Gorges’s works are peppered with bitter comparisons between James’s approach to patronage and Elizabeth’s. Though during Elizabeth’s reign Gorges had felt desperately
This was just months before Biron’s execution for treason. Contingency plans in London had broken down— ^1 never saw so great a person so neglected. He hathe bynn here now left; not on nobehnan nor gentelman them to guy de % Ralegh wrote to Cecil (Edwards 1868, 2.233-34).
Perhaps including the graves o f Gorges’s wife and daughter.
A letter o f July 29, 1602, in which Gorges promises Robert Cecil he will, as instructed, ‘wayte on [him] att ye Dvtchye’ the next day, is perhaps connected to this affair (Hatfield CP 94.81).
hard done by, after her death he constantly held her up as a model patron, demonising James:
In the late Queenes tyme, it is certaine: that she raysed many, but it was many yeares adooinge: for shee euer was warie, not to cloye any so much, wrth her liberalities at once: but shee would still keepe them in an appetite to frugaletie, and in hope o f more by theire desertes, and seruice: and thereby shee had euer this comfort o f her fauouretts, that those seruaunts, whome shee had aduaunced: did alwayes reserue a greate parte o f her liberalitie, to seme her withall, in tyme o f neede o f which shee had good triall in the yeare 1588: when ye Spanish fleete was on our coste: (A Breefe Discourse (Trinity College, Cambridge MS R. 7.23* (Prince Henry’s Copy books 3), f.9r)
It was to be expected that Gorges, sharing Ralegh’s hawkish foreign policy, would be hostile to the values o f James’s court. He was not helped, either, by other circumstances: the cooling o f Cecil’s relationship with Ralegh and Cobham; Ambrosia’s recent death; the loss o f Chelsea. Gorges’s situation became desperate, though, when, on 13 July, 1603, he was arrested in connection with the Bye Plot at his house in Kew. He was closely associated with the plotters and knew what was going on, but was not directly involved in the conspiracy (Sandison 1928, 661-2)."^* He was soon released, after his wife had written three letters protesting his innocence to Robert Cecil (quoted by Sandison 1928, 662). It is likely that Gorges’s connection to the plot was partly responsible for some o f his disappointments in James’s reign: ‘in this newe age’, he wrote in 1604, ‘1 am caste behynde all men in preferment, by reason that the daynger and Jelosie o f ye tyme did cast vppon mee suspect; and restraynt from ye courte, whilst ye bountie o f his Ma/e^tie was a dealinge’ (Hatfield CP 108.98). Following his release he wrote to Cecil to request the return of some papers confiscated at the time of his arrest,
nowe o f smale moment, havinge relation to former goverment [5/c], and beinge in deed but needlesse remembraunces o f matters farr better considered o f and ordred since ... written in a tyme vnsettled when ye authoritie o f the former age surceased, and ail Justice and magistracye was to take newe Life, from the power o f a newe prince. (Hatfield CP 188.12)
‘Cobham, at Ralegh’s trial, cleared Gorges, though with equivocal compliment: ‘Being o f Sir Arthur Gorge, he freed him saying, they never durst trust him; but Sir Arthur Savage they intended to use, because they thought him a fit man’ (Sandison 1928, 661-2).
These papers may have been connected with Gorges’s extant manuscript treatises (see Chapter 5). Gorges asks disingenously that they may be ‘as heretiques ... committed to ye fyer ... and I my selfe ... to bee ye executioner’.
Gorges had been based at Kew since about 1602. (He had pawned a thousand pounds’ worth of jewels to buy a ‘small cottage’ there (Hatfield CP 121.64), some time after April 1601 (85.160; 77.45)). Part of Gorges’s Kew property was held in copy from from his uncle Sir Thomas Gorges, to whom the manor o f Richmond (which included Kew) had been granted in 1597 (VCH Surrey 4.543). It seems Sir Thomas came to Arthur’s help after Lincoln’s temper had temporarily removed the Chelsea property in 1600-lZ* Neighbours included between 1608 and 1612 James I’s daughter. Princess Elizabeth, in the care of John, first Lord Harington and his wife.^® At this period Gorges spent the Winter months in London (at a variety of addresses), passing the Summer at Kew.^^
The manor was granted to Prince Henry in 1610, after Sir Thomas’s death (VCH Surrey 4.411), a point later denied by Gorges (PRO STAC8/244/4). Gorges’s land, held presumably fi’om Sir Thomas, included ‘a priuate inclosed meadowe’ o f seven or eight acres, which produced three or four haycocks annually, abutted the Thames and lay near the ‘Little’ common o f Kew, and ‘a great pasture’ o f twelve or fourteen acres for cattle. To oversee the holdings. Gorges employed, in addition to a coachman and a page, a bailiff and several servants (PRO STAC8/158).
See DNB; CSPD 1607-10, 552. Some time before 1612, Gorges, in his capacity as a JP, helped out Daniel Dyke, Princess Elizabeth’s puritan chaplain, who had rented rooms in Kew fi’om Alexander Prescott (PRO STAC8/158).
He wrote letters fi’om Kew on 29 July 1602 (Hatfield CP 94.81), 4 July 1604 (105.146), 29 May 1605 (86.65), 20 August 1605 (PRO SP 14/15/33 f.54r), 23 April 1606 (Hatfield CP 116.17), 27 August 1606 (117.74), 24 May 1607 (121.56 ), 28 May 1607 (121.64) and 7 October 1610 (125.156). A letter o f 4 September 1610 (PRO SP 14/48/7 f.8r), describing the startling dawn arrival o f Lady Kennedy, Elizabeth Gorges’s cousin- ‘bare-legged in hyr petycott and an olde cloake, all hyr night geare; in greate fiyght and almoste starved for colde ... beinge as shee sayde dryven oute o f hyr howse by Sir John Kennedy yt with grete violence brake in uppon hyr’ - was probably also written fi’om Kew, just a few miles down-river fi’om ‘Bamelmes’, then belonging to Kennedy (VCH Surrey 4.5; for the Kennedys, cf. Chamberlain 1939, 1.306, 2.104-5). He wrote letters fi’om ‘Walebrooke’ in London on 18 January 1605/6 (Hatfield CP 109.130), 29 January 1605/6 (190.34) and 4 March 1606 (115, 126). Gorges’s daughter Frances was baptized in the Church o f St. Stephen’s Walbrook on 27 February 1606. On 18 April, 1604 Gorges’s son Carew was baptized in the Church o f All Hallows, Bread Street, Gorges then ‘having a house in this parish’ (Sandison
Gorges left the band of Pensioners early in James’s reign, in either 1604 or 1605 (Tighe 1983, 71)/^ During this period, with Ralegh in the Tower, Gorges’s court fortunes declined. His petitioning of Cecil grew unfocused, as he frantically turned his attention from one field o f potentially profitable activity to another. In 1604 Gorges requested that his Pawton lease be converted to a fee farm (Hatfield CP 105.146), a request not granted till 1606 (116.17; 117.74; CSPD 1607-10, 330). On 12 March 1604/5 he had a publication project in hand, of which no traces now remain, and wrote to Cecil for approval, sending him a bundle of
poore papers ... to be disposed, altred, or suppressed, as yr honar pleaseth, it is but ye dutye yt I ame tyed vnto before it be prynted. For being as yr Lordship: is the Eye o f ye state, it wolde argue greate neglecte and presumption in me, to publyshe matters o f thys Nature wthout yo ia honorable Knowledg and approbations (Hatfield CP 104.85)^^
In 1605 Gorges petitioned Cecil with a scheme to regulate the production and sealing of fustians (Hatfield CP 114.22). There were to be representatives in the two chief towns of every county to check local fustians for size and quality. Fustians found being sold or dyed without a seal or under a forged seal would be forfeited, the profit being split three ways between the office’s representative, the King and the informant. This abortive scheme, with its system o f national offices, anticipates Gorges’s slightly more successful ‘Public Register’ project o f 1611/12. The interest in promoting the local clothing industry connects it to the Breefe Discourse Gorges wrote for Henry in 1610 (Chapter 5.2).
The reappearance under James o f a male Privy Chamber, together with his decision to increase the number o f Privy Chamber staff, had considerably weakened the Pensioners’ position (Tighe 1983, 89-90). Tighe says that Gorges became a Gentleman o f the Privy Chamber at this time (71), though without providing documentation. This seems unlikely given the fact that in 1610 Gorges referred to him self as ‘masterless in ye worlde ... one o f ye outcasts o f Queene Elyzabeths auncyent and faythull seruaunts’ (Hatfield CP 128.156).
These papers could be an early draft o f Gorges’s Islands Voyage narrative, as Sandison suggests (1928, 670). It is interesting that Gorges is thinking in terms o f publication at this early stage: the earliest extant printed work authorised by Gorges is a pamphlet o f 1611 (Gorges 1611).
In the wake of the Gunpowder Plot, in 1605/6, Gorges warned against the possibility that Catholics might be hiding in London cellars (Hatfield CP 109.130) and protested at the plan to quarter the plotters outside that ‘fayrest’ gate of St. Paul’s hallowed by happy memories of Queen Elizabeth and the defeat of the Armada (190.34).^'^ In 1607, Gorges petitioned Robert Cecil unsuccessfully for the wardship of his nephew, suggesting that Cecil redeem for his personal use 1,100 worth of jewels Gorges had pawned to buy his cottage in Kew (121.64).
Cecil was no longer Gorges’s sole mediator. In a letter o f 29 May 1605, Gorges mentions a petition addressed jointly to Cecil and to the Earls of Worcester, Suffolk and Northampton (86.65). In 1605 these four, ‘the Howard faction’, all related to Gorges though not particularly sympathetic to his interests, formed an ‘inner circle o f the Privy Council’ (Peck 1982, 27). Three months later Gorges asked Suffolk and Cecil to support him in token of their past service to Queen Elizabeth, an unsubtle gibe at Northampton and Worcester (PRO SP14/15/33, ff.Sdr-Sd^. In 1604-5 (Hatfield CP 108,99; 86.65) Gorges used Sir Philip Herbert (Earl of Montgomery from 1605), James’s then ‘prime favourite’ (CSPV 1603-1610, 206). Cecil remained Gorges’s most important patron, though. In May 1605 Gorges petitioned Cecil to ensure that Montgomery pleaded his suit to James when Cecil and the rest of the ‘inner circle’ were present (Hatfield CP 86.65). Cecil clearly remained last resort, with Gorges uncertain of the power and commitment of the favourite.
An associate of both Gorges’s and Ralegh’s at this uncertain time was Sir George Carew, a well-rewarded servant of Elizabeth’s who had on James’s accession remained in
favour. In 1604-5 both Ralegh and Gorges chose to baptize their new-born sons ‘Carew’ (Coote 1993, 320; Sandison 1928, 665, n.74). In 1606, when Carew, Lieutenant of the Ordnance, was in line for the vacant job of Master of the Ordnance, Gorges petitioned for the lieutenantship conditional upon Carew’s winning the mastership. (Other jobs vacant at that time, as a result of the death of the Earl of Devonshire, included the wardenship of the New Forest and the government of Portsmouth, both of which Gorges, in his letter to Cecil (Hatfield CP 115.126), admitted were out of his league.) Carew did become Master of the Ordnance, though Sir Roger Dallison, not Gorges, was appointed Lieutenant. Carew’s appointment as Master meant that he was stationed in the Tower of London, near Ralegh.
In these years Gorges’s relationship with Cecil was bumpier than before. In August 1605 Gorges apologised for the use of ‘such chargable meanes ... to cumm neare about him, for ye procuringe his Highness favour’ (PRO SP 14/15/33). The suit pleaded by Montgomery was apparently shamefully slight— ’I protest before Almightye God’ wrote Gorges, ‘yt those yt dealt in it, haue often tolde mee, yt they weare ashamed to see mee aske soe poore a suite att [James’s] bountious hands’ (PRO SP15/15/33, f.54r). Gorges’s correspondence with Cecil began to peter out at about this time, as Gorges turned to Prince Henry, then establishing himself as the major fount o f patronage for disappointed Elizabethan hawks. To such figures the prince’s combination o f youth, Protestant militarism and high moral standards proved irresistible (Wilson 1946; Williamson 1978; Strong 1986; Wilks 1987). In many ways Henry was the opposite of James (Williamson 1978,41).
Gorges’s patronage texts for Prince Henry have a didactic edge. Henry’s age meant that clients such as Gorges could pose as teachers, deploying their accumulated experience and wisdom as acts o f service. This was a favourable situation within which to compose a patronage text: mastery of his subject enabled the writer-client to establish a momentary superiority over the patron that confirmed the client’s worth and honourable status without disrupting the patron-client bond. Henry’s interest in martial topics must have been pleasing, too. Though unable to serve Henry in military action, clients such as Gorges could nevertheless present themselves as honourable martialists by means of texts on military topics. Gorges wrote a sequence of texts of this sort for Henry, some of them probably in association with Ralegh (see Chapter 5; Chapter 6.1). In their writings for Henry both Gorges and Ralegh are careful to stress to the prince the value o f prudence and restraint. Whilst clearly keen for him to pursue an aggressively anti-Spanish foreign policy. Gorges and Ralegh remain anxious that Henry should not be reckless and irresponsible.
It is likely that Gorges acted as a point of contact for Henry and Ralegh (Williamson 1978, 117; Strong 1986, 41, 51), though there is no hard evidence of this (Wilks 1987, n.3). What is certain is that Gorges wrote works for Henry in which Ralegh looms large (see Chapter 5.1-2; Chapter 6.1). The first text he composed for the prince was his narrative account of his service as captain of Ralegh’s flagship on the Islands Voyage of 1597. Gorges dedicated this to Henry in 1607, coupling it with a set o f ‘Notes’ on the navy originally written by Ralegh for Queen Elizabeth (Chapter 5.1)— a presentation astutely appealing both to Henry’s naval interests and to his sympathy with the anti-
Spanish foreign policy of Elizabeth’s reign.^^ Contact between Henry and Gorges is confirmed by the Prince’s Privy Purse accounts (PRO SP14/5%: on 7 June, 1609, a payment o f one pound was recorded ‘To Sir Arthur Gorges man with a cros-bow and a hanger’. (Henry clearly took to the present for he bought ‘a dissone of crosbow arrowes’ (for 14s) later that same month).^^ Further contact between Gorges and the prince is recorded in the accounts on 29 September, 1610.
In November 1609, Henry was setting up his household (Strong 1986, 26). In common with many others. Gorges sought a place with the prince. He sent the royal family a collection of verses for New Year’s Day 1610, including two poems to Henry (see Chapter 3.2), and, some time in 1610 presented the prince with his manuscript Breefe Discourse on naval preparedness and economic policy. On 7 October 1610, Gorges petitioned Robert Cecil for ‘a place of credit about the Prince’, saying he was ‘loathe styll to lyue Idlely, and as on masterless in ye worlde’ (Hatfield CP 128.156). He also wrote directly to Henry to offer his ‘domestic service’, misleadingly stating that he shunned ‘the mediation of great men; for that were to anticipate your own liking in the free election of your servants’ (BL MS Harley 7007, ff.440r-440v).
‘Few narratives could have been more attractive to a thirteen-year-old boy or more surely have directed his attention to Ralegh in the Tower’ (Coote 1993, 333). Another potential intermediary between Ralegh and the Prince was Sir George Carew, who had lodgings in the Tower from 29 June 1608 as Master o f the Ordnance.
Gorges was very interested in such things. Musket-arrows are enthusiastically recommended in his manuscript treatises (see Sandison 1934). At about the same time as he was presenting Henry with the crossbow, he was, according to his neighbour Alexander Prescott, threatening to use his own crossbow to shoot trespassing cattle (PRO STAC8/244/4).
Gorges is not, as far as I can tell, included in any official list of Henry’s officials/^ In the Summer of 1610, however, he boasted that he occupied ‘a place of Right good accomte and trust’ in the prince’s service (PRO STAC8/244/4).^* A letter from Gorges to Henry belonging to April the same year shows that Gorges had been successful in persuading the prince to let him perform services for him. Gorges starts by referring to a ‘deed’ he has persuaded the prince to perform:
For having once gained thereby a general applause o f glory and love in the world by So worthy and virtuous a deed; when it is done, to second the same, I will be ready to acquaint your Highness with a matter, that shall bring unto your coffers, for the better supporting o f your princely state, twenty thousand pounds a year at the least, and to be effected with ease, without wrong to the public, and not needing to sollicit the parliament for the same; and this shall follow in its due time, when the other is effected. And, in the mean time, this may suffice for an answer to all, that shall go about to disgrace your bill in parliament, that it savours more o f a well-policed Christian state, and o f the government o f a wise and giddy prince, rather, with mild and provident remedies, to prevent growing mischiefs, than afterwards to seek to weed them out with rigorous and bloody means, when they are already placed. (BL MS Harley 7007, f.357r)
It is clear from this letter that Gorges was active in devising money-making schemes for the Prince, and successful in getting Henry to look favourably on them. J.W. Williamson proposes that Gorges was behind the plan, rejected by the Attorney-General in October 1610, to obtain for Henry ‘a grant of all the forfeiture arising, or that ought to accrue, to his Majesty from Recusants; his Highness paying yearly to him one thousand pounds more than was answered for those forfeitures’. Perhaps Gorges’s references in the letter to Henry to the policing o f a Christian state refer to this scheme.
Strong has no grounds for saying that Gorges was ‘A [late] addition in 1611 to the Gentlemen o f [Henry’s] Privy Chamber’ (1986, 41). If Gorges held an official post o f this sort he would certainly have mentioned it in some o f the lawsuits considered later in this section.
Williamson suggests that Gorges was one o f two gentlemen whom Henry wanted to advance but about whom Cecil had reservations (1978, 143, n .l6, citing Birch 1760, 134).
Gorges’s language suggests that the ‘bill in parliament’ he refers to later in the letter was also directed against recusants. Probably it was the bill which had been read in the Commons just two days before, recommending more stringent enforcement o f the recusancy laws (‘An Explanation o f the Statute o f 23 Elizabeth, Cap.i, To Retain the queen’s Subjects in their due Obedience’). The issue o f the bill was a proclamation, requiring, among other things, that the departure o f all recusants fi’om London. O f this letter,