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Monday, March 05, 2018

The Cecil-Penn Correspondence Regarding Charles Chester


Having provided introductory material (“Introduction to The Cecil-Penn Correspondence Regarding Charles Chester [link]), we may proceed with minimal commentary. Robert Cecil's first letter is conciliatory, but firm:

Mistress Penn because you are my very good friend, I have thought good to make a difference between your house and others in like cases presuming so much upon your discretion as that you will surely deliver up all such papers, books, caskets or other things belonging to Charles Chester (who is by my Lord Admiral and me committed close prisoner to the Gate-house), upon this my private letter as if I had sent expressly a Pursuivant to make a search : which I will not offer unto you, although it be creditably informed that your house hath been of long time his chief receptacle, and that there are in your house divers things of his fit to be reviewed. And thus requiring you that they may be all forthcoming, I leave you to God. From the Court, this 20th of June 1592.
Your loving friend Ro. Cecill. "
You shall do well to deal clearly in the discovery of such things as be in your house, for his confession will otherwise discredit your denial.[1]

The next letter is that quoted in my earlier “Juliana Penn! Robert Cecil! Who Knew? [link]. Cecil writes to her from Theobald's, his father's country house :

good Mrs. Penn. I am very sorry to hear how extreme sick you are by your son Michael my friend; and the rather understanding that you have not been well ever since you were here. If you took any cold by coming to my lord's house, being not very accustomed to stir abroad of long time, I hope it will away with discreet and warm keeping. If any other conception should trouble you, surely this letter may assure you that there was not, nor is, the least suspicion conceived of any privity of yours to any ill of his who is now a Prisoner in the Gate-house. For my part I do wish the poor soul no harm. Some things there are found out of his lewd disposition to the State, which is the cause of his Restraint. With time it may be qualified; wherein, though no private respects shall make better or worse my conception of any man's offences, yet shall I be the more apt in pity to deal for him (I must confess) if he do forbear, according to his vile humour, to rail at my (?) Henry Cecil out of prison by letters whereof I am imformed; being of my blood, and one who never deserved of him but too well. For the letter you sent, it showed your sincerity, of which I was never doubtful, as I have told your son often when he sued to me for him.
I wish you health and contentment and so do bid you
heartily farewell. Your loving friend Ro : Cecyll."[2]



Suspecting that he has been toyed-with by the hostess of a rooming house, Cecil begins to show his teeth.  Had Mrs. Penn not been the mother of his friend, and an acquaintance of some years, he would have sent an agent to take what he demanded and she would be answering any further queries from inside a cell.

I have foreborne for your children's sake to do by you as I would have done by your betters. And, in that your answer was that you wanted spectacles, I have forborne to send to you. But I do fear it will prove that your house has fostered him to no good purpose. And it will go near to be proved that in your hearing his tongue hath walked further than to speak of subjects. Your silence in answering me, as though you scorned me for dealing friendly with you, and your privy intelligence with him since his apprehension, I can assure you must be answered. I love (I confess) your sons well, but do not imagine that any of their credits with me shall make me blind when I am ill-used. And thus I bid you Farewell.
Ro : Cecyll.
I will expect your answer, and that such you will affirm in writing to be true. And if it come not the sooner I will send a Pursuivant to your house which would be loath (to do)!

One can only assume that Cecil now promptly received the papers and effects he demanded. As Hicks-Beach points out in her volume, there are numerous signs that Mrs. Penn and Robert Cecil remained on friendly terms after this affair.[3]




[1] Hicks-Beach, Susan.  A Cotswold Family: Hicks and Hicks Beach, 75-6
[2] Ibid., 76-7.






Introduction to The Cecil-Penn Correspondence Regarding Charles Chester


In "Juliana Penn! Robert Cecil! Who Knew?" [link], the first of my short essays on the relationship between the two figures from the life of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, I presented two undated letters from Robert Cecil to Mrs. Juliana Penn.  The letters are estimated to have been written around 1591 or ’92.

It was at that time that Mrs. Penn wrote her infamous letter to the Earl demanding he and/or Thomas Churchyard pay the back bills one or both of them owed to her.  The letter to Oxford and the letters from Churchyard to the hostess being substantial pieces of evidence toward identifying Churchyard as the model for the character Falstaff, in Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays,[1] I include them in my Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff  [link].  As I point out in the book, the Mrs. Penn episode provided the London literati with entertainment.  So much so that it features at various points in the infamous literary battle between Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe.

In the first letter Cecil is surprisingly solicitous.  He asks after Mrs. Penn’s health, she having caught a chill during a visit to Cecil House on the Strand.  The subject of the visit is left vague but includes the following:

…surely this letter may assure you that there was not, nor is, the least suspicion conceaved of any privity of yours to any ill of his who is now a prisoner in the Gate-house.
At that point, I could not identify who was the prisoner in question.

Having discovered the identity of the prisoner soon afterwards, and a great deal more, the next essay — "Juliana Penn, Robert Cecil and the Silver Bell, &c." [link] — seemed a proper intermediary toward that presently before the reader.  It turns out that Penn and Cecil were acquainted from at least 1588, and, given the familiar tone of a letter from that year, almost certainly earlier.

The prisoner in the gatehouse was Charles Chester.  By all appearances, the man was a member of the Bristol Chesters.[2]  Juliana Penn having been brought up in Bristol,[3] she may have been (among all else she was) the London node of a network to advance certain Bristol families’ interests.



It is eye-opening to learn that Mrs. Penn had the audacity to try to delay the capture of Chester — perhaps even to avoid it — much to the consternation of Cecil.  This is the subject of the letters between them, the first of which was dated “20th of June 1592”.  By the information available to Mrs. Susan Beach-Hicks we learn that:

The State papers make no mention of the affair, and it was evidently of minor importance as a State affair, although, as a personal affair, it must have agitated several lives. It made no permanent breach in Juliana's friendship with the Cecils. Robert continued to be the widow's useful friend.[4]
Penn’s assiduous descendant does not seem to have discovered the outcome of the case.

With this, then, by way of introduction, I proceed to the letters that have been made public relating to the matter.  Only the Cecil side of the correspondence would seem to be available at present.

Continue to The Cecil-Penn Correspondence Regarding CharlesChester [link] >>>




[1] Shakespeare, William. 2 Henry IV, II.ii.
Host. O my most worshipful lord, an't please your Grace, I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit.
Ch. Just. For what sum ?
Host. It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all, — all I have. He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his: — but I will have some of it out again, or I will ride thee o' nights like the mare.
[2] Hicks-Beach, Susan.  A Cotswold Family: Hicks and Hicks Beach, 75-6
[3] Ibid., 57.  ‘" Julyan my welbeloved Wief" is described in every Hicks pedigree as Juliana Arthur of Clapton in Gordano, near Bristol;…’
[4] Ibid., 78.



  • Juliana Penn, Robert Cecil and the Silver Bell, &c.  February 25, 2018.  “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.”
  • Juliana Penn! Robert Cecil! Who Knew?  February 11, 2018.  “…there was not, nor is, the least suspicion conceaved of any privity of yours to any ill of his who is now a prisoner in the Gate-house.”
  • Edward de Vere in Palermo in the final analysis.  January 29, 2018.  “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.”
  • 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.'
  • Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.