PROVING THAT AN OLD ROMANTIC MYTH IS TRUE
A TRIXIE SPECIAL
(It’s best to read Parts One , Two, Three, Four, Five and Six first)
For a summary of ‘The Ring Story’, click: HERE.
Your Cat has demonstrated how ALISON WEIR…..
…..a.k.a….
….’A.W.’…
…great as she is….
……has lifted her dismissive view of ‘The Ring Story’…….
…….word for word…..
….. almost…..
….. from LYTTON STRACHEY’S…..
…..Elizabeth and Essex….
….without examining Strachey’s ‘evidence’ at all….
( See Ring Story: Part 6
Alison Weir – j’accuse!)
This was an easy mistake to make……
BECAUSE THERE WASN’T ANY!
But Your Cat’s……..
…… PAW OF BLAME…….
…… now points at…..
STRACHEY HIMSELF!!!
Brilliant new evidence has been unearthed by our mysterious…..
…..and hugely talented, tender-foot, agent……
…..(with a Triple First in Persian and Arabic from Oxford and Cambridge)….
…..not to mention Harvard and the Bronx….
….. ‘Tom X’…..
While everyone was hard at work on the highly prestigious Grosvenor Chapel Lecture……
…….(including Your Cat, who was honoured with a Guest Spot in Part Two)…..
…..Tom was hurtling down to the London Library on his Harley Davidson…..
…..WAKING UP the older scholars trying to sleep there….
…..and SHAKING UP the entire Academic Establishment.
He is now in a position to…..
…….. REFUTE……
……. Strachey’s…….
………REFUTATION…..
….. of the Ring Story!!!
It isn’t just A.W. who hasn’t read the ‘sentimental novelette’…..
……. The Secret History of the Renowned Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex…
IT WAS STRACHEY HIMSELF!!!
Over to you, Tom…..
….for your first ‘Solo Spot’ for The Code!!!
Toi! Toi! Toi!
Thanks, Trix….
Brothers and Sisters of The Code…….
I would like to introduce the bracing tang of sea air to the ‘Ring Story’….
Step forward……
……WALTER BOURCHIER DEVEREUX…….
……a Captain in Queen Victoria’s Royal Navy…..
…….and a water colourist to boot….
He published a two volume Family History.
Nothing exceptional about that, you might think…..
…. except he was from……
THE ANCIENT HOUSE OF DEVEREUX….
….AND CONSEQUENTLY A DESCENDANT OF ROBERT DEVEREUX, SECOND EARL OF ESSEX!!!
Walter B. Devereux published his…..
……..Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex……
……in 1853……
(It kept him occupied when he was……
……’left high and dry’…..
…… with no more ships for him to command at sea).
DEVEREUX BELIEVES THE RING STORY IS TRUE!!!
…….and in a footnote in the Second Volume, he writes:
The story of the ring is also related in a little book called ‘Secret History of the most Renowned Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex by a Person of Quality’. Printed at Cologne in 1695 and in London without date.
So, Devereux mentions 1695 as the Cologne printing date……
But offers NO DATE for the London edition…..
Strachey……
…..(who cites Devereux’s work in his Bibliography)….
…..takes the LONDON date to be the same as the COLOGNE date…..
SOMETHING DEVEREUX NEVER DID!!!
…..AND TAKES THAT DATE TO BE THE DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION!!!
SOMETHING DEVEREUX NEVER DID EITHER!!!
This is a piece of sloppy plagiarism…..
(No wonder Strachey never got the Cambridge Fellowship he applied for)
If Strachey had been a Genuine Scholar…..
…..one glance at the British Library Catalogue would have shown him that the earliest date……
…….on the DOZEN or so copies of the novel held in the Library…….
…… is 1680…..
So, the great debunker of all things Victorian…
…..Giles Lytton Strachey…..
….has lifted his information wholesale from an Eminent Victorian sailor….
…..but twisted it to his own Freudian-based….
……anti-Romantic…..
…..achingly snobby….
….Bloomsbury Set……
…. Agenda…
That’s it Trix…..
See you in The Chippenham later?
•
You certainly will, Tom!
Mine’s a LARGE plate of cream!
You’ve helped me re-write history!
•
We’ll be hearing MUCH MORE from Tom’s ‘Old Salt Devereux’ in subsequent Posts…….
So, to recap, The Shakespeare Code has now……
…… UTTERLY REFUTED…..
….. the claims of…..
The Earl of Clarendon
See Part: Three.
Leopold von Ranke
See Part: Four.
Lytton Strachey
Alison Weir
See Part: Six.
…….and poor Simon Adams….
-
….(remember him?)….
The only ‘authority’ left to refute is the anonymous writer in the 1876 Quarterly Review Volume…..
….. who…..
……parroting von Ranke…..
……writes:
To those who know how carefully all prisoners were guarded in the Tower when left for execution, it will appear incredible that the Earl ‘suspicious of those about him’ – for so the original story runs – ‘and not caring to trust any one of them with the ring, as looking out of his window one morning’ – where did the narrator suppose he was confined? – ‘saw a boy with whose appearance he was pleased; and engaging him with money and promises’ – his keeper of course taking no notice – ‘directed him to carry a ring, which he took from his finger and threw down to Lady Scroope, a sister of the Countess of Nottingham, with the request that she should present it to her Majesty. ‘ These directions he must have given to a boy wandering about the Tower, whom he had never seen before, and must have furnished him with sufficient instructions how to find Lady Scroope, and what to say to her without attracting the notice of the warders…..
The Tower has always been NOTORIOUS for the laxness of its security…..
It was never designed to be a prison….
….and in Queen Elizabeth’s time boasted royal apartments…..
….a library…..
… and even a menagerie!
(The lions had kept Elizabeth awake when she had been imprisoned there……..
……and access to the Princess was so open a little boy brought flowers to her every day.)
Indeed the FIRST EVER prisoner placed there in 1100…..
….one Bishop Ranulf Flambard….
…..effected an escape by getting all his guards drunk.
In 1597……
……..only four years before the execution of Essex….
…….a Jesuit priest called Father John Gerard….
…….who was tortured, chained and imprisoned in the Salt Tower in April of that year……
…… kept up a correspondence with a number of people, by sending seemingly harmless letters with secret information written with invisible orange juice. One of the men he sent letters to was a fellow Tower prisoner, John Arden, who was detained in the Cradle Tower opposite the Salt Tower. They were able to convince the guard to let them meet in order to celebrate Mass together in the Cradle Tower. In their meetings, Gerard was able to form a plan. On October 5 1597, in collaboration with people outside, Gerard and Arden were able to descend the Cradle Tower on a rope, swing across the moat and catch a boat that was waiting for them….
If a manacled Jesuit was able to execute this high-wire escape from the Tower….
……then the Earl of Essex was certainly able to throw a ring to a boy….
…..as a present, via Lady Scrope, to his Queen….
…..from one of the many windows in the Devereux Tower….
And we know FOR CERTAIN Essex was able to open the windows in his cell…..
Devereux records how:
……On Tuesday night, between eleven and twelve, he [Essex] opened the casement of his window, and spoke to the guards: ‘My good friends, pray for me, and tomorrow I shall leave an example behind me you shall all remember. You shall see in me a strong God in a weak man. I have nothing to give you, for I have nothing left but that which I must pay to the Queen tomorrow, in the morning…
BUT ENOUGH OF THIS DEFENSIVE NEGATIVITY!!!
LET’S BRING ON MORE OF THE HISTORIANS WHO BELIEVE THE RING STORY IS TRUE….
AND, MORE IMPORTANT, BRING ON THE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE!!!
‘No Documents! – No Evidence!’
…..cries von Ranke….
‘I have Documents! I have Evidence’..
….cries Your Cat…
AND SHE WILL REVEAL THEM ALL IN HER NEXT POST!!!
NOW READ PART EIGHT.
‘Bye now…..
The Shakespeare Code 
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