The Oak Island Mystery (17 page)
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Authors: Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe
Only one rational explanation for his weird behaviour seems to present itself. The masked prisoner was so well-known (as Fouquet was) that his face must not be seen in case influential friends attempted to free him. If he held a secret (one that Poussin had given him?) which made him potentially so dangerous that he was a threat to the throne itself, he must never be allowed to escape, nor to communicate with his powerful family, friends, and allies outside.
So why not simply kill so dangerous a rival? Louis XIV had few moral inhibitions. Removing a threat by liquidating an opponent would not have troubled the royal conscience unduly. The dangerous masked prisoner would have been kept alive only because the king himself wanted the captive's priceless secret. Fouquet â if it was Fouquet â was also a wily politician, who understood the vagaries and vicissitudes of power only too well. Life was sweet â even as a masked prisoner. Fouquet would not part with Poussin's Arcadian secret (assuming that he'd got it) because he knew that the moment he did he would be murdered on Louis's order. It was a classical Mexican stand-off, with neither party willing to lower his metaphorical gun first because his antagonist would certainly shoot if he did!
Fouquet's place as finance minister was taken by the sinister, scheming Colbert, another of Louis's instruments, who almost immediately sent an expedition to the Rennes-le-Château area to re-excavate and explore the original Tomb of Arques. This must have been an ancient structure once occupying the site of the relatively modern one which the authors measured and photographed in 1975. That one was built â or modified above ground level â by an American named Lawrence at the end of the nineteenth century, or during the first decade of the twentieth. It was his design that precisely emulated Poussin's final version of the legendary Arcadian Tomb. Even more curiously, Poussin's original canvas was taken to Louis's royal apartments at Versailles, before it found its way to the Louvre many years afterwards.
Bérenger Saunière was alleged to have translated and decoded some mysterious parchments which were said to have been found in the Visigothic altar pillar of the badly neglected, ancient hilltop church of St. Mary Magdalene, which Saunière had taken over in 1885, when he was thirty-three years old. The coded message contained references to Poussin as well as to the Arcadian Treasure of Sion and the burial place of the murdered Merovingian King Dagobert II.
“Shepherdess no temptation to which Poussin and Teniers hold the key ⦔ began the strange message. The shepherdess is the dominant figure in the Poussin composition. Art experts have actually analyzed the picture to show that her head is the centre of a pentagon which governs the whole design of the painting and extends outside the frame. X-rays also showed that one shepherd's staff in the foreground had been painted before the background, and the length of the staff played a critical part in the geometry of the painting.
As David Wood has pointed out with commendable care and precision in “Genisis” and “Geneset” [
sic
],
[3]
geometry is one of the major clues to the Rennes mystery, and Henry Lincoln has expounded his similar significant discoveries in
The Holy Place
.
[4]
But Rennes is only half of the French connection with the Arcadian Treasure and its link with Oak Island. The other half is at the tiny hamlet of Glozel near Vichy. We have spoken with Emile Fradin, who actually made the discoveries in the strange pit at Glozel in 1924. We have seen the inexplicable exhibits in his museum there. Not far to the southeast of the Fradin farm lie the imposing ruins of the thirteenth-century Château de Montgilbert â contemporary with both the Templars and the ill-fated Cathars, or Albigensians. Just a few kilometres due east of Vichy itself, and the same distance due north of Glozel and the Montgilbert Chateau, on the D7 route, is La Croix Rouge (“The Red Cross” â the symbol of the Templars). Also very close to Glozel, but lying just to the southwest of the Fradin farm, are Les Murs du Temple (“The Walls of the Temple”). Just a coincidence? Or an indication that the Templars were as closely involved with Glozel as they were with Rennes-le-Château?
The Tomb of Arques photographed by the authors in 1975.
Poussin's painting “The Shepherds of Arcadia,” Louvre version.
What sort of pattern are all these historical threads weaving? They lead back time and again to our central hypothesis that some very ancient object â said to be a source of enormous wealth and power â was pursued across the centuries by those who knew of it, regardless of the risks involved. Did Gilgamesh and Enkidu seek it in ancient Sumeria? In the fifth tablet of their great epic, they have to seek out and overcome the formidable Khumbaba, guardian of the trees. What other treasure is hidden among the sacred cedars which Khumbaba defends so desperately against the two heroic intruders?
[5]
Did Abram know of it when he and his family were called by God to leave Ur of the Chaldees? What mysterious truth lay behind Sarah's legendary discovery in Hermes' cavern? Were Melchizedek, Thoth, and Trismegistus three different names for the same wise and powerful man, and what secret powers lay concealed in his Emerald Tablets? Suppose, too, that the Tablets became the true core of the mysterious Arcadian Treasure, and that they went at one period from Melchizedek's Salem to Pharoah's Egypt, only to be retrieved by Moses and eventually returned to Jerusalem in Solomon's time. Suppose that it was the reckless pursuit of those same Emerald Tablets that precipitated the pride of Pharaoh's charioteers to their deaths in the Red Sea.
Solomon dies. Some, if not all, of the Tablets find their way to Ethopia via his son, Menelik, born to the beautiful black Queen Makeda (encoded as the lovely Belacane in Wolfram's
Parzival
). Solomon's son is accompanied by a party of his loyal Jewish supporters, who settle in Ethiopia and become the ancestors of the present-day Falashas.
Suppose that many years later there are Templars at the Ethiopian Court of Lalibela (“Prester John”) in the thirteenth century, Templars at Chartres Cathedral, Templars at Château Montgilbert near Glozel, Templars at Rennes-le-Château among the carefully hidden Merovingian tombs â Templars who know about the Arcadian treasure and the Emerald Tablets.
Then comes the tragic involvement of Philip IV, the downfall of the Middle Eastern and European Templars, the flight of the refugees to the Orkneys with part, at least, of the priceless treasure, and, finally, the Atlantic voyage.
Yet there is another complication that has to be considered very carefully before the examination of the French connection can be satisfactorily concluded â and that complication is Sir Francis Bacon's enigmatic brother Anthony, who spent a great deal of time in France as part of the Elizabethan “secret service.” What was Anthony so busy investigating, and what secrets did he send home to the brilliant and frequently underestimated Francis?
Francis Bacon's Secret Cypher
F
rancis
Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, was born on January 22, 1561. (By curious coincidence, it was on Bacon's birthday in 1917 that Bérenger Saunière died.) Francis lived until April 9, 1626, which puts him squarely inside the same time frame as Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, and the three painters who were said to “hold the key” to the Arcadian Treasure of Rennes â Poussin and both Teniers. Bacon's other contemporaries included fellow lawyer William Anson, whose fortune founded the Shugborough Hall dynasty, and the remarkable Dr. John Dee (1527â1608), wizard, astrologer, mathematician, and crystal gazer. If there was a secret society of Arcadian Treasure guardians with which the Cathars and Templars had once been closely involved, and which had later re-surfaced under the Rosicrucian banner, Dee is a very likely candidate for membership, or perhaps even control of it, in Tudor times.
Although Francis was officially accepted as the younger son of Sir Nicholas Bacon and his second wife, Ann (who was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke and the sister-in-law of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley), there are reasonable grounds for believing that he was actually the secret son of Queen Elizabeth I. One theory suggests that Francis Drake, “the Queen's pirate,” was his natural father.
Another strong suspicion was that the father of Elizabeth's son was Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. He had apparently arranged for the murder of his wife, Amy Robsart, at Cumnor Place, Oxfordshire, in the hope that Elizabeth would marry him. Such was the fanatical Protestant loyalty of Sir Nicholas and Lady Ann, that they would have done anything necessary to protect their beloved queen from scandal.
Despite the possibility that he was not the biological son of Nicholas Bacon, young Francis learned a great deal from the man the world regarded as his father. Nicholas himself had been born circa 1510 and by dint of sheer intelligence and hard work had gained a place at Cambridge. He was in Paris for a while after leaving university and then went on to Gray's Inn to read law. His great chance came when Archbishop Heath, who was then lord chancellor, declined to carry out some of Queen Elizabeth's instructions â never a prudent course to follow in Tudor times! Although not acquiring the official title of chancellor, Sir Nicholas took over much of Heath's former work. This elder Bacon was in many ways a curious contradiction: a strangely paradoxical man. Contemporary portraits show him as grossly overweight, and give him a decidedly earthy, crafty, untrustworthy appearance â like Bumble the Beadle in Dickens'
Oliver Twist
.
Yet all who knew him well, and so could write of him with some accuracy and authority, commented warmly on his generosity, his kindness, his patience, and understanding. Those who knew him best regarded him as a man of undoubted shrewdness, intelligence, and good humour.
Historians with an interest in psychology might well wonder whether Sir Nicholas had learned to play several roles successfully, and whether Sir Francis had subsequently acquired that trick from him. In 1564, Sir Nicholas had either written or sponsored a pamphlet which appeared under the name of John Hales, in which the royal claims of the House of Suffolk were supported. Needless to say, this was not well received by Elizabeth, and Sir Nicholas was under a cloud for some time. This experience taught him the perils of political authorship: a lesson he must have impressed firmly on young Francis after the boy's striking literary abilities became apparent.
Was Bacon the author of the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare (1564â1616), and possibly those attributed to Christopher Marlow (1564â1593) as well? Undoubtedly he had more than enough talent, education, and experience to have written them, and his own essays prove him capable of writing in a wide variety of styles.
[1]
One curious clue exists in act five, scene one, of
Love's Labour Lost
: the polysyllabic monstrosity “honorificabilitudinitatibus.” Baconian cryptographers have claimed that this can be re-worked into a Latin cypher meaning: “These plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world.”
[2]
If that interpretation is correct, it lends considerable support to the theory that Bacon's original manuscripts of the works attributed to Shakespeare and Marlowe lie under the protective mercury among the other priceless treasures deep in the Oak Island labyrinth. Bacon was as much a man of science as a man of letters, and one of his theories in
Sylva Sylvarum
involved the preservation of manuscripts in mercury. Add to this the finding on Oak Island of ancient flasks with traces of mercury in them
[3]
and the theory becomes tenable. There is also the evidence of Mrs. Gallup's discovery of the Biliteral Cipher among Bacon's works.
[4]
On December 3, 1948, Dr. Burrell F. Ruth told a group of students at Iowa State College that in his opinion Bacon had hidden his original manuscripts somewhere very secure in the hope that they would one day be recovered by better citizens living in a better world.
Dr. Orville Ward Owen followed what he understood to be Baconian cyphers and found a mysterious underground room beneath the bed of the River Wye in the west of Britain. It was empty, but Dr. Owen found further Baconian cyphers cut into its walls. In Owen's opinion, Bacon had originally intended to conceal his priceless manuscripts below the Wye, in much the same way that the ancient Visigoths had dammed and diverted rivers, constructed burial chambers beneath them, and then allowed the waters to flow back over the last resting place of their dead leader and his treasure. This was certainly done for Alaric, the Visigothic conqueror of Rome. Owen concluded that Bacon had had second thoughts and had decided that the chamber near the mouth of the Wye was not secure enough. Had he then chosen a much safer hiding place farther afield? In 1610, King James I granted Bacon land in Newfoundland, giving him a close connection with the early history of Canada.
Francis and his elder brother Anthony had attended Cambridge University together in 1573 and studied under that same Dr. Whitgift, who became Archbishop of Canterbury. As a young man in 1576, Bacon was in France with the ambassador, Sir Amias Paulet, and remained there until 1579. It may have been Paulet (or some other English aristocrat who was party to the secret) who during this time informed Francis of his “real” parentage. Anthony spent a much longer period in Europe, not returning to England until 1591.
Both the brothers had met influential Huguenots during their time abroad, and the Huguenots were reputed to have had links with the Cathars.
How does all of this connect Bacon with the Arcadian Treasure, the Emerald Tablets and the Oak Island Money Pit? Firstly, Bacon's legal background links him with Anson of Shugborough and the Shepherd Monument, which in turn is connected with Poussin, who was a contemporary of Bacon's, as Anson was.
Secondly, Bacon was in the ascendant in 1613, having just been appointed attorney general. In 1614 the key document of Rosicrucianism,
Fama Fraternatis
, appeared. According to this strange book, Christian Rosencreutz had been buried in 1484 in a mysterious hidden tomb engraved with the words: “I shall open after 120 years.” The authors of
Fama Fraternatis
claimed that they had found this heptagonal crypt in 1604 (after the expiry of Rosencreutz's 120 years â and the same year in which Bacon was appointed King's Counsel) and that it was lit by some inexplicable source. They also claimed to have examined Rosencreutz's perfectly preserved body beneath an altar surrounded by magic mirrors.
[5]
They said they had seen an arcane manuscript simply referred to as
The Book T
, one possible implication being that the “T” stood for Thoth (alias Melchizedek, or Hermes Trismegistus). If there was an ancient secret Order that had been guarding the Arcadian Treasure since its earliest days, then some influential members of that Order may well have worn Cathar robes, Templar armour, and later Rosicrucian and Masonic insignia.
Francis Bacon was well-known for his interest in codes and cyphers, as well as in ancient mysteries and allegories. In his preface to
The Wisdom of the Ancients
, he wrote: “⦠under some of the ancient fictions lay couched certain mysteries ⦠even from their first invention ⦔
[6]
It was his friend, Ben Jonson, who wrote of Bacon on his sixtieth birthday:
Hail! happy genius of this ancient Pile!
How comes it all things so about thee smile?
The fire! the wine! the men! and in the midst
Thou stands as if some mystery thou didst â¦
(January 22, 1621)
It was also Ben Jonson who said of him: “⦠he seemed to me ⦠one of the greatest men ⦠that had been in many ages ⦔
[7]
Thirdly, if Bacon was the author of some of the great plays and poems attributed to Marlowe and Shakespeare â perhaps even a few of the works which were attributed to Edmund Spenser (1552â99) and Sir Philip Sidney (1554â86) as well â then he would have had a powerful motive for announcing his authorship to posterity.
Spenser and Sidney were good friends: Spenser, in fact, never ceased to grieve over Sidney's early death as the result of a wound inflicted in battle. Spenser's most famous work,
The Faerie Queene
, was intended to run to twelve books, but only six were completed.
[8]
The first book is concerned with the adventures of the Red Cross Knight of Holiness, regarded by most critics as an emblem of the Anglican Church, but which might equally well have stood for the Templars, whose symbol was undeniably a red cross. If Spenser is linked to the Templars, Sidney is linked to Arcadia. He is also linked to Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley, brother-in-law to Ann Bacon, wife of Nicholas, and, ostensibly, mother of Francis. Sidney travelled a great deal. He knew France and Austria well. Although he died before Poussin was born, Sidney knew Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese, the great painters, whom he met in Venice. There was a strong cohesion and continuity among artists of that era, amounting almost to a guild or fraternity, in which secrets could easily be passed from one generation of painters to the next.
Tintoretto and Paolo may well have known something of what Poussin was later to communicate to Fouquet and to conceal in his Arcadian Shepherd canvases, with subjects' hands formed into Ogham letters. It was to Sir Philip Sidney that Spenser dedicated his famous
Shepheards Calender
, and Sidney himself wrote
Arcadia
, a series of romantic adventures set in the idyllic land of the same name. Knowing his death was imminent, Sidney tried to recall all copies of this work: why? Did it contain some clue to the Arcadian Treasure, which the dying adventurer felt pointed rather too clearly to its true nature and whereabouts?
Fourthly, Bacon had special scientific knowledge of document preservation, together with an interest in Canadian land.
Fifthly, there is the scrap of parchment brought up on the drill which penetrated one of the “treasure vaults” below the Money Pit, the scrap of paper which Doctor Porter examined so carefully and so publicly. Was that tiny fragment bearing the letters “ui” or “vi” torn from one of Bacon's original manuscripts?
The most fascinating data, however, are the Baconian Watermark Codes, which Mrs. Henry Pott researched with great persistence and thoroughness prior to the publication of her uniquely informative book in 1891. (The authors are fortunate in possessing the actual signed copy which Mrs. Pott gave to Lord Beauchamp in February, 1892.)
Mrs. Pott produced a mass of detailed evidence from which she concluded that Bacon had been a prominent member of a very knowledgeable secret society (Masons? Rosicrucians? Vestigial successors to the Templars?) and that that society was still active and powerful in her own day. The intriguing watermark codes which she collected and reproduced included:
1. Watermark showing elongated grapes from Sir Philip Sidney's
Arcadia
, edition dated 1662.
2. Watermark showing circular grapes surmounted by a diamond, or a dagger blade, also from Sir Philip Sidney's
Arcadia
, edition dated 1662.
3. Watermark showing rounded grapes with curious leaf, or figure emerging from water, above them, taken from the 1638 edition of Sir Francis Bacon's
Sylva Sylvarum
(the book which contains the details of storing documents in mercury to preserve them).
4. Watermark from the same source as 3 above, showing a diamond pattern of circular grapes surmounted by a hook, or crescent.
5. This is a particularly interesting pattern, resembling a stylized picture of a tree in a tub ready to be replanted (as per Michael Bradley's fascinating theory that trees were deliberately planted on Oak Island to identify it for later parties of trans-Atlantic refugees.) It is from the 1669 edition of Sir Francis Bacon's
The New Atlantis
.
6. Watermark from a letter dated 1580 from H. Maynard to Anthony Bacon, now in the Tennison MSS collection, showing a tall wine-jug with an ornate lid surmounted by five crosses supporting a crown. Do these Templar symbols indicate the Order's support of Baldwin, King of Jerusalem? Or its support for “Prester John” alias Lalibela of Ethiopia?
7. & 8. Similar wine-jug watermarks from the same source as 6, but their details differ markedly.
8. Another wine-jug watermark, of distinct pattern, found on a letter from Sir Francis Bacon to W. Doylie, dated 1580, Tennison MSS.
10. Wine jug watermark surmounted by Fleur-de-lis emblem found on a letter from Sir Amyas Powlett [
sic
] to Anthony Bacon, dated 1580, Cotton MSS.
Cathars, Templars, Rosicrucians, and the Tudor men of mystery like Francis and Anthony Bacon have created riddles enough, yet there is still much more to be said about the Oak Island enigma. Bacon may quite possibly have arranged for the burial of his priceless manuscripts in a preservative mercury bath somewhere in the labyrinth below the Money Pit, but, if he did, in locating Oak Island at all he was probably making use of much older, stranger knowledge and ancient arcane secrets that had been handed down to him.
