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Musicians and Intelligence Operations, 1570-1612: Politics, Surveillance, and Patronage in the Late Tudor and Early Stuart Years

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Musicians and Intelligence Operations, 1570-1612: Politics, Surveillance, and Patronage in the Late Tudor and Early Stuart Years Musicians and Intelligence Operations, 1570-1612: Politics, Surveillance, and Patronage in the Late Tudor and Early Stuart Years Rachelle A.M. Chiasson-Taylor Schulich School of Music McGill University, Montreal August 2006 A dissertation submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Musicology) © Rachelle C.-Taylor, 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABSTRACT/RÉSUMÉ ANALYTIQUE v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY 5 INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS AFTER 1570: POLITICAL, RELIGIOUS, AND SOCIAL CONTEXTS 10 INTELLIGENCE AND PATRONAGE 19 LITERATURE REVIEW: ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS 27 STUDIES OF WILLIAM BYRD AND POLITICS 33 STUDIES OF MUSICIANS AND INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS 37 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 39 SURVEILLANCE AND CULTURAL PRODUCTIONS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND 46 CHAPTER 2: WRITERS AND SURVEILLANCE 49 I: THE CASE OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 50 MARLOWE’S INTELLIGENCE CAREER 54 THE PRIVY COUNCIL MEMO OF 1587 57 RECRUITING AT THE UNIVERSITY, AND MARLOWE’S CIRCLE 60 THE VLISSINGEN AFFAIR 68 MARLOWE’S RECKONING 75 MARLOWE’S DEATH: CONSPIRACY OR NOT? 82 II: SURVEILLANCE IN LITERARY CRITICISM 88 SHAKESPEARE, SURVEILLANCE, AND “REALPOLITIKAL” CRITICISM 102 BEN JONSON AND THE SPIES 104 WRITERS, MUSICIANS, AND SURVEILLANCE 108 i CHAPTER 3: THOMAS MORLEY AND THE SUCCESSION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH 110 MORLEY’S BIOGRAPHY TO 1592 111 THE SUCCESSION PLANS FOR ARABELLA STUART 122 SECRET GOVERNMENT CORRESPONDENCE IN 1591-92 CONCERNING ARABELLA STUART 131 OTHER EVIDENCE FROM SECRET CORRESPONDENCE INVOLVING THOMAS MORLEY 142 THOMAS MORLEY, AN ELIZABETHAN BURNOUT? 153 CHAPTER 4: PETER PHILIPS AND THE MIDDELBURG AFFAIR 160 LIFE OF AN EXILE: THE ENGLISH COLLEGE IN ROME, AND CATHOLIC FACTIONS 161 ARREST AT MIDDELBURG 177 THE LOPEZ CONSPIRACY AND THE EARL OF ESSEX’S PURSUIT OF THE QUEEN’S FAVOUR 181 A NEW ANALYSIS OF THE MIDDELBURG AFFAIR 188 THE PROBLEM OF OSTEND 191 DÉNOUEMENT 198 THE PAGET AND DOLOROSA PAVANS AND GALLIARDS 203 EPILOGUE: PHILIPS AND ENGLISH MUSIC 206 CHAPTER 5: CECILIAN PATRONAGE: CORMACK MACDERMOTT AND NICHOLAS LANIER 208 CECIL’S CAREER, INFLUENCE, AND PATRONAGE 213 CECIL’S HOUSEHOLD MUSICIANS 216 CORMACK MACDERMOTT: CECIL’S IRISH COURIER 223 NICHOLAS LANIER: EARLY YEARS 229 LANIER IN ARCHIVAL SOURCES 233 LANIER IN BRUSSELS IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 234 LANIER AND THE AFFAIR OF THE VIRGINIA COMPANY 241 LANIER’S TRAVELS WITH CECIL’S SON AND AS A COURIER IN FRANCE, SPAIN, AND THE NETHERLANDS 245 LANIER’S CAREER AFTER CECIL’S DEATH 248 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 5: TRANSCRIPTIONS OF DOCUMENTS RELATING TO MACDERMOTT AND LANIER 250 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 268 FACSIMILES OF ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS 276 BIBLIOGRAPHY 283 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For this project, I had the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which enabled me to conduct research in archival holding institutions in Europe. The staff at the National Archives of Britain, English Library, and the Archives générales du royaume et de l’état in Brussels were wonderfully supportive. I particularly thank Dr. Sean Cunningham of the National Archives of Britain, who guided me through the intricacies of centuries-old government records. I am deeply grateful to the disabilities support staff at the English Library who waited on me “hand and foot.” To the staff at the microform department of MacLennan Library at McGill University, I owe special thanks, as I do to the great people at Marvin Duchow Music Library. My dissertation advisor, Professor Julie Cumming at McGill University, is a mentor any doctoral candidate could wish for, and the most admirable of scholars. It is indeed a very great pleasure to thank her here for her unwavering support and discerning criticism throughout this project, from start to finish. Professor Steven Huebner at McGill read earlier drafts of my work, and I owe him special thanks for his inspiring classes, which have left their mark on this study. Professor Peter Schubert, also at McGill, gave me precious feedback when I showed him some of the first utterances of this project. For his appraisal of my research on the political world of early modern England, I am most grateful to historian Professor Robert Tittler of Concordia University in Montreal; without him, I surely would have gone astray. Professor Paul Yachnin of the English Department at McGill is a man whose authenticity, originality, and strength of intellect have been an inspiration to me. I thank him for his advice on literary matters and for including me in his important interdisciplinary work at McGill. To John Harley, I express heartfelt thanks for his generous advice and friendship. Dr. David J. Smith and his wonderful family welcomed me and my family into his home near Aberdeen. We have shared many fine moments together discussing and playing the keyboard music of Peter Philips, who is known to us affectionately as “Peripatetic iii Pete.” Richard Turbet has offered me encouragement, wisdom, and vision. I am a great fan of his work. To CBC producer and composer Scott Tresham, I owe much gratitude for managing, in the summer of 2003, my project to perform the complete keyboard music of William Byrd. Since then, we have been friends and I daresay, allies in exploring Tudor keyboard music and the workings of the surveillance world in which the composers lived. I am also most grateful to Dr. Lars Lih in Montreal, who knows a great deal about intelligence operations and the interpretation of primary documents. To my record producer Johanne Goyette at ATMA, I offer deep thanks for believing in my interpretations of sixteenth-century keyboard music. My partner, Jean-Pierre Noiseux, accompanied me on research trips, patiently read through pages of my writing in a language that is not his first tongue, and held down the fort throughout this project even though he had a mountain of his own scholarly work to attend to. I can’t thank him enough. To my lovely children Madeleine, Simone, Paul, and Grégoire: thanks for the laughter and lightness, and for growing up so beautifully. iv ABSTRACT Musicians and Intelligence Operations, 1570-1612: Politics, Surveillance, and Patronage in the Late Tudor and Early Stuart Years by Rachelle C.-Taylor The problem of musicians’ involvement in intelligence operations during the late Tudor and early Stuart years has to date remained relatively unexplored. There is convincing evidence, however, that artists from different disciplines were particularly targeted for recruitment in intelligence operations, designed by Elizabeth I’s councillors, Willam Cecil, Lord Burghley and Francis Walsingham, to infiltrate and disable Catholic oppositional networks on the Continent and in England in the aftermath of the Elizabethan settlement on religion. The Scottish revolt that preceded the arrival of Mary, Queen of Scots in England (1568), the Northern Rising of Catholic Earls (end of 1569), the excommunication of Elizabeth I (1570), and the so-called “Ridolfi” plot to assassinate Elizabeth and raise the Queen of Scots to the English throne (uncovered in 1571) combined to create a large-scale political crisis that galvanized the fledgling intelligence operations, dubbed by scholars as the first “modern” secret service. Religious and political upheavals in late Tudor England had marked consequences on artistic patronage. Although this dissertation is not a comprehensive study of music patronage as it shifted with changing networks of power, I will propose that a form of alternative patronage did emerge with the growth industry in intelligence operations. By the 1580s, large numbers of university students and artists, among them the great Eizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe, were recruited to serve in the covert war that mirrored mounting overt hostilities in the Netherlands and in France. By the 1590s, after Walsingham’s death, the Earl of Essex created his own intelligence service, which gradually became an instrument of Essexian aspiration to royal favour. Robert Cecil, Burghley’s son, was dominant in v all spheres of politics and culture in the dawning Jacobean years. Cecil closely monitored and efficiently managed intelligence operations, and monopolized political and cultural patronage until the time of his death in 1612, the terminus ante quem of this study. In case studies based on archival evidence, contemporary printed sources, and recent historical and cultural scholarship, I will examine the intelligence activities of Thomas Morley (chapter 3), Peter Philips (chapter 4), and two members of Robert Cecil’s household music, Cormack MacDermott and Nicholas Lanier (chapter 5). Musicians’ involvement in intelligence operations is the raison-d’être of this study, but of course they were not the only artists who were recruited. I have thus presented, in chapter 2, my own perspective on the secondary literature detailing the intelligence career of the great English dramatist Christopher Marlowe. In 1593, Marlowe was killed at age 29 in the presence of three government operatives, one of whom appears at Peter Philips’ arrest at Middleburg less four months later. Marlowe’s intelligence activities have generated a great deal of scholarly attention, but above all, they share many common points with those of the composers in this study. In the same chapter, I also discuss surveillance as a theoretical tool in the field literary criticism. Finally, throughout this study, the different ways in which the period’s Catholic oppositional discourse has been historicized emerge. How scholars view this discourse, and the means the government took to control it, often mirrors the way in which surveillance is historicized. vi RESUME ANALYTIQUE Musiciens et services de renseignements élisabéthains et jacobéens, 1570-1612 : politique, contrôle, et mécénat Le phénomène de l’implication de musiciens dans les services de renseignements aux confins des époques élisabéthaine et jacobéenne n’a pas été beaucoup exploré jusqu’à date. Il existe cependant des preuves tangibles démontrant que des artistes de différentes disciplines étaient bel et bien concernés lorsqu’ il était question de recrutement au sein de ces services.
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