promises of redemption offered by the ‘true faith.’ 68 Demers, op. cit., comparing the endings of Dowriche and Locke’s Markes, comments that the way Locke closes ‘The necessitie and benefite of affliction’ contrasts ‘tellingly’ with Dowriche’s closing verse: ‘Unlike Locke’s quietistic resignation, the emphasis in the emblem is on the surprisingly non-denominational Truth. [... It] strikes precisely the appropriate note: high-minded, determined, triumphalist’ p. 137. I find Locke’s ending, read as an organic part of the entire volume and especially in conjuction with the dedicatory epistle neither so quietistic nor as resigned. The difference is not so telling in Dowriche’s 1596 publication either. 69 Megan Matchinske makes a similar point in her chapter on Dowriche, op. cit. 70 I use continuous line numbering following the text printed in Marion Wynne-Davies ed., Women Poets of the Renaissance (New York: Routledge, 1999) but also provide signature numbers for consistency. 71 For a brief outline of the political events recounted in Dowriche see the entry on The French History, Michelle M. Sauer ed., Facts on File Companion to British Poetry before 1600 (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2008), p.196. 72 Although Munerius is glossed as ‘He who loves wealth, rewards’ by Marion Wynne-Davies, op. cit., Tymme’s Munerius is placed as a historical figure, working, like the bat, at night. He was implicated in the affair of the Countesse of Senigana, or Senigven, so that the imprisoned Duke Arscotus might escape. The Duke and his son are also mentioned in Foxe (1570), Book 7. 73 Calvin’s Praelectiones in librum prophetiarum Danielis (1561), changing his early belief that even ungodly kings should be obeyed, had already argued that when kings disobey god they automatically abdicate worldly power and authority. See the abridged English translation of Books 1-6 by A[nthony] G[ilby], Commentaries of that diuine Iohn Caluine, vpon the prophet Daniell, translated into Englishe, especially for the vse of the family of the ryght honorable Earle of Huntingdon, to set forth as in a glasse, how one may profitably read the Scriptures, by consideryng the text, meditatyng the sense therof, and by prayer. [At London: Imprinted by Iohn Daye, ouer Aldersgate, 1570. Cum gratia & priuilegio Regiæ Maiestatis], STC (2nd ed.) 4397. 74 Randall Martin, op. cit., pp. 79-84. 75 Ibid., p. 75. 76 Ibid., p. 84 77 Sampson, op. cit. 78 Ibid., p. 134