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Monday, January 29, 2018

Edward de Vere in Palermo: the final analysis.


Edward de Vere in Transit:

Pt. 1 - How Edward de Vere Didn't Depart Italy (it turns out).

Pt. 2-1 - The Earle of Oxenford a famous man for Chivalrie

Pt. 2-2 - Crocodiles, Prester John and where the Earle of Oxenford wasn't.

Pt. 2-3 - Edward de Vere in Palermo: the final analysis.


Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Edward de Vere in Palermo: the final analysis.Virtual Grub Street. 29 January 2018.


So far, in the previous two sections of this part 2 of Edward de Vere in transit, we have seen that:

1) Edward Webbe claims to have been present at famous events in an order that they did not occur;
2) He provides few details about the places he visited and the few he gives are almost always invented;
3) Nearly all of the correct details of his travels in Russian and the Near East can be found in Hakluyt’s then recently published, and enormously popular, Principal Navigations and Francesco Sansovino’s also popular  Historia Vniversale Dell Origine Et Imperio De Tvrchi;
6) Webbe claims to have visited the land of the mythological figure Prester John;
7) He claims to have tarried with Prester John himself;
8) He claims to have frolicked with unicorns in Prester John’s menagerie;
9) He claims to have seen Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, challenge all comers to combat in Palermo, Italy.
10) History provides no further evidence of the existence of the man “Edward Webbe” or his adventures than appears in his Travailes.
Morever, Webbe’s general description of Egypt could almost be taken entirely from Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones (seven books of Natural Questions).  The mythological relationship between the dolphin with the crocodile began with the Naturalis Historiae (Natural History) of the Elder Pliny and a similarity of appearance between the two was a staple of medieval depictions of sea monsters.  There is every reason to suspect that Edward Webbe is not the “a simple man void of learning” that he represents himself to be.

Webbe returns to England, from his years of sailing and (mostly) slavery, through Italy.  His adventures do not end at the Italian shore.  As in his earlier adventures, description is flawed where it is not lacking and the gripping dramatic crises come rapid fire.  He is well treated, in Bologna, by an English Bishop called “Doctor Poole”.  The only English bishop to fit that description was the famous Doctor Pole who had been dead some 30 years at the time of his visit.  In Rome he meets with mixed treatment and escapes the English College, in that city, and the English Cardinal Allen, by managing to petition the Pope for relief.

In Naples he is tortured for 7 months upon suspicion of being an English spy.  Upon his release, he is informed by the Italians and Spaniards that England has lost its battle with the Spanish Armada and the Queen been taken prisoner.  The year, then, is 1588, and is confirmed by the fact that he arrives back in England in May of 1589.



But what can all of this mean?  What are we to make of it?

There would seem to be three possibilities.  First, Edward Webbe may actually have gone through the adventures he claimed to have survived.  The details could be so fantastical not because he has created them from Latin, Italian and English texts at hand and a fertile imagination but “for that my memory faileth me, by meanes of my great and greeuous troubles.”

Failing this, a pamphleteer named Edward Webbe may have invented his adventures to try to get a piece of the highly lucrative market in travel accounts.  He may have found writing pamphlets was not something by which he could thrive and have made his first pamphlet his last (disappearing thereafter from the scene).

The third option may be the most likely:  A pamphleteer not named Edward Webbe sought to profit by such a travelogue under the pseudonym “Edward Webbe”.  He used the pseudonym but once and went on writing under others and under his own name.  Or perhaps it was he who abandoned pamphleteering after that final attempt to make it pay his bills.

This pamphleteer who wrote what must then be a fictional account left us extensive hints as to his identity if he happened to continue in the trade under his name and others.  By his own description, Webbe entered service and traveled to Russia when he was 7 years of age.  Any formal schooling he received would have had to come before then.  Yet rather than the simple man the author portrayed himself to be, he was clearly well educated. He could read Latin and Italian and was fluent enough in English to write the sophisticated introductory acrostic poem.

Our mystery pamphleteer knew the publishing trade well enough to place his product with William Wright who had just begun publishing the work of Robert Greene, the premiere pamphleteer at the time.  He also had some personal reason to include a chivalrous, dauntless Earl of Oxford in his story. Regardless of these hints, the author could arguably be anyone.  That said, the hints point toward someone in particular.

In the year 1589 — the year before the Travailes was published — Robert Greene, the premiere pamphleteer in London at the time, extended young Thomas Nashe the high compliment of inviting him to write the preface for his volume Menaphon.  Nashe had just been sent packing by his college at Cambridge.  He was determined to make a living by his pen.  Greene saw him as a useful ally and helped him find work.

Freelancing was a hand-to-mouth living, at the time, when one managed to make a living from it at all.  As I pointed out in my Discovered a New Shakespeare Sonnet [link] Nashe surely had to write many more pages under pen names or anonymously than we have yet to attribute to him in order to make ends meet.  He would have to have been continually productive over a wide range of projects.

Two years after the mention of Edward de Vere in Webbe’s Travails, in the dedication to his Strange News, Nashe would announce to the world his delight at being the good friend and drinking buddy of “the most copious Carminist of our time, and famous persecutor of Priscian, his verie friend Maister Apis lapis… Gentle M[aster] William”.  Because the dedication is troublesome for the argument that the traditional Stratford candidate was Shakespeare it is disputed that Apis Lapis (Stubborn Ox) could be the Earl of Oxford.  Had the authorship question not required a convenient blindness all would suddenly be able to see that the Carminist was very likely De Vere.  Thomas Nashe was delighted to be the friend of the Earl of Oxford and wanted to ingratiate himself by a little public flattery.

If the fact that Webbe shared his publisher with the mentor of Thomas Nashe and that he shared Nashe’s trait of flattering the Earl of Oxford in his works are not enough to argue for the possibility that Nashe wrote the Travails in order to cash in on the tremendous popularity of the travelogue genre, there is yet another, and even more striking, shared characteristic.

Two years later still, in 1594, a much more mature Nashe would write a collection of stories disguised as a travelogue called “The Unfortunate Traveller”.  His protagonist, Jack Wilton, travels with Edward de Vere’s famous literary uncle, the Earl of Surrey, who would engage in a tournament in Florence where he “made all his encounterers new scoure their armor in the dust.”  Surrey announces his intent to travel through Italy doing feats of arms.  As he does, however, a letter arrives from Henry VIII ordering him back to England and he and Wilton part ways.

On the other side of the ledger, it must be admitted, Webbe’s Travails are not in a style (better said “lack of style”) that Thomas Nashe had ever employed in any of his acknowledged works.  Actually, it is as far from the slashing style that Nashe so loved as a style can possibly be.  So much so that De Vere’s secretary, Anthony Munday, with his much less ornamented style, begins to come to mind.  For his part, he had a direct relationship with the publisher William Wright who published several of his works between 1580-85.

The one thing that can be said with perfect certainty, regardless who wrote the Travailes, nothing but the base events that could have been gleaned from Hakluyt’s 1589 Principal Voyages and Sansovino’s Universal History… of the Turks rise above the level of fiction (lurid inasmuch as possible).  Not a single detail that can be verified proves to be remotely correct.  Thus Edward de Vere riding through Italy challenging all comers can only be understood to be one more such fiction.  As regards the Earl of Oxford’s travels in Italy, in 1575-6, it has zero evidentiary value.





  • Let the sky rain potatoes! December 16, 2017. "In fact, the sweet potato had only just begun to be a delicacy within the reach of splurging poets and playwrights and members of the middle classes at the time that The Merry Wives of Windsor (the play from which Falstaff is quoted) was written.  The old soldier liked to keep abreast of the new fads."
  • Leonard Digges and the Shakespeare First Folio.  November 30, 2017.  "Upon receiving his baccalaureate, in 1606, Leonard briefly chose to reside in London. After that he went on an extended tour of the Continent which ended around the year that Shaksper died."
  • Falstaff's Sack. August 7, 2017.  'The question Mr. Hart addresses is “Just what is sack?”.  This is not the first time the question has been addressed but his is a particularly thorough attempt at an answer.'





Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Crocodiles, Prester John and where the Earle of Oxenford wasn't.

Edward de Vere in Transit:

Pt. 1 - How Edward de Vere Didn't Depart Italy (it turns out).

Pt. 2-1 - The Earle of Oxenford a famous man for Chivalrie.

Pt. 2-2 - Crocodiles, Prester John and where the Earle of Oxenford wasn't.

Pt. 2-3 - Edward de Vere in Palermo: the final analysis.


Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Crocodiles, Prester John and where the Earle of Oxenford wasn't.Virtual Grub Street. 10 January 2018.


In part 1 of the “Edward de Vere in Transit” series, we’ve seen that the historical record argues against De Vere having visited Palermo during his southward tour from Venice to Rome.  This being the case, we ask ourselves how could Edward Webbe report having seen him there?  In part 2-1, we see that the chronology given by Webbe informs us that he was a slave of the Tartars until the Earl had been to Italy, for his only visit, and returned home to England.

From there matters only get worse.  Having returned to England, Webbe ships out again this time with the fleet of Captain William Burrough on a voyage which was the source of popular London news fondly remembered by Englishmen (though not included in the 1589 edition of Hakluyt).  But he does not seem to know the year the fleet set sail.  The voyage occurred in 1570[1]before the burning of Moscow and certainly before there had been time to return to England after being ransomed from 5 years of slavery.

Webbe’s vessel, we are informed, foundered on the rocks and he returned to England and shipped out on a merchant vessel to Leghorn.  In case the reader holds out hope that he is simply confused about his dates and this might place him in Italy in time to see the Earl of Oxford, perish the thought.  The ship arrives in Leghorn to discover it is under new ownership.[2]  It is loaded with cargo and sent to Alexandria.  On its return it is captured by the Turks and Webbe spends the next 6 years as a slave of the Turks.[3]



While a Turkish slave, Webbe is employed as a gunner.[4]  This affords him the opportunity to travel throughout the East on various military expeditions paralleling those he has apparently read about in Sansovino’s Universal History… of the Turk.[5]  He cites each famous place name but rarely describes anything uniquely endemic, and, when he does, the eye-witness description is incorrect.  He is more confident to cite detail about Cairo than elsewhere.  He describes it all as a person who has read (or, perhaps, heard) a description rather than as an eye-witness.  He informs the reader that the pyramids are corn silos.   “There are seauen Mountaines builded on the out side, like vnto ye point of a Diamond, which Mountaines were builded in King Pharoes time for to keepe Corne in, and they are Mountaines of great strength.”  This has been a common myth, in the West, throughout history but not among the residents of Cairo.  Had they been Webbe’s source, they would have told him that the pyramids were the tombs of the Pharaohs. 

Nile crocodiles, he informs us, are fish that resemble giant dolphins.  They certainly look like no such thing viewed first-hand.  They might be said to look vaguely like some early renderings of dolphins by medieval artists who did not draw them from experience but from description of them as sea-monsters.  But Webbe had been a sailor for all his adult life that he wasn’t a slave.  He should know full well that the two looked nothing alike.

“[W]e staide,” he tells us, “to see the cutting or parting of the Riuer of Nilo, which is done once euery yeere, vpon the 25 of August,”:

the grounde through out the lande of Egipt is continually watred by the water which vppon ye 25 day of August is turned into the cuntries round about, by means of ye wonderfull growing and swelling of the water vpright without any stay at all, on the one side thereof, it is to ye height of a huge mountaine, which beginneth to increase the 15. day of August, and by the 25. of the same moneth it is at the highest, on which day it is cut by ye deuiding of 2 pillars in a straunge fort, neere to the cittie of ye great Caer,…

Actually, this is recognizably a description of the annual flooding of one or another irrigation canal to a region outside of Cairo important enough to merit such expensive construction and maintenance.  The author grossly overstates the size of the dam at the head of the canal and believes there is only one canal whereas there were a number.  Webbe had been years exclusively among Turks.  How did he know the Gregorian calendar dates for these events?  These details give every indication a second-hand account.

From Cairo he is taken next as part of a 500,000 man military force to conquer the land of Prester John.[6]  That wondrous mythical medieval king also has giant sluices at his control and drowns 60,000 Turks.  A peace is brokered and Webbe sees Prester John served his daily meals by 60 kings with gold crowns and frolics with that great king’s menagerie of 77 elephants and unicorns.  There is also “a Beast in the Court of Prester lohn, called Arians, hauing 4 heades, they are in shape like a wilde Cat, and are of the height of a great mastie Dog.”

At the end of the 6 years of such marvelous travels, Webbe finds himself in Constantinople.  He is eventually released from his servitude at the behest of the English ambassador, William Harborne.[7] 

He does return through Italy along a path that could possibly place him together with the Earl in Palermo.  The year, however, is 1588.  The Earl has not been in the country for some 13 years.



[1] Webbe, Edward.  Edward Webbe, chief master gunner, his trauailes (1590).  Edward Arber, ed.  36. n. 1.
[2] Ibid, 4.  All other alternatives closed to him, Arber suggests (with a question mark for date) that somehow he must have seen Edward de Vere during this stopover.
[3] Ibid., 20.
[4] Sansovino, Francesco.  Historia Vniversale Dell Origine Et Imperio De Tvrchi;… (1560, 1564, 1568, 1582).  “I Turchi nel arriuare spararono due uolte l'artiglierie, laqual fui liuellata tanto attache appena toccò le Lance, & si crede che i Bombardieri Christiani de quali si serue il Turco lo facessero a posta,...” 230.  The Turks fired their artillary two times, the which were leveled so low they nearly touched the Lances, & if one can believe it Christian gunners are drawn from among the Turkish slaves to man the posts… 
[5] Ibid.  Webbe also appears to get his information about the great celebrations of Moslem circumcision from Sansovino.
[6] Webbe, 24.
[7] Ibid., 28.


  • Let the sky rain potatoes! December 16, 2017. "In fact, the sweet potato had only just begun to be a delicacy within the reach of splurging poets and playwrights and members of the middle classes at the time that The Merry Wives of Windsor (the play from which Falstaff is quoted) was written.  The old soldier liked to keep abreast of the new fads."
  • Leonard Digges and the Shakespeare First Folio.  November 30, 2017.  "Upon receiving his baccalaureate, in 1606, Leonard briefly chose to reside in London. After that he went on an extended tour of the Continent which ended around the year that Shaksper died."
  • Enter John Lyly.  October 18, 2016.  "From time to time, Shakespeare Authorship aficionados query after the name “John Lyly”.  This happens surprisingly little given the outsized role the place-seeker, novelist and playwright played in the lives of the playwright William Shakespeare and Edward de Vere."




Sunday, January 07, 2018

The Earle of Oxenford a famous man for Chivalrie

Edward de Vere in Transit:

Pt. 1 - How Edward de Vere Didn't Depart Italy (it turns out).

Pt. 2-1 - The Earle of Oxenford a famous man for Chivalrie

Pt. 2-2 - Crocodiles, Prester John and where the Earle of Oxenford wasn't.

Pt. 2-3 - Edward de Vere in Palermo: the final analysis.


Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “The Earle of Oxenford a famous man for ChivalrieVirtual Grub Street. 7 January 2018.


The question, then, from part one of this series, is how can Edward Webbe have seen "the Earle of Oxenford a famous man for Chiualrie" in Palermo, Sicily, issuing “a challeng against al manner of persons whatsoeuer, and at all maner of weapons, as Turniments, Barriors with horse and armour, to fight a combat with any whatsoeuer”?  How can De Vere ever have visited that city?  

Edward Webbe’s biography in the old Dictionary of National Biography includes only the biographical material that can be extracted from the long famous book of his travels, Edward Webbe, Chief Master Gunner, His Travailes.  In 1868, Edward Arber did his usual fine job of editing what has since been the standard popular reprint edition.

Three editions of Webbe’s popular account seem to have been published in rapid succession.  The final complete edition was executed for William Wright.  It is the only edition to include the date of publication on the title page: 1590.  Wright’s shop was extremely busy even compared to other book  sellers of the day.  Among his specialties were news sheets on foreign matters and travels.  The thin Webbe quarto would fit particularly well there.

Wright’s operation deserves our attention for another reason.  At about the same time that he offered the Webbe account he began publishing new works by Robert Greene, the greatest pamphleteer and literary jack-of-all-trades of the day.  Wright seems first to have licensed Greene’s The Royal Exchange (1590), “Fyrst written in Italian and dedicated to the Signorie of Venice, now translated into English, and offered to the Cittie of London.”  Greene did, indeed, read some amount of Italian, but all evidence indicates his knowledge of the language was limited.  No Italian original has ever been found.

In 1591, Wright published The Second Part of Conny-catching.  In 1592, he published A Groats-worth of witte, bought with a million of Repentance.

Edward Arber, the editor of the reprint edition of the Travailes is about as fine an example of an Elizabethan scholar as might be imagined.  His work is impeccable as the rule.  His tables and attempts to give the text a viable chronology are well crafted, as always, but surely he knew that a great deal remained to be explained.  It can only be said that legitimate travel texts from the time were often inconsistent and reported the most ridiculous sights and incidents as direct personal experience.  Such matters do not disqualify an account.


Webbe tells us that he was just 12 years old when he traveled with Captain Jenkinson’s 1566 ambassadorial mission to Moscow.  The account of this mission and many matters relating to Russia and the Turk had just been published the year before in the 1589 first edition of Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation.  Hakluyut’s book was just the latest and most popular of the enormously popular genre of travelogues recounting newly explored and/or discovered lands.  The public was ravenous for the stuff.

Webbe does understand that Jenkinson remained in Russia for 3 years.  At the end of this time, he tells the reader, the Crim-Tartars burned Moscow and took he and 6 other Englishmen as slaves.  There is a problem with this account, however.  Jenkinsen’s embassy left Russia in 1568 and the Crim-Tartars burned Moscow in May of 1571.  Hakluyt did not include direct information on the latter event in his 1589 first edition.  It was very well known recent history but no accounts seem to have been published by 1590 that could have reminded the author of the exact chronology.

Webbe’s problems only begin here.  He claims that he was a Tartar slave for 5 years.  Again, it was widely known that the Tartars had taken English slaves from among the survivors of their sack of Moscow.  It was just the kind of lurid detail to stick in the English mind as an identifying trait of the savage Tartars.  The only detail he gives of his 5 years among the Tartars is an observation on their newborn children that is as exotic as it is fictional.  At the end of the 5 five years, he informs the reader, the 7 men were ransomed by “friends”.  He returned to England.  The earliest this could be is 1576.  The Earl of Oxford is on his way back to England and the author has never set foot in Italy in order to have the chance to see him or hear his challenge.

So then, what are we to make of all of this?  More to come in Part 3.


Be sure to check out the other articles on Shakespeare and the Authorship Question here at Virtual Grub Street.  Here are just a few:


  • Enter John Lyly.  October 18, 2016.  "From time to time, Shakespeare Authorship aficionados query after the name “John Lyly”.  This happens surprisingly little given the outsized role the place-seeker, novelist and playwright played in the lives of the playwright William Shakespeare and Edward de Vere."
  • 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,..."