Wriothesley Quotes

A generation back, his family were called Writh, but they thought an elegant extension would give them consequence;" Cromwell of Wriothesley

Troubled men both, he thinks, Wriothesley and Riche, and alike in some ways, sidling around the peripheries of their own souls, tapping at the walls: oh, what is that hollow sound?

This will require self-abasement.’ Richard Cromwell says, ‘Shall I go out and find somebody who’s better at it than you are?’ ‘Richard Riche knows the art of creeping,’ Gregory offers. ‘And Wriothesley can crawl when required.’ He begins: ‘Most humbly prostrate before your Majesty…’ ‘Try, prostrate at the feet of your Majesty,’ Gregory says. ‘Redundant,’ Richard says. ‘Yes, but it makes her sound … flatter.

He thinks, strive as I might, one day I will be gone and as this world goes it may not be long: what though I am a man of firmness and vigour, fortune is mutable and either my enemies will do for me or my friends. When the time comes I may vanish before the ink is dry. I will leave behind me a great mountain of paper, and those who come after me – let us say it is Rafe, let us say it is Wriothesley, let us say it is Riche – they will sift through what remains and remark, here is an old deed, an old draft, an old letter from Thomas Cromwell’s time: they will turn the page over, and write on me.

Master Wriothesley’s face is a study. He does not understand how much you can learn from boatmen, their argot blasphemous and rapid. At twelve he spoke it fluently, his mother tongue, and now it flows back into his mouth, something natural, something dirty. ==========

On February 7, 1601, about two years before the queen’s death, an uprising against the crown had begun at the Globe Theatre with a treasonous production of Richard II in which Elizabeth was satirized as the incompetent Richard surrounded by villainous counselors. This rebellion, which would march on London the following morning, was led by two fallen favorites, Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, and Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton. We can’t be sure of their motive in starting this doomed rebellion, but it seems likely these two hyper-educated earls, symbols of the fast-fading English Renaissance, had been attempting to free their aged queen from the grasp of her powerful secretary, Sir Robert Cecil, in order to thwart Cecil’s plan to control the crown upon Elizabeth’s death.

In 1794 William Henry Ireland, a twenty-year-old Londoner, claimed to have discovered documents in the old trunk of a mysterious gentleman collector. The documents provided everything the literary world had longed for: a love letter from a young Shakespeare to Anne Hathaway, in which he had enclosed a lock of his hair; Shakespeare’s letters to and from Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton; Shakespeare’s haggling with a printer over the terms of publication of one of his plays (“ I do esteem much my play, having taken much care writing of it…. Therefore I cannot in the least lower my price”); a note from the Queen thanking Shakespeare for his “pretty verses” and inviting him to perform for her at Hampton Court; and, mercifully, Shakespeare’s Protestant “Profession of Faith,” putting an end to the dreadful possibility that the glory of the British nation might have been a secret Catholic. Ireland also “found” Shakespeare’s books inscribed with his name and marginal notes. And then, to top it all off, the greatest treasure of all: the original manuscript of King Lear in Shakespeare’s own hand, including a prefatory note from Shakespeare to his “gentle readers.” The literary world fell for the forgeries, hook, line, and sinker.