The Pastimes of George Ferrers: Reconstructing the Life and Career of a Tudor Renaissance
Gentleman
The following is the keynote address I delivered at the annual joint meeting of the South-Central
Renaissance Conference and the Elizabeth I Society Iin 2008 . It represents the first work from my
current monograph in progress, Lord of Misrule: The Life and Times of George Ferrers, Tudor
Renaissance Gentleman..
So who was George Ferrers? And, whoever he was, what does he have to do with the
fabulous Virgin Queen? Actually, I’ll bet some of you English literary scholars or
constitutional and court historians might know who George Ferrers was; I have just begun to
explore his life and career, and I am here today to share with you the results of my preliminary
research. I suspect he might be the quintessential English Renaissance gentleman. I do not
yet know whether Queen Elizabeth I of England and gentleman George ever met in person;
although there are a number of occasions when it certainly was within the realm of probability
that they would have crossed paths. I do know that they did speak to one another on one
rather unique occasion. Well, sort of.
Let me take you back to a beautiful, sunny, summer day in the year 1575, in the seventeenth
year of her reign, as our favorite queen, Elizabeth, made her way to a party so fabulous it
lasted nineteen days. While we know that Elizabeth’s wealthiest subjects always picked up
the tabs for her summer progresses, a policy that accorded nicely with the Queen’s own fiscal
priorities, nevertheless, all that traveling and partying had to have been wearying at times; the
packing, the bumpy roads, and the seemingly endless addresses and salutes from towns and
villages along the royal path, when she always projected an engagingly regal personality that
consistently won for her the hearts of her subjects. We could certainly forgive her if she had
been in a less than sanguine mood that summer day; and we all know that Elizabeth could be
a bit mercurial in her temperament; you all are probably familiar with this contemporary
quote: “when she smiled it was pure sunshine that everyone did choose to bask in if they
could; but anon came a storm from a sudden gathering of clouds and the thunder fell in
wondrous manner on all alike.” But sunshine apparently reigned in her world that day, and
she undoubtedly had her game face on as she approached Kenilworth Castle for that festive
occasion. This was, however, no humdrum summer progress party being thrown by any
ordinary party-giver- but by royal favorite Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. By 1575, the
inevitable march of time had begun to sap Leicester’s undoubted physical charms, as he
geared up for his most ambitious campaign to march the queen to the altar, or, at the very least,
to sell her on an ambitious Protestant foreign policy. Undoubtedly, Elizabeth was fully aware
of the political implications pregnant in Kenilworth. Nevertheless, the “Tracey and Hepburn”
of the sixteenth century continued to maintain that affection for each other that had survived a
number of rough patches, and the festivities at Kenilworth broadcasted to the political nation
the unique place he held in her heart.
George Ferrers had some kind of relationship with Leicester, I have not uncovered the
nature of this just yet, but as Elizabeth entered Kenilworth, on July 9, 1575, she was met by a
big strong buff Hercules, who, “dazzled by the rare beauty and princely countenance of her
majesty,” immediately surrendered custody of the castle into her charge. As Elizabeth then
walked through the gate into the base court, a lady and two attendants began to careen across a
pool as if walking on water, conveyed either by a raft or a moveable island. It was the lady of
the island, king Arthur’s lady of the lake, and the words of her recitation had been written by
none other than George Ferrers. The lady’s address was both poetry and history, as it
described how she had persevered through Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, and Plantagenets,
concluding with the statement, “the lake, the lodge, the lord, are yours to command.” The
entire oration smacked with obscure historical double- entendres, with oblique references to
the Yorkist roots of the Tudor dynasty, as it suggested that Elizabeth did not possess power in
the castle until the lady of the island handed it over. Was all this Leicester’s motivation?
We all know Elizabeth had a quick wit. Thankfully, for all concerned, without any hint of
possible storm clouds, Elizabeth immediately responded to the lady’s oration, remarking, “we
had thought indeed the lake had been ours, and do you call it yours now? Well, we will
herein common more with you hereafter.” As we shall see, the exchange could very well be a
metaphor for Elizabeth’s attitude towards all the circumstances that conceivably brought
George Ferrers to her attention. However, I do not yet know whether Elizabeth and the lady,
or George, ever had that follow up interview, or if she was aware of the identity of the author
of the oration.
What I can say with much more certainty is that Elizabeth knew who George Ferrers was, as
his multi-faceted career brought him periodically into the limelight over the course of the
reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth. Ferrers, at various stages of his life,
was a poet, a soldier, a historian, a lawyer, a courtier, and a sixteenth century version of Johnny
Carson all rolled into one. I suspect he possessed quite a winning personality too, when he
chose to employ it; his enjoyment of favor and patronage from Henry VIII, Edward VI, and
Mary I, and his lack of prosecution or imprisonment under Elizabeth I, would be akin to a
figure in contemporary American society enjoying the trust and affection of Jimmy Carter,
Ronald Reagan, Bushes one and two, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Much like recent American
history, politics and religion, and radical demographic and economic instabilities had a
polarizing effect on sixteenth century Tudor society. Amazingly, Ferrers appears to have
successfully negotiated his way through such an historical land mine, and died comfortably in
his bed.
So why isn’t he famous? Perhaps because the various forms of primary and secondary
sources describing his life are so compartmentalized in a number of specific contexts,
encompassing legal and parliamentary history, literary criticism, foreign affairs, and those brief
mentions describing the life of a minor courtier and Hertfordshire landowner, no historian
before me has ever attempted to subject his life and career to any historical analysis. The most
information found in one place on George Ferrers is successive biographies in various
volumes of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. While these essays do a fine job of
creating a timeline- there is no analysis, no speculation concerning the possible motivations
behind the twists and turns of George’s career. Trying to uncover the historical motivations
behind obscure historical figures, as my friend and colleague Barbara Harris recently warned
me, can be a slippery slope to climb, but I remained determined to walk the plank, if
necessary, to uncover the possible motivations behind the life of George Ferrers.
I first encountered George at the Folger Shakespeare library, as he routinely crashed the
afternoon teatime! Actually, his name cropped up periodically while I performed research on
the reign of Edward VI, and I did bend more than a few people’s ears discussing him at
teatime. In the last week of my fellowship, as it dawned on me that I had accumulated more
than enough material to finish off Edward VI, whose death, as Carole Levin will tell you, was a
sad but necessary prerequisite for the career of our favorite queen, I suddenly found myself
frantically in the midst of piecing together as much of the George Ferrers story as I could haul
away from the Folger Library.
We will begin with his name and his family. The name itself is a bit tricky; there existed a
number of noble and gentry families in sixteenth century England associated with the name of
Ferrers or ennobled as Lords Ferrers. George’s family, however, were solid gentry stock who
had lived in or near St. Albans, Hertfordshire, for many generations. George’s first discernible
career was as an undergraduate at Cambridge, where he received a bachelor’s degree in Canon
Law while still in his early twenties, during those momentous years in which the “kings’ great
matter” transformed into the English Reformation, and young lawyers clamored to fill the
administrative ranks of the “Tudor Revolution in Government.” The noted antiquarian John
Leyland considered George a particularly skillful orator and litigator. But George was also a
scholar; in 1533 bearing the primary responsibility for editing and translating The Great Boke
of Statutes, and the next year, the first published English translation of Magna Carta. In the
end of that same year, he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn to practice law. At this point, there are
just a few clues to suggest to me what his character might have been like. He was an obvious
go-getter, but go-getters often need a team to make sure that they go and they get, and
sometimes this can get in the way of the orderly flow of business- the management at Lincoln’s
Inn censured George for continually having his lackeys around the common buildings, which
was apparently causing a commotion. Here I have images of Richard Lester’s slapstick version
of The Three Musketeers, the one with Michael York and Raquel Welch. Could it be that
George was not only high maintenance but also required continual entertainment?
Despite his legal prowess and obvious scholarly talents, George apparently craved the glitz
and the glitter of the life of the courtier, and sought a place at the epicenter of the Henrician
royal court, in the King’s privy chamber, the sixteenth century version of the West Wing.
George quickly leap-frogged his way through the hierarchy of the Tudor food chain as he
came to the attention of Thomas Cromwell, who always had his eye out for good talent.
Cromwell found a place for George in his own household the same year that George began to
build up his landholdings in Hertfordshire in the area of Caddington, obtaining a grant for the
manor of Flamsteed in 1535. But prior to Cromwell’s fall in 1540, Gentleman George had
caught the eye of Henry VIII, who apparently liked what he saw and heard from the man
referred to as “Young Ferres.” George entered Henry’s privy chamber in 1538, and was a
participant in the festivities surrounding the arrival in England of Henry’s fourth wife Anne of
Cleves.
Henry VIII really liked George Ferrers. Henry also liked his women, obviously, but, like
many aging athletes who were also kings, he was also a big fan of good old fashioned locker
room style male bonding. Henry might have gotten older and larger over the course of the
1530s and into the last decade of his life, but most of the men who stalked his privy chamber as
pages, like George, remained young, athletic, entertaining, and always ready to laugh heartily
at the king’s jokes, as ideally, we all expect our students to do when presented with our own
matchless wits. Look at Henry’s numero uno boon companion, Charles Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk, a man who obviously had that special something that caused even women of royal
rank to go weak in the knees. But Brandon was no Karl Rove- Henry had Wolsey, Gardiner,
and Cromwell for that. George Ferrers was no Karl Rove either, nor was he the legend
Brandon was in the tournament lists, but it is likely that George captivated Henry, not only by
his intellectual and legal gifts, but also by his ability to listen to a war story enraptured, and
perhaps spin a good one himself. We shall take the 100 marks left to George in Henry’s will as
the measure of the king’s high esteem.
Fortunately, favor translates into patronage. George had been friends with another
gentleman of the privy chamber, one Humphrey Bourchier, whose wife Elizabeth came from a
long line of gentry in the Caddington area of Hertfordshire, specifically in the region of what
used to be Markyate priory, which had been dissolved during the late 1530s along with all the
rest of the former monasteries and religious lands in England, part and parcel of one of the
greatest transfers of real estate in English history, that ultimately bolstered an English gentry
class with the wealth and power to drive the seventeenth century Stuart monarchs crazy.
Anyway, Humphrey Bourchier had a lease on Markyate, but was having a hard time coming
up with the cash for outright purchase when he died in 1540. In December of 1541, at the age
of 31, George’s bachelorhood ended when he married Bourchier’s widow Elizabeth, the first of
his three wives. If George’s mama had told him to “shop around,” he did a good job; waiting
for the right deal to come along; the marriage was just one important strategic move towards
George’s ultimate goal, which was full possession of Markyate, which Edward VI granted him
by letters patent in July 1548.
But we are getting ahead of our story. Nearly five years prior to Henry VIII’s death in
January 1547, George was the catalyst for a truly groundbreaking moment in English
constitutional history. In 1542, George was elected MP for Plymouth, through an old family
connection on his mother’s side, accepting a satin doublet in lieu of wages- George
undoubtedly recognized the wisdom behind dressing for success while sitting in the
Commons. Prior to the session, George had apparently offered surety for a loan of 200 marks
that one White of Salisbury had obtained from a lender named Weldon. White was obviously
experiencing a cash-flow problem, and had welched on the loan, so, as George was walking
down the streets of London town, minding his own business, he was apprehended and taken
to the Compter, a jail on Bread Street. George, however, was no intellectual dilettante; he was
a decidedly martial man when circumstances required, and he did not submit to his arrest
without a fight. When the House of Commons was informed that an MP had been arrested for
debt, they immediately sent the sergeant with his mace down the the Compter to demand
George’s release, which turned into a scuffle as two London sheriffs turned up, in which the
sergeant was constrained to use the mace as a weapon, breaking off the crown in the process.
What emerged from this episode, besides black eyes and bruised limbs for all participants,
including George, was the recognition of immunity from arrest for sitting members of
parliament. Henry VIII, in fact, took this episode very seriously and personally. The king in
fact, surrounded by his judges, and a select group of notables from both houses, felt
compelled by the incident to make his most famous statement on Tudor constitutional theory:
“we be informed by our judges that we at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the
time of parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are co-joined and knit together as
one body politic.” This whole episode seems to give George a sort of “Forrest Gump- like”
quality, and it is sometimes considered his most famous performance- I know this, because the
Wikipedia article on George Ferrers only mentions this incident, and nothing else about his
life, which would be like Arnold Schwarzenegger only being remembered for being a
championship body lifter, and not for his other great claim to fame, which is being married to
Maria Shriver..
When George was not in the capital keeping his king entertained, or creating the
circumstances for grand pronouncements on constitutional theory, he was back home on his
now considerable estates in Hertfordshire, engaging in what had became a very popular
pastime for the gentry class, the enclosure of common lands. George was, in fact, an
enthusiastic enclosurer (this word now exists- I added to the Wikipedia dictionary), despite the
close relationship he developed with that ultimate pariah of the enclosing classes, Edward
Seymour, duke of Somerset and Lord Protector during the first phase of Edward VI’s minority
reign. Economic historians tell us that enclosing was a necessary economic prerequisite to the
development of commercialized agriculture and animal husbandry geared to a market
economy in early modern England, the sixteenth century equivalent to the contemporary
practice of corporations gutting their medical plans and pensions funds; and sticking it to their
employees so they can remain viable and competitive. To the owners of the means of
production, then as now, these were necessary tonics to keep pace with economic growth and
inflation, but they just aren’t nice, and seemed as grossly unfair to sixteenth century peasants
as they do to twenty-first century workers today. Apparently, George’s tenants took him to
court in 1546 to reopen lands enclosed in flagrant violation of the judgment of the Caddington
manor court, which, by 1569, recognized those and many other enclosures as legitimate done
deals.
As popular as George became with members of the Tudor ruling classes, the people that
George Ferrers chose to share his winning personality with seems to have been decided along
class lines. Columnist Dave Barry, that astute observer of modern class relations, once wrote
that, “if you go out to dinner, and you are rude to the waiter, you are not a nice person.”
George may have charmed the pants off of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and the dukes of Somerset
and Northumberland, even Mary Tudor was not immune, but court records tell us that George
obviously saw no purpose in being a nice guy to the tenants who worked and lived upon his
estates, and suffered under his exacting style of estate management.
By this time, George correctly sniffed out the future nexus of power, or else he had a good
astrologer, as Edward VI’s reign inevitably approached. Indeed, George was able to ingratiate
himself with both of the Seymour brothers, Edward and Thomas, lord Sudeley, uncles to the
young king, no mean balancing act concerning the animosity that was soon to arise between
these ambitious siblings eager to dominate those political free for alls known as royal
minorities. Edward VI later consented to the executions of both his uncles, while he himself
fell prey to George’s considerable charms just like his father.
King Edward VI of England, although only a child and youth during his reign, was a
providential prodigy, intellectually, religiously, but he also had a keen admiration for
successful martial exploits conducted in the heat of battle, as the young king paid careful
attention to the Scottish policy of his uncle, Protector Somerset, the “Hammer of the Scots.” It
is not surprising, then, that such a well-rounded figure like George would appeal to the king;
George was no stranger to the battlefield, and had participated in Henry VIII’s final
continental military escapade in 1544, the one that netted him the French city of Bolougne.
George was in Somerset’s train during the 1547 Scottish campaign, as part of the last big surge
of the “rough wooing” designed to bring Scotland firmly into the English orbit, culminating
with the Battle of Pinkie, which allowed Somerset to claim that the surge had been worth it,
and that they should stay the course in Scotland, or else the French terrorists would be further
emboldened. A gentleman named William Patten wrote a first hand account of this campaign,
referring to George as “a gentleman of my lord Protector’s and one of the commissioners of
carriages in this army.” George went about his military tasks with decided relish and
enthusiasm. On one occasion, when he suspected some Scots were hiding in a cave, Somerset,
after experiencing a particularly wild and crazy dream, granted George leave to do whatever
was necessary. After the renegade Scots refused to come out of the cave and surrender, Patten
described how George attempted to smoke them out by plugging the cave’s vents with
burning straw, but the fire soon became “so great a force and so long a while, that we could not
but think they within, must needs get them out or smother. And forasmuch, as we found not
that they did the one: we thought it for certain , they were sure of the other.” Could it be that
George had a sadistic streak? Or was it simply a tragic accident? Or maybe the Scots got away?
It was in the next year, in 1548, that George began to reap some serious benefits from his
close relationship with the young king and his Seymour kinsmen. This was, of course, before
Protector Somerset and his brother, the Lord Admiral, had fallen out with each other. The
Protector undoubtedly had a share in George’s land grants, while the Admiral apparently
helped get George a seat in the Commons from Cirencester in Edward’s first parliament. The
king himself presented George with a copy of an account of the 1547 Scottish campaign written
by one Le Sieur Berteville. By this time, George had married again, this time to Jane, daughter
of John Southecote of St. Albans. Despite his presence at the epicenter of royal government,
George firmly remained a Hertfordshire boy who always saw fit to marry a local girl. And his
appointment as justice of the peace for Hertfordshire, a post he held until Mary’s reign, may
very well have been the summit of George’s political aspirations.
George did have literary aspirations, though. By the end of 1549, however, the Seymour
connection could have been a serious liability, as the reckless admiral had been beheaded the
previous March, while Somerset was toppled from power in October by a coup led by John
Dudley, earl of Warwick, whom Edward later created duke of Northumberland. As George
made the leap from Cromwell to Henry VIII, he negotiated a similar transition from Somerset
to Northumberland, who dominated the minority government for the remainder of the reign.
This time, however, it was a rockier road. Now, I want to remind you that I have just begun
this project, this is just a preliminary report, and I will resume work once again as soon as I
finish grading finals. So, I have not yet followed up on all of my leads; one is from my friend
and colleague Scott Lucas at the Citadel, he is a literary scholar whose forthcoming book
concerns the writing of the series of volumes known as The Mirror For Magistrates, George
wrote a number of essays for this, and Scott gave me a citation for a contemporary letter
describing how in April 1550 George had been apprehended and put under house arrest in
Northumberland’s house in Greenwich on suspicion of writing inflammatory pamphlets in
support of Somerset. However, a year and a half later, George found himself appointed to
reign as ‘lord of misrule’ over Edward’s Christmas court of 1551/1552, while Edward’s uncle,
the newly convicted felon Somerset, waited in the tower under a death sentence.
The historian Richard Grafton, who was also printer for Edward VI, later wrote during
Elizabeth’s reign that the Christmas festivities constituted a plot hatched by Northumberland
and George designed to divert a heavy hearted king Edward from Somerset’s impeding
execution. Others, including myself, have argued otherwise. It was in the process of
explaining Edward’s agency as a minority king that George Ferrers first came to my attention.
As it turns out, Scott Lucas came to the same conclusion that I did, in a completely different
way, that it was Edward’s idea to appoint George as lord of misrule, that he was not sitting
around moping for Somerset, and that Northumberland, the king of political expediency, not
only expedited the king’s wishes, but outwardly reconciled himself to George, whom he
rewarded with 50£ from his own hands following the conclusion of the Christmas festivities of
1551/52. George, however, never made it into Edward’s privy chamber, despite the evidence
that clearly pointed to the affection Edward felt for George, nor did he gain any political office
under Northumberland. Was Northumberland only outwardly reconciled? Or was George
simply not ambitious for office? These are questions I will answer for you all at a later date.
George’s performance as lord of misrule for Edward’s final two Christmas courts was his
finest performance, and this will soon be reflected in George’s Wikipedia article. According to
Grafton, Ferrers was “a gentleman both wise and learned” while John Stow later remarked that
“the king had great delight in his pastimes”; in other words, like Mary Poppins, George
provided highly entertaining interludes that were the sugar that helped the medicine of his
humanist historical musings to go down. George was assisted in writing the pastimes by a
coterie of other learned men, William Baldwin, and the Chaloner brothers Thomas and
Francis, and clearly enjoyed the creative processes behind devising Christmas entertainments,
which complemented the scholarly tone of Edward’s royal court, but George was above all a
performer. Among the papers in the Losely manuscripts are numerous letters from George to
the hapless Thomas Cawarden, master of the revels, ordering costumes and complaining about
their quality and the time it took to produce them- George Ferrers was an impatient man- and
Northumberland and the council shared his impatience. Stow wrote vividly nearly thirty years
later of George’s procession by water, at the conclusion of the Christmas festivities, from
Greenwich to a procession through the city in which he was the center of attention, receiving
adulation from all quarters of London- this may very well have been the most memorable
event of George Ferrers life, as he returned to Greenwich, loaded down with gold and silver,
and wine, and a reputation that celebrated a scholar who was also a quintessential gentleman.
For his second Christmas as “lord of misrule,” George requested costumes for a divine, a
philosopher, an astronomer, a poet, a physician, an apothecary, and various clowns, jugglers,
and friars- all this sounds like vaudeville, but the reviews for the second Christmas were
positive as they had been for the first.
George’s reputation served him well during Mary’s reign, which also inaugurated bizarre
new elements to the George Ferrers story. According to the online John Foxe project,
references in later Elizabethan editions of Actes and Monuments mention a Ferys that was
imprisoned in the Tower in Aug. 1553, perhaps in support of the Jane Grey plot, and a Ferys
who was present at Mary’s coronation in October- if both references were indeed our George,
he must have talked, or charmed, his way once more out of a tough spot. But the identification
is not conclusive; the next occasion when an individual who was indisputably our George
Ferrers was during the Wyatt Revolt which erupted at the end of January 1554. In the account
written by Edward Underhill, who was on his way to join Lord William Howard, who was in
charge of the watch at London Bridge, after George joined Underhill, they came upon Ludgate,
which was locked, of the three men in the party, George was the only celebrity, identifying
himself to the custodian as “the lorde off misrule of kynge Edwarde.” While Underhill
identified George as a Protestant, he nevertheless fought bravely for Mary, whose government
later rewarded him with £100. George sat as MP for Brackley in Mary’s third parliament in
1554, and her fourth in 1555, but 1555 was a strange year for George. In January, he failed to
appear for the parliamentary session, and was informed against in King’s Bench, but no
further action was taken. But George’s most incomprehensible behavior in Mary’s reign was
his accusation in May 1555 that certain individuals “did calculate the king’s and queen’s
(Philip and Mary) and my lady Elizabeth’s nativity; whereof one (John) Dee, and Cary, and
Butler, and one other of my lady Elizabeth’s are accused. And that they should have a familiar
spirit; which is more the suspected, for that Ferys, one of the accusers, had, immediately upon
the accusation, both his children striken, the one with present death, the other with
blindness.” After the accused were arrested and taken to Hampton court, however, the Privy
Council noted that as George had been sent out to apprehend one more conspirator, named
Stanley, George then disappeared himself, so that Edwarde Chamberlain was ordered, if
George did not reappear, to look for him in the “counties of Oxon, Stafford, Warwick and
Wigorn.” It is at this point that George drops from the historical record for the remainder of
Mary’s reign. What happened to George in that summer of 1555 is something I am eager to
explain on another occasion.
Suffice it to say, considering the way in which George’s accusation against Dee, a grudge he
bore apparently to the end of his life, reflected upon Elizabeth at a critical moment in her life
as an imperiled heir to the throne, as Elizabeth was finishing a year long enjoyment of the
hospitality of Sir Henry Bedingfield in Woodstock, (perhaps the worst period of her life, but
one of my students nonetheless once remarked that it was very cool that Elizabeth went to
Woodstock) that George’s days as a court darling were over. George does not appear to have
enjoyed any discernible favor from Elizabeth, surprise! But he suffered no retaliation either-
and in fact he enjoyed the office of escheator for various midland counties in the 1560s.
However, George’s principle occupation during Elizabeth’s reign was composing works of
scholarship, writing poetry, most of it now lost, and contributing to various editions of the
volume known as The Mirror for Magistrates. This may very well be the most substantial of
George’s accomplishments, but my time is running out, and there are a few more things I wish
to share with you all, so I will postpone my discussion of George’s contributions to poetry and
history for another occasion. That way, I can share with you one more inexplicable episode.
In 1571, George was elected to parliament one more time, as MP for St. Albans, a clear sign
that George’s local standing in Hertfordshire had not been too adversely affected by Elizabeth’
s accession, or that Elizabeth’s political machine was not powerful enough to decide such local
contests. Now this episode that I am about to tell you about requires much more research, but
apparently, George was drawn into the web of John Leslie, bishop of Ross, the Scottish
ambassador, who, in a deposition stated that George had composed a work in Latin supporting
the claim of Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne. This should have been political
dynamite in the year of Ridolfi, but it appears, though, that no harm came to George for his
actions, which begs the question- did the Privy Council consider him a harmless crank? Or,
did he have a well placed patron at the center of power in a position to cushion the fall?
Was it Leicester? I still have not figured out the nature of George’s connection to Leicester.
However, in 1569, George married for a third time, to Elizabeth Preston, a widow of St. Albans,
with whom he had at least three sons and two daughters, even though he was already in his
late fifties. In 1573, George filed a suit in Star Chamber against the marriage of Elizabeth
Preston’s daughter to one Thomas Seale, a servant of the earl of Leicester. While Ferrers and
his wife claimed they had not consented to the marriage, the defendants claimed the marriage
had been witnessed by George’s daughters, and was legally binding. My delicate sense of
intuition tell me that these improbable occasions than linked George however tangentially to
Leicester were responsible for the connection that allowed George’s lofty poetry to be the
words the lady of the lake used to regale Queen Elizabeth as she entered Kenilworth castle on
the summer day that began this discussion, and to prevent him from doing time for his
indiscretions with Bishop Leslie.
Which brings my story full circle. Well, almost. Another edition of the Mirror for
Magistrates appeared in 1578, this time with an essay on the fifteenth century Humphrey, duke
of Gloucester and his notorious wife Eleanor Cobham, was this an allusion to John Dee, a
grudge George apparently carried with him to the grave? The following January he was dead,
in his bed, presumably satisfied with a career that spanned the many contexts of the English
Renaissance, who monuments and remnants have remained scattershot until now.