Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Procedures
- Introduction
- Part I Roots 1548–1562
- Part II Youth 1562–1571
- Part III Emancipation 1571–1574
- 15 Majority and Marriage
- 16 Country Muses
- 17 Country Matters
- 18 Murder
- 19 Mayhem
- 20 Wanderlust
- 21 Desperadoes
- 22 Flight
- Part IV Exploration 1574–1576
- Part V Alienation 1576–1579
- Part VI Intrigue 1579–1580
- Part VII Sedition 1580–1581
- Part VIII Release 1581–1585
- Part IX Reiteration 1586–1591
- Part X Renewal 1592–1595
- Part XI Re-engagement 1595–1599
- Part XII Decline 1600–1604
- Part XIII Aftermath 1604–1613
- Notes
- Appendix: Oxford's Letters and Libel Documents
- Bibliography
- Index
- Liverpool English texts and Studies
21 - Desperadoes
from Part III - Emancipation 1571–1574
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Procedures
- Introduction
- Part I Roots 1548–1562
- Part II Youth 1562–1571
- Part III Emancipation 1571–1574
- 15 Majority and Marriage
- 16 Country Muses
- 17 Country Matters
- 18 Murder
- 19 Mayhem
- 20 Wanderlust
- 21 Desperadoes
- 22 Flight
- Part IV Exploration 1574–1576
- Part V Alienation 1576–1579
- Part VI Intrigue 1579–1580
- Part VII Sedition 1580–1581
- Part VIII Release 1581–1585
- Part IX Reiteration 1586–1591
- Part X Renewal 1592–1595
- Part XI Re-engagement 1595–1599
- Part XII Decline 1600–1604
- Part XIII Aftermath 1604–1613
- Notes
- Appendix: Oxford's Letters and Libel Documents
- Bibliography
- Index
- Liverpool English texts and Studies
Summary
On 17 January 1574 Ralph Lane, then in Greenwich, addressed a deliberately cryptic letter to Burghley, concerning ship-traffic with Portugal and three individuals: Antonio de Guaras, a Spanish agent; one ‘R. B.’; and Lane himself. The Privy Council had offered a lieutenancy first to R. B., who declined, then ‘soodenly resolued vppon another Agent for them, which ys Rowlande Yorck’, overlooking Lane, who was considered too hot in spirit.
Rowland York, evidently the ninth of ten sons of Sir John York, was a man of extraordinary notoriety, as noted by Camden in his 1615 Annales (p. 470), whose Latin was Englished by George Carleton in his Thankful Remembrance of 1624 (p. 116): ‘York was a Londoner, a man of loose conversation, and actions, and desperate.’ The balance of the passage has been cited above in connection with Oxford's 1567 killing of Thomas Brincknell; a translation of 1625, A True and Royal History, gives a slightly different rendering (Book 3, p. 223):
This Yorke, borne in London, was a man most negligent and lazy, but desperately hardy; he was in his time most famous among those who respected Fencing, hauing been the first that brought into England that wicked and pernicious fashion to fight in the Field in Duels, with a Rapier called a Tucke, onely for the thrust: the English hauing till that very time, vsed to fight with Backe-swords, slashing and cutting one the other, armed with Targets or Bucklers, with very broad weapons, accounting it not to be a manly action to fight by thrusting and stabbing, and chiefly vnder the waste.
As we have noted, it was not Rowland York but Edward de Vere who, as early as 1567, killed his man with an unmanly thrust of his rapier beneath the waist.
Rowland York's character may be judged by his subsequent actions (DNB). On 28 October 1580 William Herle reported to Walsingham that York had been arrested on a felony. In 1584 York was caught up in a plot to betray Ghent to the Duke of Parma. In 1586 he joined Leicester's expedition to the Low Countries, where, serving under Sir Philip Sidney, he betrayed the sconce of Zutphen to the Spanish, encouraging Sir William Stanley's more disastrous betrayal of Deventer.
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- Information
- Monstrous AdversaryThe Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, pp. 105 - 107Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2003