Leonard Digges with Context (Shakespeare Authorship and the Small World Problem, Part 1)

In this series:

• Leonard Digges and the Shakespeare First Folio.
• Leonard Digges with Context.
• What Happened to the Shakespeare First Folio Commendatory Verses?

Oxfordian research has certainly become the obsession of many.  The search for irrefutable proof has led to the inspection under high powered microscopes of anything that might prove to be evidentiary.  The record of every birth, marriage and death that has survived to the present day is being sought out, evaluated, and given its proper place.  Every name in every variant spelling is given a genealogy, a region and location.  Every record that shows more than one name is evaluated for what it might suggest about family and social relationships.  Internet comment threads on the matters are followed as eagerly and as deadly seriously as episodes of The Game of Thrones.

Traditional scholars availed themselves more sparingly of the same sources.  Their search for relationships have handed down possible Stratford Shaksper links and methodologies to be wielded by the “Strat” (Stratfordian) Authorship effort. Thomas Russell married Anne Digges we are told.  They moved to Alderminster.  Alderminster is some 5 miles outside of Stratford-Upon-Avon.  Leonard Digges, Anne’s son, wrote one of the commendatory poems for the First Folio.  “Voila!” cry the Strafordian opposition.  “Shakespeare and Digges were personal friends.  Digges, after this fashion, establishes with certainty that the Stratford man wrote the plays in the Folio.”

I’ve recently pointed out the reasons why Digges is highly unlikely to have known Shaksper of Stratford-Upon-Avon, the propinquity of Alderminster aside, and received, by way of Stratfordian reply, that Digges was friends at Oxford with a fellow student who was a young member of the Stratford Combes family, that the King’s men performed at Oxford during Digges time as a student, that young men like Digges were great fans of the theater and especially Shakespeare, etc.

Onlookers have added that Digges was sure to have met Shaksper during his his return to Alderminster on college vacations.  But, while Thomas Russell had lived in Alderminster prior to the Digges’s move there, the Diggeses had not.  After the death of Leonard Digges’s biological father, Thomas Digges, the family continued to live in London.  The extended family was very well established there.

Upon his own father’s death, in 1559, Thomas Digges was taken in as a ward of John Dee.  As an adult, Thomas would carry on his famous father’s mathematical and astronomical pursuits.  Upon his father’s death he inherited not only wealth but friendships with all the finest intellectuals of London and its environs including Baron Burghley and his guardian John Dee.  He would also serve in parliament, and other official capacities, building still more considerable wealth and high-end social connections in and around London.

Some years after Leonard’s father died, his mother was proposed marriage by Thomas Russell, a lawyer.  As was so often the case with a widow’s second marriage, Russell’s offer was an excellent financial move.  He would be marrying up and gaining ₤12,000 and more into the bargain.  His wife’s fortune, however, was bequeathed upon the condition that she never remarry.[1]  She is said simply to have dispensed with the formalities of wedlock and moved into Russell’s house in Alderminster near Stratford-Upon-Avon. 

A Mr. David Kathman has written that the entire family moved to Alderminster[2] but there would seem to be no evidence to the effect that either of the sons accompanied her.  There is plenty to argue that, absent direct evidence to that effect, the son’s should be considered to have remained behind in London. Dudley the elder son would sue his step-father in the London courts, in future years, over the provisions of his father’s will.  He is said to have included aspersions in the legal paperwork describing Thomas Russell in the most disrespectful and insulting terms.[3]

Alderminster would have no educational facilities to even begin to compete with those available in London.  The sons’ futures would have been severely impaired by leaving the benefits and the social milieu of the city.  Upper middle class young men with the least ambition would have chosen London without hesitation.  Their mother had certainly forfeited any right to override their personal choices had she wished or the choices of a suitable adult prepared to step in as guardian.

The original will had left Dudley, the elder son, a wealthy man upon reaching 24 years of age.  He would have been able to borrow against the inheritance from the moment his father died. Leonard, the second son, was bequeathed enough to live modestly and to pay for an Oxford education.  Their mother’s household having moved, the London house would always be available to them free of charge.  Or they might have stayed with family or friends until they reached their majority and rented out the house for additional income in the meantime.

So then, context is essential.  There is little likelihood that Leonard Digges ever lived in Alderminster or traveled there during his Oxford vacations.  All signs are that he lived in Oxford and London during all of his life that he was not traveling in Europe.  There is only one occasion that we know with certainty that he visited Stratford-Upon-Avon.  He seems to have arrived at the invitation of the aforesaid young Combes who he had befriended as a fellow student at Oxford.  It was 15 years after the death of Shaksper of Stratford and the letter that tells us of his visit also informs us that he was not familiar with the place and had to ask questions of the locals in order to learn a  bit about it.  He gives no sign that he even briefly visited the house or the tomb of Shaksper.

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[1] Green, Nina.  The Oxford Authorship Site.  http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-86-204.pdf.

[2] Shakespeare beyond Doubt, ed. Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, 127.
[3] Green, http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-86-204.pdf.  Palmer, Alan and Veronica.  Who's Who in Shakespeare's England,  210.  

• How Edward de Vere Didn't Depart Italy (it turns out).  July 19, 2017.  "It seemed that Pasquale Spinola must have been mistaken or misled.  There would not have been nearly enough time to visit Florence, Siena, Rome, Naples and Palermo and to return to Venice.  Such a trip took considerable time in the 16th century."
• Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583.  July 5, 2017.  "The brief Viscount Bulbeck being the son of the renowned poet and playwright Edward de Vere, we might have hoped to have the text of the father’s own memorial poem.  As far as traditional literary history is concerned, no such poem has yet been discovered."
• Shakespeare's Apricocks.  February 21, 2017.  "While he may never have been a gardener, he does seem more than superficially knowledgeable about the gardens of his day.  One detail of such matters that he got wrong, however, is as much to the point as any."
• Shake-speare and the Influence of Ronsard.  May 22, 2014.  "If Shake-speare were actually born in 1564, the question should naturally arise as to why so many of the sources for his works were written between 1560 and 1580,..."
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.



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