It is my very great pleasure to welcome
Historical Fiction author, Dean Hamilton onto the blog. Dean is going to tell
us about the inspirations behind his latest book.
The
Jesuit Letter
England 1575.
Ex-soldier
turned play-actor Christopher Tyburn thought he had left bloodshed and violence
behind him when he abandoned the war against the Spanish in Flanders, but fate
has different and far bloodier plans waiting.
The
innyards of London are closed due to plague and the playing troupe The Earl of
Worcester’s Men are on the road, touring the market-towns of the Midlands.
When
Tyburn accidentally intercepts a coded letter from a hidden Jesuit priest in
Warwickshire, he is entangled in a murderous and deadly conspiracy. Stalked by
unknown enemies, he must race to uncover the conspiracy and hunt down the
Jesuit to clear his name. . . or die a traitor’s death. His only hope – an
eleven-year old glover’s son named William Shakespeare.
This
novel has been selected by the Historical Novel Society as an Editors’ Choice
and Short-listed for the 2016 HNS Indie Award. It has also been selected as a
Semi-Finalist for the 2016 M.M. Bennetts Award for Historical Fiction. It was
recently awarded an Indie B.R.A.G Medallion.
***
Author’s
Inspiration
You might think, given the subject matter, that
the primary inspiration for THE JESUIT LETTER was William Shakespeare, however,
in actuality it was his father.
I knew relatively little about Shakespeare’s
family and upbringing until I happened to read Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became
Shakespeare. Greenblatt, like many biographers before (and after) him,
pulls together threads, ideas and commonalities from Shakespeare’s many works,
drawing parallels between the limited evidentiary knowledge we have about
Shakespeare’s life and upbringing, and tying in supposition, guesswork and context
to try and draw a picture of the life of the famous Bard of
Stratford-Upon-Avon.
What surprised me, was that John Shakespeare –
Will’s father – actually had rather more documentation accessible about him
than his much more famous son. John
Shakespeare was a glover by trade, but also held a number of properties and
agricultural interests including an active role as a brogger, illegally trading
in wool. He served as a municipal ale taster, a constable, an alderman, and
eventually mayor (High Bailiff) of Stratford-Upon-Avon. By all accounts, he was
one of Stratford’s leading citizens but in 1575, it all started to apparently
go downhill. Records indicate a series of property sales and ownership
transfers, the loss of his position as an alderman due to non-attendance, and usury
charges over the next decade.
The question that has intrigued scholars is why?
What caused John Shakespeare’s reversal of fortune, which saw him slide from
aspiring gentleman (he applied for a coat-of-arms in 1569, an application that
was allowed to lay fallow until revived by Will in 1596) to a man withdrawn
from public life. Research led to a number of different cited possibilities
including alcoholism (for which there is zero evidence, only speculation
assumptions and guesses based on a handful of lines cited from Will
Shakespeare’s plays), issues with the Courts due to his usury and brogging
charges, commercial speculation, depression (8 children, of whom only 5
survived to adulthood) or illness, and Catholicism.
Of the many cited possibilities, the question of
Shakepeare’s Catholicism is probably the most telling. His withdrawal from
public position coincided both with fines paid for his wife’s continued
absences from Protestant church services, and the arrival of the new Bishop of
Worcester, an ardent anti-Catholic, in Stratford on a visitation. Mary
Shakespeare’s maiden name was Mary Arden, one of Warwickshire’s leading
families and one vehemently identified with the Catholic faith. The titular
head of the Arden family, Edward Arden (who also makes an appearance in The Jesuit Letter) was openly Catholic
and at terrible odds with Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s
favorite councilor. In addition a Catholic testament supposedly with John
Shakespeare’s name upon it was uncovered in the rafters of the Shakespeare
family home on Henley Street in the 18thc, though some scholars
doubt its veracity. Some have speculated that Shakespeare deliberately divested
himself of his properties only on paper – transferring ownership and “conveying
land and goods” to his friends to avoid possible recusancy fines, bitter
taxation and potential property confiscation due to his Catholic faith.
The other piece of (entirely speculative)
commentary that Greenblatt noted that caught my eye was whether young Will could
have attended any of the performances of the travelling theatre troupes that
his father is documented as paying for as mayor in 1569, and, more tellingly,
whether Will attended the famous celebrations held at Kenilworth Castle, when
Queen Elizabeth’s Summer Progress rolled through in the summer of 1575. Many
scholars have seen significant parallels between Shakespeare’s A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, and the staged performances, fireworks shows and events held at
Kenilworth by the Earl of Leicester to honour (and woo) the Queen. There is a
superb record of the Kenilworth events documented in the Langham Letter from 1575.
This tiny, dangling bit of supposition about
what actually happened to alter John Shakespeare’s fortunes made me wonder –
about playing troupes, the hidden life of Catholic recusants, the corrosive
political and religious strife that had torn England apart over the preceding
thirty years, the knife-edge that Elizabeth’s reign balanced on between
hard-line Protestantism and a dangerous fanatical Catholicism, and the
every-day, ordinary lives that had to determine their own fates, in a time when
landing on the wrong side of the fence at the wrong time could result in
torture and death.
Most fiction embedded in the Elizabethan era
tends to be tales of Court intrigue, set amidst the silken splendor of
palaces. Mine tends to hang about in
ale-soaked taverns, muddy streets and fetid back-alleys where cold-steel by
lantern light offers redemption or grim death by turns…
So just what would happen if a battered
ex-soldier turned play-actor, venturing about on a summer playing tour in the
Midlands, stumbled into vicious conspiracy and murder in the quiet town of
Stratford-Upon-Avon?
Well, you will have to read the book to find
out.
Purchase
Links
About
the author
Dean Hamilton works as a marketing professional
by day and prowls the imaginary alleyways of the Elizabethan era in his
off-hours. He is married, with a son, a dog, four cats and a turtle. The Jesuit
Letter is his first novel.
Useful Links
(A
note from Mary - I reviewed The Jesuit Letter, back in January of this year.
You can find out what I thought of the book…here!!)
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See you on your next coffee break!
Take Care,
Mary Anne xxx