Martin Stephen: The Conscience of the King

Cecil's eyes turned up towards Gresham. There was more in them than the pain of a terminal illness.

'Help? It would destroy all I have worked for in these years of trial! The Church would condemn the King instantly. The Puritans in Parliament would call out the hunt of the self-righteous upon him. The saner element in Parliament would look at the uncontrolled expenditure they are increasingly asked to fund and call foul on a sodomite king. And England would laugh at its monarch! Do you hear me? The country would laugh at its monarch. Monarchy can withstand many things — corruption, abuse of power, immorality. Ridicule it finds hardest to survive.'

Cecil had feared ridicule more than anything else in his life. A cripple, the runt of the litter yet brought up as a great man's heir, he had more to fear than many in an age which mocked deformity. Gresham thought for a moment. He settled on a poor stool, one of four by the scarred and battered table in the room.

'There must be more,' Gresham said. 'No monarch has been laughed out of power. The executioner's axe cuts short laughter alongside life.'

This time it was Cecil's time to pause.

'Yes, there is more. The King increasingly withdraws from political life, seeking only to hunt obsessively and spend time with his young men, Robert Carr in particular. Yet this is not the time of Queen Elizabeth, when the only alternative to her was rule by Spain or Civil War.'

'Prince Henry?' Gresham interrupted.

'Yes. Prince Henry.' Cecil's voice was so dry and wasted that Gresham had to lean forward to hear it, like a rustle of dead leaves on the earth. 'We have a brilliant young prince, an heir to the throne who promises more than any other in living memory. A statesman, a man of faith, a man of intelligence and skill — and still only a child! O dear God in heaven! Had I had such material to work with! What a world we might have made!'

The intensity in the whispered voice was all the more frightening because of its fragility, the impression of a man clinging on by willpower alone.

'Well, it is not to be. But there are those, not least of all the Prince himself, who see the way things are going with King James in charge, and who seek a change now, before the monarchy rots beyond redemption. These letters could be just the cause they need — not to kill the King or rise up in rebellion but to force him to step aside for his eldest son and heir.'

'"Had I had such material to work with." My lord Cecil,' said Gresham, 'if the disclosure of these letters would bring about such events, why should you or I oppose them? You yourself have praised the heir. Why not King Henry IX? Why should he not take over?'

'Because they must not learn how to depose a king and replace him with another! Do you not see? Parliament, the Puritans, the country

… once they are given the right to choose a king, they will never lose it.'

'Would it be such a bad thing?' mused Gresham.

'It would be a terrible thing!' hissed Cecil. 'Politics can never look at the man. It must always look at the principle. They rid themselves of a king they do not like, justifying it on the basis that the heir is different. Then what follows? What if the heir turns rotten? If he dies? If he offends one of the great noble families, who then turn to one of their own nominees? Then turn to the next best, or the most promising, and do so time and time again. This way is madness. It must not be allowed to happen!'

'And do you think these letters could depose a king?'

'I think a king can depose a king, if the king is a sensual fool whose instinct for survival lessens with every month that goes by. King James is indolent, and confident. It is a dangerous, dangerous mixture. The letters could be the push that topples him over the edge of his own making. I do not know what will come to pass! I would know, if God had only allowed me to live, and I had been able to advise and perhaps even influence the outcome for the better. Now others must do it for me.'

'What role does Sir Edward Coke play in all this?'

'It was reported to him that the letters had been stolen, from Sir Thomas Overbury. I suspect Overbury sees Coke as powerful enough to take action, lawyer enough to relish the intrigue and self-serving enough to realise how much credit the safe recovery — and destruction — of the letters would bring him with the old King. In any event, Overbury will work with Coke to regain the letters, which is more than that most impossible of men will do with any other.'

Sir Thomas Overbury was Robert Carr's dark angel. They were inseparable. Intelligent, ruthless, determined and arrogant almost beyond belief, Overbury was seen by many as Carr's manager, providing him with the intelligence he himself lacked. If any incriminating letters existed, Overbury would want their power and be most aware of what the loss of it would mean.

'However, these letters are not all. You are a playgoer, I believe, Sir Henry?'

'I frequent the playhouses when I am in town, yes.'

'Two manuscripts were stolen recently from The Globe theatre. Both were plays, both written by the man they call Shakespeare. You know Master Shakespeare.' It was a statement, not a question.

The air thickened between the two men. There was a long pause. Finally Gresham spoke..

'I know him, though I knew him first by another name. William Hall, was he not? Or at least that was the name he used when he travelled abroad on state business and claimed his thirty pieces of silver.'

'You overestimate Hall's part in your friend Raleigh's downfall. As does Raleigh himself.'

'I doubt it,' Gresham replied. 'But what I do accept as truth is that Mr William Hall — whose company of players, I seem to recall, suddenly became The King's Men and the most favoured actors in the land very shortly after Sir Walter Raleigh's conviction and imprisonment — has hung up his spying boots and become Master William Shakespeare. Actor, poet and play-maker, no less. He's done very well since Raleigh was imprisoned on a false charge. Very well indeed. Was that the reward you chose for him? To make his disorderly crew The King's Men? And, yes, I know his plays. They are very good, unfortunately. Outstanding, even, better perhaps than any others. Surprisingly so for those of us who knew him when he was doing a different job.'

'You will know what price is placed on these manuscripts, and what security surrounds them.'

There was an insatiable demand for plays for the theatre as companies were putting on sixteen or seventeen shows a season. Any company with a hit on its hands kept the manuscript as secure as a prized daughter's maidenhead. It did not stop rival companies from putting shorthand writers in the audience to scribble down the text of a hit, or bribing leading actors in a company to dictate a verbatim account of their parts — and what they could remember of other people's parts. To lose a manuscript was to give your play to your rivals. Apart from reasons of security, the expense of copying out whole texts meant that full versions of a play often only existed in at most three copies. Actors were given their own lines and cues on separate sheets for rehearsal and learning, and these were counted out and counted in as if the paper they were written on was twenty-four-carat gold.

'Difficult for the players if a manuscript is stolen,' mused Gresham, 'but hardly life-threatening for the King, I would have thought?'

'Life-threatening for the porter who was murdered to gain the manuscripts,' croaked decil. 'Yet the players are The King's Men, are they not? They see this theft as an insult to the King himself — or so they say, in asking for his help. But the importance is that our information suggests the same person who stole the manuscripts may also have stolen the letters. A Cambridge bookseller, we think — another reason to call on you and your local knowledge. Identify the man who stole the manuscripts and we believe you will identify the man who stole the letters.'