“Romance survives the Tudor revolution,” notes James Simpson: “While the events of the 1530s and 1550s provoked the radical limitation or the official repudiation of many varieties of Middle English writing, romance continued to be produced.” The essay that follows uses Thomas Lodge's Famous, True and Historicall Life of Robert, Second Duke of Normandy (1591) to examine how one such romance – in Simpson's words – “adapt[ed] to new discursive, commercial, and political environments.” In particular, this essay traces how Lodge's text reflects the impact of humanism and religious reformation in later Elizabethan England. It explores how Lodge's recourse to seemingly “papist” material is inflected by his confessional position, but also how it challenges reformist polemic which painted romances as morally-corrupting works, made for pleasure and time-wasting, by using romance to make moral and political arguments, and – as Edmund Spenser does from a Calvinist perspective in The Faerie Queene (1590) – to try to cultivate an active, ethically engaged readership.

The legend of Robert the Devil comes into English from France where it has a long literary tradition, in verse, prose, and drama; in Latin and the vernacular, going back until at least the thirteenth century. Prior to Lodge's Life, there were at least four English versions: two lost plays (performed in Lincoln in 1453 and Chester in 1529); a prose account, The Lyf of the Moste Myschevoust Robert the Devyll, published by Wynkyn de Worde, around 1500 (second edition 1517?), which is translated fairly faithfully from La Vie de terrible Robert le Diable (first printed in Lyon in 1496); and a version in metrical verse, derived from de Worde's Lyf, printed, probably by Richard Pynson, around 1510. Aside from a small fragment in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Douce, Fragmn. f. 4), this version only survives in a mid-sixteenth-century manuscript transcription (London, British Library MS Egerton 3132A), which seems to have belonged to a recusant named Edward Banyster.

These multiple versions share the same basic plot. The Duke and Duchess of Normandy, long-married, lack an heir, until – in despair – the Duchess abandons praying to God for a child and instead pledges any baby that she conceives to the devil. From the outset, the resulting child (Robert) is trouble. He is born in a prodigious storm, after a protracted labor (as much as a month long in some versions).

Genesis 1–11 has a different character from the rest of the Genesis narrative: as ‘primeval history’, it is often separated out from the ‘ancestral history’ of Genesis 12–50’. There is good reason for this: the universal perspective of Genesis 1–11 and its closeness to Ancient Near Eastern traditions about the Creation and Flood distinguish it from later chapters, which are more narrowly focused on national and domestic concerns. Its theological significance as a source for the Christian doctrines of creation, human nature and the Fall meant that it was one of the most heavily commentated parts of the Bible: Augustine wrote about the first chapters of Genesis in five of his works, including three of his commentaries. Other authorities who wrote Hexamera on the six days of Creation include Basil the Great, Ambrose, Alcuin, Bede and, in the twelfth century, Abelard. It is hardly surprising, then, that the beginning of Stjórn I is so heavy in commentary that the biblical text can appear to be overshadowed. This is also the case for the beginning of Genesis in the Glossa ordinaria, which may have been one of the compiler’s models.

All of Stjórn I draws heavily on Comestor’s Historia scholastica and Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale, but the first part also makes use of Augustine’s two finished commentaries on Genesis and Isidore’s Etymologiae, which gives it a more encyclopaedic character. It incorporates etymology, natural history and geography, as well as theological discourses on angelology, human nature and sin. There is some evidence that, at an early stage, this part of Stjórn may have been planned around the readings for Septuagesima and Lent: Noah’s Flood, for example, is introduced as ‘annarr partr þessarrar gerðar’ (‘the second part of this work’) and linked to the second Sunday in Septuagesima. This would also explain the inclusion of extracts on the liturgy for Septuagesima from Durandus’s Rationale divinorum officiorum, and the medley of sermons for ‘fyrsta sunnudegi í langa föstu’ (‘the first Sunday of the Lenten fast’). However, if this was the plan, it appears to have been abandoned, as no ‘third part’ is ever marked. This chapter explores how the compilatory character of Genesis 1–11 in Stjórn I works against any single mode of reading: we are presented not only with different ways of interpreting biblical narrative, but with differing versions of events and different styles of writing.

This list is meant for quick reference, and includes technical terms and some obsolete words of general application. More extensive comment on certain words and expressions is made at their first occurrence within the text (as noted here), and terms appearing once only are mostly dealt with at that point. This is not a general dictionary, but has application only to the present volume. Since its purpose is to help the reader rather than highlight the editors’ ignorance, uncertain terms are not included. This applies both to words which could not be interpreted (and therefore printed within inverted commas in the text), and to items described in commonplace words but the precise application of which cannot be stated. The definitions derive chiefly from OED and Capt. John Smith's Sea Grammar in the edition by K. Goell, assisted by previous NRS volumes and the glossary in Professor Rodger's Safeguard of the Sea. D. King, J. B. Hattendorf and J. Worth Estes, A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O’Brian's Seafaring Tales (New York, 1995) is also useful, though its definitions reflect eighteenth-century usages which were sometimes different from those of the sixteenth.

THREATENED with the English rack, John Leslie allegedly exclaimed to his interrogator Thomas Wilson that not only was Mary, Queen of Scots involved in the murder of her husband Darnley, but she had also poisoned her first husband Francis and then brought Bothwell ‘to the Fylde to be murdered’. In response, one critic has noted even-handedly that the bishop was ‘subtle and resourceful but not of the stuff of which martyrs are made’. Nevertheless, Leslie's desperate outburst – perhaps excusable under the emotional duress of torture – is completely at odds with our sense of his allegiance to Mary, and so it should be. For all material evidence points to Leslie's sincere and unflagging commitment to the cause of his queen. His literary efforts to resuscitate Mary's reputation and political career, spread over some 19 years, ensured that his name would be irrevocably associated with the defence of Mary. So inescapable is this connection, in fact, that referring to Leslie as Mary's arch-defender has become easy shorthand, often masking a limited understanding of the bishop's methods and principal concerns. This has had the unfortunate effect of forestalling any detailed study of Leslie's works, as well as leading us to assume that Leslie sought primarily to recover Mary's damaged reputation. He was concerned about that, of course. But more than 450 years of speculation about Mary's character, fuelled in part by the wickedly clever propaganda of Robert Sempill and George Buchanan, among others, has skewed our perception of the debate in which Leslie was engaged, for Leslie's project was deeply invested with the political possibility of Mary's restoration. Certainly, he defended her against charges of immorality, but one of his strategies in doing so was to shift the terms of the Marian debate by breathing new life into the Elizabethan succession issue. Not only does Leslie envision a recovery of Mary's political career, but he also uses her claim to the English throne – as Elizabeth's legitimate heir – to constitute her very defence. Perhaps even more startlingly, in addressing the charges against her, he uses her gender to strengthen his political argument: her femininity is a warrant both for her innocence and her place in the English succession. This chapter aims to elucidate Leslie's principal concerns and his methods for the design of Mary's defence.

Thomas George Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook has generally been regarded as one of the least effectual First Lords of the Admiralty of the Victorian era. Appointed to the post in 1880 by William Gladstone, he was, according to John Henry Briggs, of the same economical and ideological stripes as Gladstone himself:

Briggs's credentials to pass judgment on the First Lord appear impeccable. Both he and his father were career Admiralty civil servants, their combined tenures spanning much of the nineteenth century. Briggs himself served almost forty-five years at Whitehall, of which more than thirty-five were spent assisting the Board itself. Thus, his boast that he ‘had the honour of serving with fifteen First Lords and upwards of fifty Admirals’ lends apparent credence to his subsequent claim that he ‘was cognisant of all that was taking place throughout the department’.

Having retired in 1870, Briggs was, unless clairvoyant, no longer ‘cognisant of all that was taking place throughout the department’ by the time that Northbrook assumed office, and historians have long been aware that his account of the Admiralty's doings, even when he was present, is often profoundly unreliable: marred by blatant partisanship, factual errors, and near-libels of many distinguished and capable Navy officials. And yet his allegations continue to inform modern judgments of many of those administrators, none more so than Northbrook.

Oscar Parkes, long-time editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, appropriated not only Briggs's verdict but enough of his words to warrant accusations of plagiarism: ‘Northbrook was a politician and a very strong party one at that. Having from early days imbibed the extreme views of economy and retrenchment associated with Liberalism, he was always more solicitous to keep down the Estimates than to incur any expenses which he thought might be embarrassing to the Ministry.’

Over twenty years ago, James Simpson observed that John Lydgate was a “thoroughly public” poet, one whose “corpus was riven by distinct, often exclusive, generic and discursive commitments.” This essay grows out of Simpson's insights about Lydgate's adaptable style and public orientation, although it considers a poem that is a far cry from the maximalist work for which Lydgate is best known today. This is the so-called Dietary, a ten-stanza lyric about the many benefits of honest dealing, personal hygiene, a healthy diet, and clean living. A poem that survives in at least fifty-six manuscripts, the notional topic of the Dietary is “the gouernans of man,” as rubrics to the text often put it, and many of its lines are indeed given over to the proper habits that a person ought to keep up if they wish to remain in sound physical health. For instance, we are told to wear a hat when it is cold (1), to keep away from the “eyre of pestelens” (42), to go to bed early (7), and to take it easy on the salt (69–70). At the same time, however, the Dietary also devotes about half of its space to the voicing of conventional moral sentiments – by making comments, for instance, about such things as the need to remain “content with suffisaunce” (14) or to shun “mowthes þat ben doubill” (25) – and this mixture of proverbial wisdom with wellness advice has prompted some debate about what Julie Orlemanski terms the “generic flexibility” of the poem. Some scholars have suggested that it is a courtesy text, or even a text designed to appeal to a new type of consumer, while others have contended that it is a work of medicine at heart.5 What both positions tend to have in common, however, is a tacit assumption that, as Derek Pearsall once put it, this is a poem for which “literary criticism” has “no part.”6 In each case, that is, the operating premise is that the Dietary must have been popular because it was useful for some instrumental end, and not because it appealed to the aesthetic or literary sensibilities of its readers.

This Appendix, which provides details on Admiralty officials, sea officers, shipwrights and military officers commanding troops aboard HM ships, also serves Elizabethan Naval Administration [ENA], and so includes some individuals not featured in this volume

Entry is restricted to those who appear twice or more in the texts. Any comment on such persons featuring once only is made in the footnotes. The footnotes briefly identify other known persons at the first occurrence.

Inset references are given for naval appointments, and any other details which augment or correct the general authorities listed in the several endnotes. Only the more significant naval commands are included; where not otherwise specified the sources are as for Appendix 1 (see pp. 461–4).

Note on Appointments

Where offices are conferred by letters patent, the date of passing the great seal marks the formal start of tenure, but the day from which the fruits are paid (where shown) is a surer guide to the actual period of employment.

Grants for life in survivorship were a common practice in an age which had no pensioned retirement; by agreement between the parties the younger man would take over most or all of the duties, leaving his senior colleague some part of the income.

A reversion gave right of succession to the incumbent office holder; it

The allowances for travel and boat-hire were flat rates payable for any day on which journeys were made. Because these moneys did not pass through the Navy Treasurer's books, the totals actually paid could only be discovered by an extensive examination of the Exchequer records beyond the scope of the present work.

Alexander, Stephen Admiralty clerk d. 1577

Listed as employee and shipkeeper at Deptford in 1548 [I.65]. By 1562 the clerk keeping the ‘book of report’ which recorded the purchase of provisions and other commodities [ENA, 4 (f. 10 and passim)]. Paid for ‘making perfect’ the Quarter Book entries for the whole of 1563 [f. 335v], so the scribe responsible for ff. 159–361. Buried at Deptford 31 July 1577 [Drake, Hasted's Kent, p. 40].

Anthony, Robert naval commander

Occ. in list of captains 1553/5 [II.80]. Served with Sussex in raid on Western Isles 1558 [II.77].

Baeshe, Edward Surveyor-General of naval victualling 1550–87

Born c. 1507, son of Richard Bashe, shoehorn maker of Worcester.