⁶⁰ For many years the fullest account of these events was Margaret Dowling's ‘Sir John Hayward's troubles over his Life of Henry IV,’ The Library, 4th ser., 11 (1930), 212–24.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Wolfe's account of the book's origins, of his role in its publication and of its removal from circulation is found in a summary transcript of his interrogation (13 July 1600), PRO SP 12/275, no. 28. Wolfe was apprenticed in 1562 and first appears as a printer in Florence in the mid-1570s. He caused a stir in London in the early-1580s by challenging press monopolies by illegally printing titles reserved by Queen's Privilege to others. The Stationers appear to have co-opted him: by 1587 he was beadle of the company. After 1593, when he became Printer to the City, he worked exclusively as a publisher, contracting his printing work to other shops. He printed or published over 400 titles, including many in Italian, and was a principal source of books reporting on the Protestant-Catholic struggles in France. His name is linked to several surreptitious editions of Machiavelli, to certain notable civilians (especially Aretini), and to both the Marprelate and Harvey-Nashe-Greene controversies (Harvey was a close associate). Wolfe died in 1601. The fullest account of his career is by Huffman, Clifford C., Elizabethan Impressions: John Wolfe and His Press (New York, 1988)Google Scholar, although mention of Hayward's book is restricted to a single note (p. 180). For more on Wolfe's work, see Hoppe, Harry R., ‘John Wolfe, printer and publisher, 1579–1601,’ The Library, 4th ser., xiv (1933), 241–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sellers, H., ‘Italian books printed in England before 1640,’ The Library, 4th ser., v (1924–1925), 107Google Scholar; McKerrow, R. B., ed., A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books, 1557–1640 (London, 1919), 296–8Google Scholar. See also Plomer, H. R., ‘An examination of some existing copies of Hayward's “Life and Raigne of King Henrie IV,”’ The Library, 2nd ser., iii (1902), 13–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶² Arber, , iii, 134.Google Scholar

⁶³ A detailed account of Harsnett's involvement appears in W. Greg, W., ‘Samuel Harsnett and Hayward's Henry IV,’ The Library, 5th ser., xi (1956), 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁴ PRO SP 12/275, no. 28 Wolfe: ‘it had no epistle dedicatory or to the reader when first brought to him; after some conversation between them, it was dedicated to the Earl of Essex.’

⁶⁵ PRO SP 12/275, no. 28. He ‘went three or four times, by direction of the doctor, to the Earl, he being then at the Court at Richmond, to learn what he thought of it, but was always put off by some of his men that his Lordship was much busied about his voyage to Ireland, and so never spoke to him.’

⁶⁶ PRO SP 12/278, nos. 54, 63, 94; and below, 26–7, 33.

⁶⁷ PRO SP 12/275, no. 28.

⁶⁸ The dedication page contained on its verso a list of ‘Faultes escaped in the printing’ (see text), a practical reason for preserving it. But Coke's notes (PRO SP 12/275, 25) seem to confirm the excision, as does Chamberlain's letter to Carleton, below.

⁶⁹ The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. McClure, N. E. (Philadelphia, 1939), i, 70.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ The Ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba. Fower Bookes of the Histories of Cornelius Tacitus. The Life of Agricola (STO 23643) and The Annales of Cornelius Tacitus. The Description of Germanie (STC 23644; both 1598). At the time of the Essex rebellion, in Feb. 1601, Savile spent a short time in private custody. Grenewey's dedication calls history ‘a true and lively pattern of things to come …;’ the same volume's ‘A. B. to the Reader’ tells us ‘For Historie …, what Studie can profit in so much, as that which gives patterns either to follow or to flee…?’ The First Part's introductory ‘A. P. to the Reader’ praises historians for setting forth ‘unto us not onely precepts, but lively patterns, both for private directions and for affayres of state,’ a purpose to which Elizabeth's officials later proved explicitly unsympathetic.

⁷¹ (Italics mine.) Elizabeth's refusal to settle the succession question enabled her to keep competing interests, domestic and foreign, at bay. Parson's advertisement of the question's implications was accordingly seditious. She objected as well to the dedication, with its suggestion of a subject sharing in her own prerogative. Although she did raise the matter with Essex, she apparently never doubted his loyalty. The incident so shook the earl, however, that he fell ill and kept to his bed for several days.

⁷² See James, , ‘Crossroads,’ 437Google Scholar. An example of Hayward's preoccupation with this subject is his somewhat unfair characterization of de la Pole as a ‘merchant's sonne of London,’ below, 72.

⁷³ As early as 1578 her relative, Sir Francis Knollys, found the phrase ‘Richard the Secondes men’ a readily understood shorthand for the favouritism he found rampant at Elizabeth's court: Wright, Thomas, Queen Elizabeth and Her Times, 2 vols. (London, 1838), ii, 75Google Scholar. Ten years later Henry Carey (father of the Lord Chamberlain and Essex's great-uncle) protested his own political virtue with the comment ‘I was never one of Richard II's men.’ Cited by Strickland, Agnes, Lives of the Queens of England, 12 vols. (New York, 1840–1848), iii, 540.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ For a thorough commentary on the corruption of the quarto texts of the depositen scene, see A. W. Pollard's introduction to his facsimile edition of Q3 (London, 1913).

⁷⁵ A much discussed point. An abstract of testimony at the first Essex trial (5 June 1600), alleges that ‘Essex's own actions confirm the intent of his treason. His permitting underhand that treasonable book of Henry IV to be printed and published; it being plainly deciphered, not only by the matter, and by the epistle itself, for what end and for whose behalf it was made, but also the Earl himself being so often present at the playing thereof, and with great applause giving countenance to it.’ (PRO SP 12/275, no. 35). This comment, by Coke, has been taken by some scholars as indication of a connection between Hayward's book and Shakespeare's play, but the dating of both makes that unlikely. Albright, Evelyn May, ‘Shakespeare's Richard II and the Essex Conspiracy,’ PMLA, 42, 628–720Google Scholar; Heffner, R., ‘Shakespeare, Hayward and Essex,’ PMLA, 45, 754–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MissAlbright, 's reply, ‘Shakespeare's Richard II, Hayward's History of Henry IV, and the Essex conspiracy,’ PMLA, 46, 694–719CrossRefGoogle Scholar; more by Heffner and a counter by Miss Albright in PMLA 46, 898–901Google Scholar. Heffner's view seems the more likely: that the Essex clique privately staged a pageant recreating essentially the same material covered both in Shakespeare's play and The First Part.

⁷⁶ PRO SP 12/278, no. 94, in 1601 (see below). As late as 1615 Francis Bacon, prosecuting Oliver St. John for sedition, could charge, ‘I see you follow the example of them that brought him [Richard II] upon the stage and into print in Queen Elizabeth's time,’ in Spedding, J., Ellis, R. L. and Heath, D. D., eds., Works (1857–1874), xii, 145.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Much as they had thronged the departure of the popular Bolingbroke, as Shakespeare describes it in Richard II, II, ivGoogle Scholar; (see also Henry V, V, prol.). Everard Guilpin's account in Skialetheia, ‘Satire I’ (1598), named in the 1 June suppression order (below), appears to characterize the Essex departure in similar terms.

⁷⁸ Greg, 2.

⁷⁹ PRO SP 12/275, no. 28.

⁸⁰ The full text of this ‘epistle apologetical’ is given in the present edition.

⁸¹ Wright, (Queen Elizabeth, ii, 25–6Google Scholar) cites a comment as early as 1575 by Nicholas White in a letter to Burghley, complaining of the queen's ‘letting of the realme to farme,’ like ‘benevolence’ a complaint lodged with notorious regularity to Richard's mismanagement. Such terminology was already familiar in the anonymous play Wood-slock, V, iGoogle Scholar, as it was in Shakespeare's Richard II, I, iv, 45–7Google Scholar; II, i, 58–60, no, 113, 250, 256. Hayward later was taken to task for similar references, and admitted under questioning (PRO SP 12/278, no. 17), to certain anachronistic lapses in his handling of sources on the topic; see below.

⁸² Arber, , iii, 677–8.Google Scholar

⁸³ Arber, , iii, 677.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Nominally, censorship was controlled by the Star Chamber, of which Bancroft became a member in February 1599/1600, whence emanated censorship regulations and orders for their administration. But their execution devolved upon the High Commission where Bancroft, as Bishop of London, was the acutal as well as nominal head. Usher, R. G., The Rise and Fall of the High Commission (2 vols., Oxford, 1913), i, 101–12Google Scholar, and The Reconstruction of the English Church (2 vols., 1910), i, 119, 128Google Scholar. Harsnett's defence is described below.

⁸⁵ Arber, , iii, 677.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Arber, , iii, 678.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ ‘Bibliographical History,’ below. Wolfe ceased printing his own books in 1594; Hoppe, , 267.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Wolfe's testimony (PRO SP 12/275, no. 28).

⁸⁹ PRO SP 12/275, no. 28. Edward Barker was ‘register and actuarie’ of the ‘court of commission’ which was ‘kept the next day forenoon after the delegates court in the consistorie of Paules’ (BL MS Cotton Cleo. F III, f. 152). The High Commission, originally constituted ad hoc as ecclesiastical investigations were needed, had by 1592 become a permanent court, no longer vistitational, but judicial.

⁹⁰ Harrison, G. B., The Life and Death of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (New York, 1937), 254.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Camden, , Annales, ii, 185.Google Scholar

⁹² Bacon later sought to minimize his part in the proceedings, claiming that he took part only at the queen's own insistence. Although he stressed that the Hayward affair was merely incidental to the much larger matter of Essex's disgrace, we have only his own testimony that he entered the business reluctantly. ‘…it was allotted to me, that I should set foorth some undutifull cariage of my lord, in giving occasion and countenance to a seditious pamphlet, as it was tearmed, which was dedicated unto him, which was the booke before mentioned of king Henry IV. Whereupon I replyed … That it was an old matter, and had no maner of coherence with the rest of the charge, being matters of Ireland: and therefore, that I having bene wronged by bruites before, this wold expose me to them more; and it would be said that I gave in evidence mine own tales.’ (Apologie, 223–4).Google Scholar

⁹³ PRO SP 12/274, nos. 59, 60.

⁹⁴ PRO SP 12/274, no. 58.

⁹⁵ PRO SP 12/274, nos. 61, 62; 12/275, no. 25.1.

⁹⁶ The date assigned by the Calendar of State Papers to PRO SP 12/274, no. 58 (Popham) and to four others relevant to this stage of the Hayward proceedings (nos. 59 and 60, the MS ‘Epistle Apologeticall,’ and nos. 61 and 62, notes by Coke) is ‘Feb.?’ 1600. Other similar notes by Coke (PRO SP 12/275, no. 25.1) are dated 11 July 1600. At Hayward's later hearing in January, 1601 the framework of his testimony (PRO SP 12/278, no. 17) appears to have been dictated point by point by Popham's interrogatories, with Coke's, reportedly prepared in July 1600, as a supplement. Although it is likely that crown officials prepared their questions well before this January 1601 inquisition, February 1600 seems altogether too early; Hayward was not arrested until July of that year. It is more likely that Popham and Coke prepared their interrogatories at roughly the same time, during the investigation (spring/summer 1600) surrounding the first Essex trial, after which Hayward was first questioned and imprisoned. The queen's uncertainty about how to proceed with Essex may have made it unneccessary to question the principals exhaustively, until Essex's activites in January/February, 1601 reactivated the business, and caused officials to reapply their earlier inquiries with renewed vigour.

⁹⁷ PRO SP 12/275, no. 25.1.

⁹⁸ PRO SP 12/274, nos. 61, 62.

⁹⁹ PRO SP 12/275, no. 25.1.

¹⁰⁰ Below, 109–10.

¹⁰¹ PRO SP 12/275, no. 25.

¹⁰² Dasent, J. R., ed., Acts of the Privy Council of England (1905), new ser., xx, 499Google Scholar (13 July 1600, letter to Sir John Peyton, L. Lt. of the Tower): ‘Her Majesty's pleasure is you shall receave into your charge and custodye the person of Doctor Heiward, and to see him safely kept under your charge untili you shall receave other dyreccon.’ See also Carleton's comment (SP 275, no.37) on 26 July 1600: ‘My Lord of Essex remains prisoner, but at his owne custody. The Queen had given him libertie to go into the countrie, but recalled it againe upon the taking of Dr. Haywood who for writing Henry the fourth is committed to the tower.’

¹⁰³ A full transcript of Wolfe's testimony, from which the following are drawn, is in PRO SP 12/275, no. 28.

¹⁰⁴ Prof. Greg's article, cited above, is concerned chiefly with Harsnett's reply to Coke as an example of the actual practices current among Elizabethan censors. He concludes, in part: ‘Making allowance for Harsnett's anxiety to minimize his responsibility, and admitting that as an examiner he may, at least at the beginning of is career, have shown a disregard of duty surprising in one in his position, it is nevertheless impossible to avoid the impression that at the end of Elizabeth's reign ecclesiastical licensing for the press was more casual and less effective than the authorities can have intended or perhaps realized. This was probably inevitable in view of the output of the press and the inadequate provision for control, but it is a fact that bibliographical criticism should bear in mind.’ (8–9).

¹⁰⁵ PRO SP 12/275, nos. 31, 31.1 (30 July 1600), from which the following citations are drawn. Greg's article contains a full discussion of these two documents.

¹⁰⁶ Bacon reports in the Apology many instances of the queen's uncertainty about what course to take; the exchange with Bacon (above) in which she suggested that Hayward be tortured to reveal his book's true origins took place during Essex's confinement, when she was clearly perplexed about what to do with the earl.

¹⁰⁷ PRO SP 12/278, no. 49.

¹⁰⁸ PRO SP 12/278, no. 17.

¹⁰⁹ PRO SP 12/275, no. 25.1.

¹¹⁰ PRO SP 12/274, no. 58.

¹¹¹ PRO SP 12/275, 25.1.

¹¹² PRO SP 12/278, no. 63; see also Hussey's rough notes describing the 13 February Star Chamber session, calendared at 12/278, no. 94.

¹¹³ PRO SP 12//278, no. 54.

¹¹⁴ PRO SP 12/278, no. 94.

¹¹⁵ The ‘list of traitors’ connected with Essex given in the Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, J. R. (London, 1906), 261–2, 159–60, 483–9Google Scholar are surely complete, but do not include Hayward's name. Hayward, like Southampton, was released from the Tower between Christmas 1602 and June 1603. The ‘Demands of Sir John Peyton knight lieutenant of the Tower of London for the dyettes and chardges of prysoners in his custodye …’ for the Michaelmas quarter, 1602, include: ‘Doctor Hayward — Item — ffor the dyett and chardge of John Hayward, for the foresaid time at xv(s) the weeke — xxv(li) Item for his washinge and to the Barber x(s)… xxv li x s.…’ Southampton's expenses for the same quarter were £33.6.8. (PRO £407/56 pt. 2, fo 96, endorsed ‘Jo: Cant, Tho Egerton, W Knollys, Ro Cecili.) There is no mention of Hayward in such records before June 1600; records from June 1600 to Michaelmas 1602 (fols 94–95) are missing; he is not mentioned in the quarter St John/Michaelmas 1603.

¹¹⁶ Marginal annotations to PRO SP 12/274, no. 61.

¹¹⁷ PRO SP 12/274, no. 61; italics mine, showing change of emphasis.