Death by Disputation (A Francis Bacon Mystery Book 2) (35 page)

Historical Notes

The astute reader will have noticed that I used the somewhat anachronistic term “nonconformist” to refer to my radical Protestants. This word was not generally used for Protestant Dissenters until well into the seventeenth century. I chose it because rebellious sixteenth-century Protestants didn't have a single handy name, like Catholics. They called themselves the “godly folk.” Others called them “Puritans” for their repeated assertions of purity of worship, or “precisians” for their vaunted preciseness in interpreting the Bible. Neither term was meant in a friendly way. “Precisian” irritates my mind’s ear, so I eschewed it. “Puritan” works, but it tends to conjure images of Thanksgiving and pumpkins and all that good stuff.

So I relied upon “nonconformist,” which captures the vital essence of the problem. The irksome extremists refused to participate in the normal round of religious affairs, creating fracture lines through every town and hamlet, disrupting the peace of the realm. In those days, that was a serious crime. I ended up choosing lexical precision over historical purity and can only hope it didn’t grate too harshly on anyone’s ear.

Many real persons found their way into this book. I include the regular cast for completeness.

• Francis Bacon.
  
• William Cecil, Lord Burghley and the queen's Lord Treasurer.
  
• Lady Anne Bacon, Francis's mother.
  
• Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe, poet and playwright.
  
• Thomas Nashe, poet, playwright, satirist, and pamphleteer. He and Kit really were friends, going back to their Cambridge days. Some scholars think they co-wrote Marlowe's first known play,
  Dido, Queen of Carthage
  , probably while at university.
  
• Sir Horatio Palavicino, merchant and banker. I love this guy and really wanted him to have a bigger role, but there just wasn't room for him. Another book!
  
• William Perkins, Puritan clergyman. Both his preaching and his books, of which he wrote many, were enormously popular in his time. He was one of the radicals, although he managed to conform outwardly and thus escape direct conflict with the authorities. My notes say he was extremely anti-intellectual, believing that intellectual curiosity led to witchcraft. We can imagine what Francis Bacon thought of him.
  
• Dr. Eggerley wasn't a real person, but he was based on Roger Norgate, who was headmaster of Corpus Christi College from 1573-1587. Norgate embezzled college funds, spending the money on luxuries and houses. He also had a wife, famous for nagging. Their fights could be heard throughout the college.
  
• John Barrow was based two real people, John Greenwood and Henry Barrow, both radical Separatists who got their necks stretched by the government in the early 1590s. Greenwood was at Corpus Christi while Marlowe was there. Kit bought him a few treats at the buttery — generous for a scholarship boy. Greenwood must have been a little older, though. He commenced B.A. in 1581.
  
• Mark Graceborough gets a walk-on mention towards the end. He was a student at Corpus Christi when Marlowe was there. No special distinction. I just like his name.
  
• The title Earl of Orford was first created in 1697. It went extinct and was re-created twice thereafter. I don’t think there’s a present Earl of Orford. If there is, my humblest apologies for appropriating the title. I chose it because I like the word and because there’s an Orford Castle, built by Henry II, on the beautiful coast of Suffolk, which I would love to go and explore someday.
  

I only changed one tiny bit of history, moving Sir Horatio Palavicino into Babraham Hall in 1587 instead of 1588. I spent quality time figuring out Christopher Marlowe's known schedule for the first half of 1587 to make sure he could be where I put him, when I put him there. No one knows where he was, but he didn’t consume food in his college for seven or eight weeks between January and May. Most people think he was off intelligencing somewhere for someone.

Most of the places in this book are real too; in fact, the only place I made up is the Cap and Bells. Of course Cambridge is real, and the university, and all the colleges. Gray’s Inn is real and full of lawyers to this day, although they don’t live there. Burghley (Burleigh, Burley) House was real too, on the north side of the Strand just south of Covent Garden, where the Strand Palace Hotel now stands.

I mention several villages on the outskirts of Cambridge, all of which are real: Trumpington, Grantchester, Dry Drayton, Sawston. The latter two had Puritan preachers in their churches in the sixteenth century. Cambridgeshire really was a hotbed of religious agitation, spread by the argumentative precisians at the university.

I picked Babraham as the home of the Wingfields mainly because it was about five miles from the university so my characters could easily walk back and forth. Babraham Hall is no longer inhabited by gentlepersons who might object to my revising their history; it has become the Babraham Institute, a research center for molecular biology. Francis Bacon would love the whole idea of a research institute and be enchanted by molecules. I have no reason to believe the village church, St. Peter’s, was ever a Puritan stronghold, but the vicar in 1556, John Hullier, was hanged by Queen Mary for refusing to renounce the Protestant faith.

If you're interested in reading more about these people and places, come visit my blog at
www.annacastle.com/blog
. I review history books and write posts about the fascinating things I learn that can't be put in the books, where Story is King. If you have questions or complaints, please feel free to let me know at
[email protected]
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Acknowledgements

As always, I must thank my critique group, the Capitol Crime Writers, whose comments always make my books better and whose conversation has made me a better writer: Russell Ashworth, Jerry Cavin, Will Chandler, and K.P. Gresham. This book was further improved by the sharp eyes and excellent taste of my editor, Jennifer Quinlan of Historical Editorial.

I must also thank Professor Victor Morgan for writing the invaluable
History of the University of Cambridge
, Volume 2: 1546-1750 (series edited by Christopher Brooke, published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press.) His chapters about the Elizabethan period, while chiefly concerned with a clear and beautifully-written exposition of structure and politics, are also liberally sprinkled with lively anecdotes of the sort that set a novelist's instincts buzzing. I read those chapters several times and may read them again for pure pleasure.

About the Author

Anna Castle holds an eclectic set of degrees: BA in the Classics, MS in Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics. She has had a correspondingly eclectic series of careers: waitressing, software engineering, grammar-writing, a short stint as an associate professor, and managing a digital archive. Historical fiction combines her lifelong love of stories and learning. She physically resides in Austin, Texas, but mentally counts herself a queen of infinite space.

Where to find me:

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Books by Anna Castle

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The Lost Hat, Texas Series

Book 1,
Black & White & Dead All Over

What happens when the Internet service provider in a small town spies on his clients' cyber-lives and blackmails them for gifts and services?

Murder; that's what happens.

Penelope Trigg moves to Lost Hat, Texas to open a photography studio and find herself as an artist. Things are going great. She's got a few clients, some friends, even a hot new high-tech boyfriend. But when Penny submits some nude figure studies of him to a contest, she gets hit with a blackmail letter in her inbox. "Do what I want or your lover's nudie pix get splattered across the Internet." The timing couldn't be worse, so Penny is forced to submit to the blackmailer’s demands. Then people start dying and all the clues point to her. She has to rattle every skeleton in every closet in Lost Hat to keep herself out of jail and find the real killer.

Book 2,
Flash Memory

Nature photographer Penelope Trigg has landed the job of her dreams: documenting the transformation of over-grazed rangeland into an eco-dude ranch and spa, owned by her boyfriend Tyler Hawkins. Then a body is found on the ranch and Ty is arrested. The victim was an aggressive real estate developer with his greedy eyes on Ty’s land and Ty’s sister Diana, who is almost engaged to the senior deputy sheriff. Clues put her at the center of the puzzle.

Determined to prove Ty’s innocence, Penny stirs up Diana’s old flames, trying to shed enough light to develop an alternative suspect. She mainly learns how to lose friends and annoy people, until she realizes someone has been manipulating the evidence. But is Ty the framer or the framee? Penny uses her eye for detail and her camera's memory to put the picture together and reveal the killer.

Francis Bacon is charged with investigating the murder of a fellow barrister at Gray's Inn. He recruits his unwanted protégé Thomas Clarady to do the tiresome legwork. The son of a privateer, Clarady will do anything to climb the Elizabethan social ladder. Bacon's powerful uncle Lord Burghley suspects Catholic conspirators of the crime, but other motives quickly emerge. Rival barristers contend for the murdered man's legal honors and wealthy clients. Highly-placed courtiers are implicated as the investigation reaches from Whitehall to the London streets. Bacon does the thinking; Clarady does the fencing. Everyone has something up his pinked and padded sleeve. Even the brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss — and in danger — until he sees through the disguises of the season of Misrule.

Thomas Clarady is recruited to spy on the increasingly rebellious Puritans at Cambridge University. Francis Bacon is his spymaster; his tutor in both tradecraft and religious politics. Their commission gets off to a deadly start when Tom finds his chief informant hanging from the roof beams. Now he must catch a murderer as well as a seditioner. His first suspect is volatile poet Christopher Marlowe, who keeps turning up in the wrong places.

Dogged by unreliable assistants, chased by three lusty women, and harangued daily by the exacting Bacon, Tom risks his very soul to catch the villains and win his reward.

In the summer of 1588, Europe waits with bated breath for King Philip of Spain to launch his mighty armada against England. Everyone except Lady Alice Trumpington, whose father wants her wed to the highest bidder. She doesn't want to be a wife, she wants to be widow; a rich one, and the sooner, the better. So she marries an elderly viscount, gives him a sleeping draught, and spends her wedding night with Thomas Clarady, her best friend and Francis Bacon's assistant. The next morning, they find the viscount murdered in his bed and they're both locked into the Tower.

Lady Alice appeals to the Andromache Society, the widows’ guild led by Francis Bacon's formidable aunt, Lady Russell. They charge Bacon with getting the new widow out of prison and identifying the real murderer. He soon learns the viscount wasn’t an isolated case. Someone is murdering Catholics in London and taking advantage of armada fever to mask the crimes. The killer seems to have privy information — from someone close to the Privy Council?

The investigation takes Francis from the mansions along the Strand to the rack room under the Tower. Pulled and pecked by a coven of demanding widows, Francis struggles to maintain his reason and his courage to see through the fog of war and catch the killer.