When I wrote the first installment (“Juliana Penn! Robert Cecil! Who Knew?” [link]) on the surprising relationship between Juliana Penn
and Robert Cecil, I was not aware that diligent search could arrive at a
surprising amount of information on Mrs. Penn, much of it now long forgotten. Again, it was she who sent a now infamous 1591
letter to the Earl of Oxford, demanding payment for rooms let under the bond of
Thomas Churchyard [link][1],
a swatch from which appeared in A Cotswold Family: Hicks And Hicks Beach[2]
and has since been reprinted in all biographies of the Earl.
You know my Lord you had anything in my house whatsoever you
or your men would demand, if it were in my house ; if it had been a thousand
times more, I would have been glad to pleasure your lordship withall.
While Mrs. Beach-Hicks makes clear that there is a
collection of at least some of the letters of Juliana Penn, from which this
swatch to Oxford is quoted, as well as the oft quoted letters she received from
Churchyard, on the matter, she neglects to tell the reader with certainty where
they are deposited.[3]
Almost as surprising as Mrs. Penn’s friendship, through her
son Michael Hickes, with Robert Cecil, is the earliest letter that I have yet
to find between the two. It is dated
October 3, 1588. In it we discover that
Cecil is already well enough acquainted with her that he feels comfortable
calling upon her to act as his front in the purchase of an item he covets among the booty taken from the Armada fleet.
Good Mrs. Penn. I do
receive from you many kindnesses, for which I heartily thank you, and yet at
this time must I make bold with you for a thing which you may get, and to which
I would be beholden to no other but yourself. So it is my Lady Gorge hath a
pretty silver bell, that was Don Pedro's the Spaniard. It was taken at sea. The
weight of it in silver is all that to her it can be valued at. If you of
yourself would desire to buy it, I would willingly pay whatsoever she will ask,
so that it might not be known unto her that I am to have it, for I would not be
beholden unto her; you see how bold I am with you. If I may pleasure you or
yours I will be most ready. And thus wishing you health and long life for my
friend's good your eldest son, I commit you to God. From my Lodging this 3 of
Obre 1588.
" Yor loving frend
" Robt Cecils."[4]
I am not yet aware of how the matter turned out.
This may be the proper place to mention that Robert Cecil
was quite familiar with at least two of Mrs. Penn’s sons. Michael has already been mentioned. After the death of her first husband, Robert
Hickes, Juliana married her husband’s close friend and business partner Arthur
Penn. Arthur would manage her interest in
Robert Hickes’s mercer shop, in Cheapside, until his own death. Some two years after the passing of Robert,
Juliana bought the messuage on Peter’s Hill, that seems clearly to have been the
boarding house in question, and moved into it from over the shop. Her second son, Baptist, must have participated
in the running of the mercer business, taking it over upon the death of Arthur.
It is at about the time of Arthur’s death that Cecil received
a request from Baptist described in an undated letter to Michael.
SIR ROBERT CECIL TO MICHAEL HICKES.
… Sir W. Rawley and I dined together in London : we went to
your brother's shop, where your brother desired me to wryte to my wife, in
anywise not to let anybody know that she paied under 3l.
10s. a yard for her cloth of silver.[5]
So then, in the early 1590s Robert Cecil knew Juliana Penn
as more than the mother of his friend Michael.
He was already long on a familiar basis with the Michael and Juliana and
at least of recent acquaintance with her second son Baptist.
For all the mercer’s shop and boarding house must have brought
in a very decent living, though, they were not the main Hickes-Penn financial
concerns. While Robert Cecil did not need
to avail himself of the service, the Hickes-Penns made most of their wealth
through money-lending at interest (a.k.a. usury). Juliana seems to have learned the business
from her first husband. Michael is somewhat
famous for being also a close friend of Francis Bacon. What is not generally known is that the basis
of the friendship was the monies he would begin lending to the impecunious secretary in 1593. Bacon frequently rolled over the loans — being
unable to meet scheduled payments — until he received the first of his royal
offices (solicitor general) under James I. Second son, Baptist, would prove so capable at usury that he would become one of the
richest men of his time and be created Viscount Campden. Sir Michael Hickes himself was quite a wealthy
man at the time of his death in 1612.
And there is still much more…
[2] Beach-Hicks,
Mrs. William. A Cotswold Family:
Hicks And Hicks Beach. London: William
Heinemann, 1909. 71.
[3]
Ibid., 65. “The letters to and from
Juliana Hicks, who became Juliana Penn, are few in number, but, if they
illuminate her only partially, they illuminate her rather vividly.” This is reported alongside a discussion of
the Hickes family letters included among the Lansdowne MSS.
[4] Ibid.,
73.
[5] Queen
Elizabeth And Her Times, A Series Of Original Letters,… (1838), Thomas
Wright, ed. II. 414.
- Juliana Penn! Robert Cecil! Who Knew? February 11, 2018. "Good Mrs. Penn, I am very sorry to heare how extreme syck you are, by your son Michael,..."
- 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."
- Did Falstaff Write a Poem for Lowe’s Chyrirgerie? December 2, 2017. "Can honour set-to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is that word, honour? air."
- 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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