The Battle of Zutphen and Sir Philip Sidney (and St. Edmund Campion!)

On September 22, 1586, Spanish forces defeated the Anglo-Dutch allies at the Battle of Zutphen in the Spanish Netherlands. (In May of 1591, the Anglo-Dutch allies, led by Maurice of Orange, would besiege the Spaniards and win the city back.) 

During a cavalry charge, Sir Philip Sidney was fatally wounded, as it turned out, because the surgeons could not remove the musket ball from his thigh and he died of gangrene poisoning in the city Arnhem on October 17, 1586. Biographers now, like Alan Stewart, dismiss the legend that Sidney removed a piece of his body armor that would have protected him from this wound because another Englishman did not wear it. Stewart comments that the English generally preferred light armor, so Sidney wouldn't have been wearing it in the first place.  

His body was returned to England and he was buried in the Old St. Paul's Cathedral but his grave and monument were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. His posthumous reputation as a Renaissance courtier was aided by his biographer Fulke Greville and Edmund Spenser's elegy Astrophel.

The Poetry Foundation notes in its biography of Sidney that he met Edmund Campion in 1577 during his "official mission of extending the queen's condolences to the family of Maximilian II":

In Prague he also visited Edmund Campion, whom he must have known, if only casually, from their days at Oxford. To his tutor in Rome, Campion described Sidney, mistakenly, as "a poor wavering soul" who might be amenable to conversion to the Roman Church. It is clear that his interest in Sidney was opportunistic. Yet Campion's words provide no basis for saying, as John Buxton has, that Sidney was cynically "using all his tact and charm to learn from Campion's own lips how far conversion had led him on the path of disloyalty." Rather, though Sidney held Campion to be in "a full wrong divinity"--as he said of Orpheus, Amphion, and Homer in The Defence of Poetry--he probably admired the gifted and accomplished Jesuit, as many others did. Sidney genuinely sought "the prayers of all good men" and was happy to assist even Catholics who would ease the suffering of the poor. The catalogue of the long-dispersed library at Penshurst, recently discovered by Germaine Warkentin, lists an edition of the Conference in the Tower with Campion, (1581) published shortly after Campion's execution. If in fact this book belonged to Philip Sidney, perhaps he hoped to find in it evidence that Campion had discovered the true religion in the hours before his death.

Edmund Campion had left Oxford in 1569, the year after Sidney had come to attend Christ Church. The two men shared the patronage of the Earl of Leicester: Sidney because Leicester was his uncle; Campion because of his display of rhetorical brilliance when Elizabeth I visited Oxford in 1566.

Their "tours" of Europe overlap: Sidney from 1572 to 1575; Campion from 1571 to 1580. But they were seeking vastly different goals: Sidney to forge a Protestant alliance; Campion to study for the priesthood and to teach in Prague at the Jesuit College. 

And they both hoped the other would convert: Sidney hoped Campion would return to the Church of England; Campion hoped that Sidney would be reconciled to his ancestral Catholicism.

Image Credit (public domain): The Fatal Wounding of Sir Philip Sidney (1805)by Benjamin West.

Donizetti's "Maria Stuarda" and "Roberto Devereux" Plus an Early Tudor Opera

I thought I should complete the survey of Donizetti's Tudor operas with a post on Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux, which both feature Elizabeth I in a leading, though not title, role.

The first opera is based on Schiller's play, Maria Stuart, and like the Vanessa Redgrave/Glenda Jackson movie, commits the wild inaccuracy of having Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I meet. Donizetti's librettist Giuseppe Bardari creates a love/hate quadrangle: Elizabeth loves Leicester; Leicester loves Maria; Maria hates Elizabeth; Elizabeth hates Maria. From that you get three acts of bel canto drama, confrontation, but no mad scene. In the end:

Maria's friends lament her fate, and she, facing death calmly, tries to comfort them and give them strength. As the cannon sounds the signal for her execution, Cecil asks for her last requests. She forgives Elisabetta and prays for a blessing on her and the kingdom. She tries to calm the grief-stricken Leicester and hopes that her innocent blood will placate the wrath of Heaven. She goes resolutely to her death as her friends grieve over her fate.

Roberto Devereux gives us the triangle of Elizabeth and Essex and Sara, the Duchess of Nottingham, whose husband plots the death of Essex. There's a great love duet between Essex and Sara--and a tremendous mad scene for Elizabeth before Essex's offstage execution. She abdicates at the end.

There is really a fourth opera in Donizetti's Tudor series, Il castelo di Kenilworth, but even though it features the really great triangle of Elizabeth, Leicester and his wife Amy (Amelia), it does not get as much attention because it is not a tragedy. Amy survives attempted poisoning and does not fall downstairs. The opera is a comedy (not a funny comedy but a comedy in the classic sense): Elizabeth gives her blessing to Amy and Leicester and everybody is happy--except for the villain, of course.

Donizetti wrote other operas with an English or Scottish setting: Lucia di Lammermoor most famously, but also Rosmunda d'Inghilterra about the Fair Rosamund, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Emilia di Liverpool. English royalty also appear in L'assedio di Calais, with Queen Isabella begging King Edward III to show mercy to the burghers of Calais.

Donizetti was extraordinarily prolific, considering that he died when he was 56 years old, composing nearly 75 operas, 16 symphonies, 19 string quartets, 193 songs, 45 duets, 3 oratorios, 28 cantatas, instrumental concertos, sonatas, and other chamber pieces.

To conclude this operatic post--Rossini also wrote an opera featuring Elizabeth I and Leicester: Elisabetta, regina d'Inghiliterra, which included snippets of music from earlier work--and then Rossini used music from it in later work. Leicester is secretly married to Matilde who is Mary, Queen of Scots' daughter (in this ten-minute survey of the opera, you know she's from Scotland because she's wearing a kilt/plaid!) Elizabeth sends Leicester to prison along with his wife and her brother, Enrico. The Duke of Norfolk is the villain and tries to kill the queen! She frees Leicester, Matilde and Enrico at the end after they save her life.

All four of these operas offer interesting interpretations of history! As this review of a 2010 production of Maria Stuarda comments:

There's a fond belief that Donizetti's Maria Stuarda is about Tudor history. It is, to the extent that its chief characters are Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, and others have recognisable names such as Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and Sir William Cecil. . . .Yet Donizetti himself was none too interested in facts. You can no more rely on his 1834 bel canto opera to untangle the English Reformation crisis for you than expect Hamlet to throw light on the Danish succession.

That's opera, doc!

The Catholic Martyrs at the Shrine of the English Martyrs at Harvington Hall, Worcestershire

From The Catholic Herald, this story about a Mass honoring Catholic martyrs at Harvington Hall in Worcestershire:

Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham was the principal celebrant and preacher at Mass during the annual pilgrimage to the Shrine of the English Martyrs at Harvington Hall, Worcestershire, on Sunday September 4, writes Peter Jennings.

The Elizabethan manor house was built by Humphrey Pakington (1555-1631), a courtier from the household of the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, who managed to practise his Catholic faith in secret during a time of great persecution.

Harvington Hall has the finest surviving series of priest holes anywhere in the country and during Elizabethan times offered shelter to many recusant priests. . . .

The four martyrs especially venerated at Harvington, who worked at various times in the area are: St John Wall, who was hung, drawn and quartered at Red Hill, Worcester on August 2 1679 and canonised in 1970; St Nicholas Owen, who died under torture in the Tower on March 2 1606, and was canonised in 1970; Blessed Edward Oldcorne, who was executed at Red Hill, Worcester on April 7 1606 and beatified in 1929; and Blessed Arthur Bell, who was executed at Tyburn on December 11 1643 and beatified in 1987.

More about Harvington Hall and more about the priest holes here and here.

While searching the web for more information about the shrine, I found this site, which features a new shrine to the English Martyrs at Holy Cross Priory in Leicester. Scroll down and read the last words of the martyrs:

John Wall: It is an easy thing to run the blind way of liberty, but God deliver us from all broad, sweet ways.

Ralph Sherwin: I make no doubt of my future happiness, through Jesus Christ, in whose death, passion, and blood I only trust.

Charles Mahoney: Now Almighty God is pleased I should suffer this martyrdom. His Holy Name be praised since I die for my religion.

John Kemble: I die only for professing the old Roman Catholic religion, which first made this kingdom Christian.

George Haydock: I pray God that my blood may increase the Catholic faith in England.

The Assassination of William the Silent

William I, Prince of Orange was shot to death by the French Catholic Balthasar Gerard on July 10, 1584. This assassination stunned Elizabeth I, adding to her fears that Catholic agents could be plotting to kill her.

Reluctantly, she allowed her favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to take English forces to the Continent in 1585, joining the conflict between Spain and the rebels in the Spanish Netherlands. She was undercutting Leicester from the beginning of his expedition as Elizabeth also arranged secret treaty discussions with Spain days after he landed. She did not want Leicester to engage in battle (incurring costs) and never properly supplied the English troops, leaving them without resources. Leicester resigned his position as Lieutenant-General of the thwarted expedition in 1557.

By the way, Gerard's punishment was swift and severe: "Gérard was caught before he could flee Delft, and imprisoned. He was tortured before his trial on 13 July, where he was sentenced to be brutally — even by the standards of that time — killed. The magistrates decreed that the right hand of Gérard should be burned off with a red-hot iron, that his flesh should be torn from his bones with pincers in six different places, that he should be quartered and disemboweled alive, that his heart should be torn from his bosom and flung in his face, and that, finally, his head should be cut off", according to the wikipedia article cited above.