And What Rough Beast? A possible link between Yeats and Lenin

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

That is the conclusion of W B Yeats’s famous poem “The Second Coming”, written in 1919. This was a time when the future of Ireland was uncertain and violence seemed to be the only recourse for establishing independence from the United Kingdom. World War One was over, but a state of war existed in Ireland as the British desperately tried to exert control. 

Seen in this context, Yeats’s poem expresses fear for the future, seen in the visionary form of a terrible monster coming from the desert and emerging as a monstrous parody of the Christian hope for the return of Christ. There is an echo of a repeated line from Yeats’s earlier poem “Easter 1916”, namely “A terrible beauty is born”.

However, I wonder if Yeats might not have had another event in mind when he wrote about his “rough beast” with “A gaze blank and pitiless as the Sun”. This was the journey made by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, otherwise known as Lenin, from Switzerland to St Petersburg in 1917. Lenin’s arrival is generally regarded as the spark that lit the fuse of the October Revolution and the birth of Communism in Russia.

Lenin had spent many years honing Marx’s philosophy and working out how a Communist Revolution could be prompted in Europe. Russia, which was primarily a backward agricultural country, did not appear to be prime territory for the overthrow of capitalism, which Marx had envisaged would happen when the mass of workers in industry realized that they were being exploited by the bourgeoisie and took over the factories. However, Lenin’s version of Marxism showed that a Russian Revolution was feasible, as were revolutions throughout Europe.

Lenin therefore spent much of his time travelling in Western Europe and involving himself in the international socialist movement. That was why he found himself in Switzerland in 1916. Meanwhile, events were moving towards revolution in his home country, although the February 1917 Revolution that overthrew the Tsar had not been organized by the Bolsheviks and did not lead to a Socialist government. 

Lenin desperately wanted to be back in Russia, but his problem was that Russia was at war with Germany and the most obvious route from from neutral Switzerland to Russia was through Germany.

The German government knew all about Lenin, and they also knew that a revolution in St Petersburg, led by Lenin, might be just what was needed to take Russia out of the war and enable Germany to concentrate on its western front at a very difficult time for them now that the United States had joined the Allies. It was therefore in Germany’s best interest to give safe passage through their territory to this particular enemy alien.

However, the imperialist Germans, led by Kaiser Wilhelm, were also terrified of Socialist revolution taking place in their own country. Just suppose that Lenin was able to use his journey through Germany to make stirring speeches at every station the train stopped at and light the revolutionary fuse there before doing so in Russia? 

The solution was the “sealed train”. Lenin and his entourage were conveyed in locked carriages from which they could not leave nor could anyone else enter. This applied for the whole journey from the Swiss border to the Baltic Sea port of Sassnitz, from where they took a ferry to Sweden. Not only did Lenin and his party get across Germany in safety, but they also took with them a gift from Germany in the form of a consignment of gold bars. The Russian Revolution was financed at least in part by the German Kaiser.

Winston Churchill was later to describe this event as Germany turning upon Russia “the most grisly of all weapons”. It was one that worked. In March 1918 the new Bolshevik government, led by Lenin, signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that took Russia out of the war. However, this was too late for Germany to do much about the outcome of the war, which was now going very much in the Allies’ favour.

So where does this leave Yeats and his “rough beast” line? The poem “The Second Coming” is highly symbolic, but how do the symbols relate to Lenin? He could hardly have been described as a “rough beast” – certainly not in his appearance and general behavior, and the bestiality of his political actions in ordering the killing of his opponents had not become apparent by the time that Yeats was writing his poem.

However, suppose the rough beast is Communism itself? Yeats might well have regarded this political philosophy as rough, and been aware that it was never going to become the guiding ethos of a nation without exciting considerable opposition that would inevitably lead to bloodshed. The Irish revolution, then in full swing, was not dominated by socialists – although they played their part – and there was never any danger that Ireland would become a people’s republic in the sense that Russia was becoming.

But had Communism’s hour come round at last as Lenin made his way towards St Petersburg? It could be seen as “slouching” in that the journey was hardly a rapid one – Lenin’s party, once in Sweden, had to journey north right round the Baltic Sea and enter Russia from Finland. And once in St Petersburg Lenin did not find things at all easy – he had to escape back into Finland at one stage before the second Revolution in November 1917.

Given the state of Europe in 1919, with Yeats’s Ireland and Lenin’s Russia both in upheaval and uncertain how things would pan out, it does not seem fanciful to regard Lenin’s arrival in St Petersburg as a second coming. And could Yeats have been thinking of the journey in the sealed train as being a form of delivery down a birth canal? Perhaps that is taking the symbolism a bit too far, but if the notion of Communism does have a certain beauty about it, in terms of the recognition of the worth of ordinary people and the value of common purpose, it should also be seen as a “terrible beauty”, as more recent history has shown all too clearly.

© John Welford

Jenny Diver: a noted female criminal

Jenny Diver was born in about 1650 and died on the gallows in 1710 after a lifetime of thievery, mostly in London, in which her cleverness at relieving wealthy people of their property excited a certain amount of admiration, although not from those who were her victims!

Jenny Diver usually worked as the leader of a team, although she was central to the action and never simply sent others to do her dirty work on her behalf.

One stratagem was to wear a dress to which was attached a pair of realistic-looking false arms and gloved hands. The dress would also be stuffed with a cushion to make her look pregnant. Jenny would attend church and sit between two rich ladies. While the ladies knelt to pray and most eyes were reverentially closed, Jenny’s real hands would get to work, relieving the ladies of their valuables and passing them to her companions in adjoining pews. Should one of the ladies discover that they had been robbed, nobody would suspect the pregnant lady whose hands had been in her lap the entire time!

The fainting fit was another good ruse. Jenny would choose a crowd of people, such as might be watching a royal procession go by, then pretend to faint and fall to the ground. While everyone nearby showed concern and tried to help her, their pockets would be swiftly plundered by Jenny’s team members.

One of her more outrageous exploits came when she knocked on the door of a house in Wapping that belonged to wealthy lady named Mrs Mapplebeck. Jenny Diver’s “footman” explained that she was not feeling well but had not got her smelling salts with her. Mrs Mapplebeck asked them in while she went upstairs to find her own bottle of smelling salts – Jenny waited in the lounge while the footman was sent to wait in the kitchen. They took good advantage of this time to help themselves to a good collection of Mrs Mapplebeck’s belongings from both rooms. Just for good measure, when they left the house they drove off in Mrs Mapplebeck’s coach!

The following day, Jenny Diver went to the theatre, still in Mrs Mapplebeck’s coach, and flirted with a young gentleman from Yorkshire who was clearly well-to-do. She suggested that he visit her at home the next day, when her husband would be away. This was, of course, not her own home but a lodging house rented for the purpose. After the young man had undressed and was looking forward to what would follow, Jenny’s maid knocked on the door to say that the “husband” had returned early and was on his way upstairs. The man from Yorkshire hid under the bed and only dared to emerge half an hour later, to find the place devoid of Jenny, her maid, his clothes, and all the cash and valuables from his pockets!

An expected end but immortality of a kind

Jenny Diver later moved to Bristol where her luck ran out and she was arrested and deported to the American colonies. However, she conned her way back and resumed her old ways, only to be caught one last time. This time there was no second chance and she ended up being hanged at Tyburn. However, her reputation was such that she was accorded the dignity of being taken to the gallows in a coach rather than a wagon. She also became a character in John Gay’s 1728 celebration of low life, “The Beggar’s Opera”.

© John Welford

King Arthur - myth or reality?

Legends about King Arthur and his knights are extremely popular, and many people are convinced that the stories are based on historical fact. But is such belief little more than wishful thinking?

King Arthur

Stories about King Arthur have been going the rounds for many centuries, and the characters and basic plotlines have become part of Britain’s national consciousness. Arthur, so the tales relate, ruled from his castle of Camelot, aided by a group of knights who sat in council at a round table so that no-one would take precedence. Arthur was married to Queen Guinevere and he wielded a magical sword called Excalibur.  Or so it is said!

Did he exist?

But how likely is it that King Arthur really existed? The period of history in which he lived, if he actually did so, was after the Romans left Britain, which happened in the early 5^th century, and when people from northern Germany (Angles and Saxons) were entering Britain and challenging the Celtic Britons, many of whom had become Romanized. Several sources tell of a “Battle of Badon” in the late 5^th or early 6^th century at which the Britons defeated the Saxons and removed the threat of invasion for several more decades. The warlord who led the British army is reputed to have been King Arthur.

However, there are all sorts of problems with this account. There is no reliable written evidence that proves that there ever was a Battle of Badon, and certainly no archaeological evidence for it. It may not even be true that the Saxons arrived as a warring invasion force, as is generally imagined; it is quite likely that they came as just a few families at a time to settle peacefully where they could find some spare land to farm. There may therefore be no need to invent a warlord named Arthur to send them packing.

The sources of the legend

The most complete early account of the deeds of King Arthur is that of Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100-55). It is from him that we get the stories of the sword in the stone, the lady in the lake and the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere. Geoffrey was the main source for Sir Thomas Mallory (c. 1405-71) whose “Le Morte d’Arthur” was one of the first books printed by William Caxton, which is a major reason why the Arthur legends became so popular – and widely believed.

But how reliable was Geoffrey of Monmouth as a historian? The answer has to be – not very! Geoffrey wrote his “The History of the Kings of Britain” as a means of proving the legitimacy of the Norman rulers of his own time (he lived during the reigns of Henry I and Stephen). He had very few facts to go on, and he filled the many gaps from his own imagination in order to compile a continuous narrative.

So what were Geoffrey’s sources for the Arthur stories, assuming that they did not all come from out of his own head? The sources do not include Bede (c. 673-735) who is generally regarded as a reliable historian, but Arthur does not get a mention. There are mentions in a collection of early Welsh poetry, but the poems in question may well have been added much later, possibly even after Geoffrey’s time.

The earliest verifiable mention of Arthur is in “History of the Britons” by a Welsh monk named Nennius, who wrote in the 9^th century. Nennius is the chief source for Arthur having fought and won the Battle of Badon, but his account was written some 300 years after the supposed event. Nennius produced a mixture of fact and mythology, in the typical manner of early story-tellers, so it is impossible to rely on any of his work as a historical source. However, is it known that his work was read and accepted as history by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

So where does that leave us?

The net result is that there is no firm evidence that King Arthur existed at all. The whole “Arthur industry” almost certainly derives from stories told round the camp fire that were passed down the generations, probably turned into songs and ballads, and eventually written down by somebody with the knowledge and skill to do so. As we all know, once something is preserved in writing it tends to acquire a reputation for being true, and this is the case with mythologies across the world.

The Arthur legends make excellent stories, and there may well have been a fearsome warlord who won more battles than the average and was celebrated by the bards of his day, but all the Round Table, Lancelot and Excalibur stuff needs to be taken with an enormous dose of salt!

© John Welford

Frances Howard, a 17th-century murderer

Frances Howard was a 17^th century murderer who was lucky to escape the ultimate penalty for her crime but who caused other people to lose their lives on her behalf.

Desire

Frances Howard was born on 31^st May 1590, the daughter of Lord Thomas Howard and therefore a member of a highly-respected aristocratic family. Famous Howards included Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, who had commanded the fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada, and Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII.

Frances was married at the age of 14, her husband being Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was then aged 13. However, due to their youth they were not allowed to live together as husband and wife. Robert was sent off to complete his education, followed by various missions abroad.

Frances was therefore left alone in her aristocratic world to ensnare whoever she wanted as a potential replacement for the role of bedmate. Her eye fell on Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, who had been part of the Scottish coterie of aristocrats who had accompanied King James when he added the throne of England to that of Scotland in 1603.

Intrigue

Rochester was not averse to forming a liaison, but he was wary of offending King James, who had Robert Devereux’s best interests at heart, and he was also not a skilled letter writer. He therefore asked his friend Thomas Overbury to act as his secretary in writing love letters to Frances.

All went well until Devereux returned from Europe with every expectation of enjoying married life with Frances, who was then aged 18. However, she was far more interested in Lord Rochester and refused to yield to her husband’s nightly entreaties.

Frances now had two objectives, namely to depress her husband’s desire for her while at the same time increasing that of Lord Rochester. She therefore employed the services of Mrs Anne Turner, who was known to be able to provide various potions and powders and who worked alongside a somewhat sinister gentleman named Dr Simon Forman.

Mrs Turner duly supplied Frances with what she needed, but the “anti-lust” potion for Robert Devereux did not seem to have much effect. Frances then decided on a different tactic – she wanted to be a widow rather than a wife. However, although the wish was strong, the poisons were never strong enough.

Meanwhile, Frances was worried about Rochester, who was clearly the darling of the Court and surrounded by beautiful women. Rochester made a very good show of not showing affection for Frances, a married woman, because to do so might jeopardise his position. Frances underwent various black magic ceremonies, orchestrated by Dr Forman, to force Rochester to be more forthcoming.

Frances must have believed that the magic was working , because Rochester became infatuated with her. The couple had to keep their affair secret and met at Mrs Turner’s lodgings and a house that Frances bought specially for this purpose. Their secret was known to only one other person, namely Thomas Overbury.

Overbury was unhappy with the relationship, as he believed that it would ultimately destroy his friend, and he told him so. He also started to drop hints at Court that Frances Howard was an adulteress. When Frances got wind of this she realised that Overbury presented a real danger to her and had to be silenced.

Murder

Her opportunity came when Overbury was ordered by King James to become his Ambassador to the Low Countries. Overbury refused – being anxious not to allow Frances a free hand with Rochester – and this was interpreted as a matter of “high contempt” by the King. Overbury was duly sent to the Tower of London.

This could not have worked out better for Frances. She now employed a man named Robert Weston who got himself a position in the Tower as Overbury’s personal assistant and the man who handed him his food. Slipping him doses of poison was therefore going to be easy.

Or it would have been if Weston had not been caught in the act by Sir Gervase Elwes, the Lieutenant of the Tower. Sir Gervase now had a problem, because he knew that Weston was trying to smuggle poisoned food through to his prisoner but did not know on whose orders. For all he knew, the attempt to kill Overbury might have been initiated by King James himself. Elwes therefore stayed silent, but did not allow any more poison to reach Thomas Overbury.

Frances came to realise that her plan was not working, so she removed Weston from the scene and tried a different tactic. This was to contact William Reeve, who was an assistant to the Tower’s physician. She paid him to steal a quantity of mercury sublimate from the prison’s dispensary and administer it to Overbury as a medicine. It did not take long for him to die.

For Frances, everything now seemed perfect. Overbury was dead and she was able to obtain a divorce from Robert Devereux and marry Lord Rochester, who had no idea that his wife had murdered his former best friend.

Denouement

But married bliss did not last long. Frances’s problem was that too many people knew about her activities, mainly because they had been bit-players in her schemes and were therefore able to call upon her to buy their silence. Frances gained little pleasure from the marriage she had schemed so hard to bring about, having instead a constant fear of being found out.

The first crack in the wall came courtesy of William Reeve, whose hands had actually killed Thomas Overbury. Two years after Frances had married Rochester, Reeve fell dangerously ill and decided to tell what he knew in the hope of saving his soul from perdition. Before long King James was told and the house of cards tumbled around Frances’s ears.

Both Frances and Rochester were sentenced to death, as was nearly everybody who had played a part in the Overbury murder. Those sentences were carried out as far as Anne Turner, Robert Weston and Sir Gervase Elwes were concerned, but Frances and Rochester were able to escape the hangman’s noose by virtue of royal pardons. In Frances’s case, this was in recognition of the high service that her family and ancestors had given to the Crown.

They were also able to escape incarceration in the Tower of London, because the King allowed them to stay at the Oxfordshire home of Lord Wallingford, who was Frances’s brother-in-law. The sentence was therefore commuted to house arrest for life. Rochester now had nothing but utter loathing for his wife, who had caused his downfall despite him being completely innocent of any wrongdoing concerning the murder.

Frances died in August 1632, aged 42, from what was described as a “terrible wasting disease”. One just wonders if this was not another way of saying that her husband was eventually able to do to her what she had done to Thomas Overbury, namely cause her death by ingesting poison. It would have been a fitting end to the story.

© John Welford

George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury

George Abbot was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1611 to 1633, during the reigns of King James I and King Charles I.

He was born in Guildford, Surrey, the son of a cloth worker. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and became a fellow in 1583. He became the master of University College in 1597, dean of Winchester in 1600 and was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University three times between 1600 and 1605.

He was appointed to the bishopric of Lichfield in 1609 and London in 1610 before gaining the see of Canterbury in 1611. A noted scholar, he worked on translating the New Testament section of the King James Bible which was published in 1611.

As Archbishop, he performed the consecration of King Charles I but did not always see eye-to-eye with the new monarch, at one time being deprived of his position but later reinstated.

George Abbot has the dubious honour of being the only Archbishop of Canterbury to have killed someone, although this was an accidental crossbow shooting during a deer hunt.

© John Welford

Sir Martin Frobisher

Sir Martin Frobisher (1539-94) was an adventurer during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I who made a name for himself both as an explorer and a military commander.

He came from a wealthy background but preferred a career at sea rather than that of a businessman. At the age of 14 he joined an expedition to West Africa but was soon involved in what must be regarded as piracy.

He became obsessed by the notion that there was a “quick” route to the Far East by sailing to the north of North America - the famed “Northwest Passage”. After several years of fundraising, Frobisher set off in 1576 and got as far as Baffin Island. He returned to England having collected some samples of local rock that were suggestive of gold ore, although the evidence was slight.

Even so, the possibility that there was gold to be found in the far north was enough to allow Frobisher to raise the funds for a much larger expedition, which set sail in 1577. He brought back 200 tons of the supposed gold ore, and the Queen was also interested in the possibility of extending her realm to the new – supposedly rich – lands that Frobisher had discovered.

In 1578 Martin Frobisher set off on a third expedition, this time with the intention of establishing a colony on Baffin Island. However, this came to nothing, and so did the intended gold-exporting business when it was proved beyond doubt that all he had discovered was a vein of iron pyrites, or “fool’s gold”.

Martin Frobisher now turned his attention to aiding Francis Drake in the latter’s state-sponsored harassment of Spanish ships and ports. In 1588 he served under Lord Howard as the commander of one of the four naval divisions that defeated the Spanish Armada. It was for this service that he received his knighthood.

After a short time managing his estates in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire he found the call of the sea and adventure to be too strong and in 1592 he joined Sir Walter Raleigh in a military expedition to the Azores. In 1594 he led a squadron of ships that took part in the Siege of Morlais during the French “War of The Three Henrys”. However, during the siege of Brest, shortly afterwards, he received a gunshot wound from which he died after his return to England.

Sir Martin Frobisher has a deserved place on the list of “sea dogs” who did much to make the reign of Queen Elizabethan I a golden age for England.

© John Welford

Thomas Hooker

Thomas Hooker was an important figure in the history of colonial America, and not just in Hartford, Connecticut, the city with which he is most closely connected. It is therefore surprising that a school building in a village close to where I live should bear a plaque that declares that the “Reputed Father of American Democracy” was once a pupil there.

Market Bosworth, in Leicestershire, gave its name to the battle in which King Richard III lost his life in 1485, but it was also the seat of the Dixie Family. The Grammar School was founded in 1601 under the will of Sir Wolstan Dixie, and is still running to this day.

Thomas Hooker as a Puritan Clergyman

Thomas Hooker was born in 1586 at Markfield, some ten miles from Market Bosworth.  He was the son of a farmer and would have been one of the first pupils of the new Dixie school, from where he proceeded to Cambridge, taking a BA degree in 1608. He was granted a fellowship, endowed by the Dixie family, and remained at Emmanuel College until 1618.

Emmanuel was a distinctly Puritan college, and Thomas Hooker became a clergyman with a very Puritan outlook, meaning that he believed more in personal spiritual growth than adherence to Church dogma.

Hooker became rector of St George’s, Esher, Surrey. In 1621 he married Susannah Garbrand and they soon had two daughters, both of whom were eventually to become the wives of clergymen in America.

As a puritan, Thomas Hooker objected to the marriage of Prince Charles (later to become King Charles I) to a Catholic Spanish princess, and this marked him out as a potential troublemaker. This reputation grew when he moved to Chelmsford in Essex and he preached many sermons in favour of the nonconformist cause, emphasising individual salvation and castigating the established Church for its oppression and its laxity in spiritual matters. His sermons appealed to a wide swathe of the population, being direct and lively and free of classical allusions. A number of them were published.

He opened a school in Essex, where his family grew further with two more children being born who survived to adulthood. However, his puritan, anti-establishment views were becoming known in high places, and he eventually fell foul of the conformist Bishop of London, William Laud. In 1630 he was summoned to the Bishop’s court but chose to go into hiding, and then exile, rather than fight a case that he knew he could not win.

Thomas Hooker’s Escape to America

In June 1631 Thomas Hooker escaped to the Netherlands, returning only in 1633 to collect his family and take ship for Boston, which they reached on 4th September.

Hooker became the pastor of a church at Newtown (which is now Cambridge, MA), where he found a number of former friends from Essex who had preceded him to the colony. He stayed at Newtown until May 1636, when the decision was made to move further south and west, mainly because of the need to find better grazing land.

The place chosen for the new settlement was known by the natives as Suckiaug, on the banks of the Connecticut River, but was renamed Hartford after the English town of Hertford.

Can Thomas Hooker’s Reputation be Justified?

Thomas Hooker’s reputation as the “Father of American Democracy” comes from his activity during the formation of a colonial confederation of Connecticut towns in 1638. He preached a sermon in which he reminded the citizens that the authority of the leaders of the people depended on the consent of the people to be governed by those leaders. He merely extended to civil society the principle that pertained to church governance within the nonconformist tradition.

The resulting document became known as the “Fundamental Orders” (adopted in January 1639), which set out the conditions under which the Connecticut colony would be run as an entity distinct from that of Massachusetts Bay. It was what might be termed a “proto-Constitution”, in that it contained elements that were to be repeated in later constitutions, and eventually found their way into the Constitution of the United States.

In particular, the Fundamental Orders established the principle of magistrates being elected by secret ballot. It stressed the rights of the individual and set limits on the power of government. The Connecticut colony differed from Massachusetts in that non-members of the church were eligible to stand for office, thus enshrining the principle of the separation of church and state.

The claim that this was the world’s first written constitution was accepted for many years, although modern historians dispute this. It has however led to Connecticut becoming known as the “Constitution State”. Thomas Hooker’s role in this development would seem to have been elevated beyond its rightful place, and to call him the “Father of American Democracy” is somewhat exaggerated. All he did, in reality, was to point out how an Independent church managed its affairs, with the implication that a civic community could do the same.

Thomas Hooker’s role was not in government but in the church. He continued to lead his church in Hartford for the rest of his life, which ended on 7th July 1647. The link between the wall of a school in a Leicestershire market town and the American Constitution is a fascinating one, although the word “reputed” on Thomas Hooker’s blue plaque should not be ignored.

© John Welford