Francis Bacon paid the wherryman at the Lambeth Stairs and walked along the trail winding through the marshy banks on the south side of the river. Morton’s Gatehouse rose before him, five stories of red brick trimmed with white stone. He passed through the gate and across the courtyard toward the palace proper, considering the best approach to his upcoming audience with Archbishop Whitgift.
Although Lambeth sat nearly due south across the river from Whitehall, Francis rarely had occasion to visit and the contrast between the two palaces struck him every time. Whitehall was the main center of the English government, even when the queen was in residence elsewhere. It drew men and women from every corner of England and every country in Europe, some on matters of greatest importance, others merely to gawk at the fountains and the tournament field. Everyone wore their best clothes. Their costly garb added color to the vibrant scene.
At Lambeth Palace, most of the visitors and occupants wore somber clerical garb, the hems of their long robes dusting the ground. No vendors hawked sweet buns or bitter ale. No clusters of cheerful foreigners stood about pointing and chattering. And while the palace in no way resembled a Vatican-upon-Thames, as Martin Marprelate would have it, it did have the hushed and secretive atmosphere of a center of religious power.
Francis had readily been granted an appointment, even on such short notice. He and his brother Anthony had lived in John Whitgift’s house at Cambridge University when His Grace was Master of Trinity College. The Bacon boys had been thus honorably lodged thanks to their father’s position as the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Now Sir Nicholas had fallen, while Whitgift had risen to the highest seat a cleric could attain in England.
The archbishop sat in the tall chair on the dais in his reception chamber, wearing the sleeveless black gown of his office over billowing white sleeves, his head fully covered by a black coif topped by the square black Canterbury cap. He beckoned Francis forward with a flick of his bony fingers.
Francis bowed from the waist before saying, “Thank you for seeing me, Your Grace.”
“How not, my boy? I remember, as if it were yesterday, our struggles to find something your brother could eat without distress.” Whitgift smiled fondly at his former pupil.
“Tempus fugit, Your Grace. It seems so long ago to me.” It had been fifteen years ago — more than half Francis’s life — and he’d only stayed for a few terms. He’d found university boring. Aristotle, Aristotle, all day long, as if he hadn’t read that dull philosopher’s complete works by the age of ten. His mother was a better tutor than any Cambridge master.
“Do you hear from Anthony?” the archbishop asked.
“Not as often as I could wish. He’s still in Montauban, still writing a weekly report for us, although some weeks I hear nothing from him.” Also still spending far beyond his means. If Anthony ever made it home, he’d have to squeeze in with Francis at Gray’s to save money.
“And your mother?”
“She is well, Your Grace. It’s kind of you to ask.”
“She was so pretty when she was young. Long before you knew her!” Whitgift chuckled. “You take after her, my boy. You have her eyes.”
Francis smiled, noticing the papery quality of his old tutor’s cheeks and the lengthening lines around his eyes. He must be nearly seventy, a trifle younger than Lady Bacon. A decade younger than Lord Burghley. The old generation was fading, aging alongside their queen. But still in her service, still holding the reins of power.
For how much longer? And who would replace them? Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, for one. Robert Cecil, for another. But not Francis Bacon if things continued in their present direction.
“I know why you’re here,” Whitgift said. “Lord Burghley asked me to give you whatever help I can. No one is more eager than I am to see that foul-mouthed Martin Marprelate caught and hanged.”
That was not precisely Francis’s mission, but this wasn’t the time to split hairs.
“I blame him, if you want to know,” Whitgift grumbled, “for making this nonsense possible. He’s nothing like as moderate as the queen, though he feigns agreement.”
Francis had to make a mental leap to catch up. The old man meant Lord Burghley, whose personal sympathies lay with the nonconformists, at least the more moderate ones. He liked a plain church and an emphasis on reading the Bible rather than sitting in splendor to witness an elaborate weekly ritual. Nevertheless, he had always supported Her Majesty’s policies concerning religion.
Whitgift rumbled on. “I thought when Leicester passed — may God rest his soul in peace — these radicals, these change-alls, these never-satisfied zealots, would lose their chief advocate on the Privy Council. His Lordship may be gone, but his allies live on. Burghley, Cobham, Knollys. Too many!”
Lord Burghley had married Francis’s mother’s sister. Baron Cobham was his Aunt Elizabeth’s neighbor and the father of Robert Cecil’s new bride. Leicester’s brother, the Earl of Warwick, had married the sister of Elizabeth’s late husband, John Russell. Sir Francis Knollys’s daughter Lettice was Leicester’s widow and the mother of the queen’s young favorite, the Earl of Essex.
The webs of kinship and common interest were densely woven among the queen’s old guard. In the dangerous years of her youth, she had relied on the staunchest Protestants, choosing many close counselors whose kin had fled to Germany during the Marian years to avoid a fiery martyrdom. They married, had children, and then used their children to strengthen their bonds.
In contrast, archbishops entered the Church from a university, first making a name at Oxford or Cambridge. They might come from anywhere, from families of no importance. Whitgift’s father had been a Lincolnshire merchant, for example. If such men wanted power, they had only the clerical ladder to climb and no children to help extend their reach.
Listening to the old man’s grumbling, Francis recognized two things. First, the archbishop’s view of the Marprelate controversy was wholly political. He saw Martin as the pawn of some powerful figure, perhaps even someone on the Privy Council. Second, he failed to understand the popularity of Presbyterian ideas among the middling sort, merchants and prosperous yeomen who had achieved literacy and wanted more say about their manner of worship. Whitgift had lectured at Cambridge, but he had never preached in a parish church. He had no sense of the common Englishman.
“The queen must replace the Earl of Leicester with a moderate man,” Whitgift said. “A true friend of the true church.”
“Do you have any idea who she’ll choose?”
Whitgift grunted. “That whelp Robert Cecil, if his father has anything to say about it, which he will, mark my words. He’s already bringing him to every meeting. I don’t like it.”
His gaze shifted toward the door. Francis knew his allotted time was nearly up and he hadn’t asked any of his questions. “I wanted to ask Your Grace, in confidence, if you have learned anything from the men who were arrested last autumn that hasn’t been generally reported.”
“Arrested! Pah! We caught a few minnows and took statements from them, but the other councilors made us release them. I would have hanged them, each and every one.”
“For preaching?” As far as Francis knew, the raids conducted in November and December had yielded only a few well-known hotheads, against whom Whitgift had long-standing grudges, and a few rumors of Martin-like books being written by unnamed parsons in vague locations.
“For aiding and abetting a seditious rebel!” Whitgift’s long hands gripped the carven arms of his chair. “And worse, for refusing to admit it. But no, no! We were obliged to let the little fish swim back to the whale, leaving him lurking safely in his lair.”
Did whales live in lairs? Francis supposed they might do. There could be whole cities under the sea, for all anyone knew. Their inhabitants were as likely to yield clues about Martin as the poor parsons that had been netted so far.
“Do you have any idea where Martin might be?” Francis asked. “Or who is helping him?”
“Martin Malcontent has support in high places, mark my words. Spurred on and cosseted, especially by women with too much education, too much money, and too little supervision. They resent the masculine power of the Church and seek to undermine it by stealth, harboring banned preachers and writers of seditious trash.”
“I’m not sure that’s the —”
Whitgift either didn’t hear him or couldn’t stop himself. “I wish your father were still alive, my boy. He would know how to manage women like your moth —” He broke off with a cough. “How to manage such meddlers. Pah! They believe themselves to be beyond the reach of the law, but they are not. They are not! They may be women, but they can be caught, and they can be punished.”
He leveled his glassy gaze, laden with meaning. Francis took it as a warning. “I am sure my lady mother understands her duty to the Church as well as the Crown. But I will speak with her, I promise.”
That empty promise was met with a derisory grunt. They both knew Francis had no control over his mother, who had ruled her small fiefdom as femme sole for ten years.