Beal surely knew that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was the son-in-law to Burghley, when he headed the list of his services with having recovered “ some of his stuff” and apprehended three of the pirates who had robbed him on his way across the Channel. The reference is to the taking by pirates of the ship upon which Oxford was a passenger, returning, in 1576, from a tour of France, Germany and (mostly) Italy.
The reader may recall that among Oxford's possessions were the famous scented gloves he was bringing back from Italy. Mr. Beal may be the means by which the Earl was said to have been robbed of all yet presented the gloves to the Queen at some time after his arrival back in England.
Shortly after this, Beal seems to have interceded with the Dutch authorities in behalf of the English merchants. At any given time the issues could be access to the Dutch and Flemish ports by English ships, piracy in Dutch and Flemish waters, increases in port fees, altered currency exchange rates, commodity price fixing, etc. The last three would have been handled by Thomas Gresham and his operatives. Beal must have been representing the English court in matters of access and/or security.
In the process of this second voyage, Beal, too, was waylaid by pirates. The waters were periodically infested with marauders. Queen Elizabeth, herself, informally hired their services from time to time.
Number LIX. 84
Mr. Beals voyages and embassies: which he writ and sent to the lord treasurer, to manifest his public services and good deserts.
A VOYAGE to the prince of Orange; carried with him seven persons [attendants] with him, and had allowance of her majesty 40s. per diem. Then he solicited the merchants' causes [against the pirates.] One of his businesses was to prosecute the injury done to my lord of Oxford; whereof three were found, and one imprisoned, and some of his stuff recovered. He was then in danger of drowning, and taken by the Spaniards, who lay at Brewershaven, by which he ventured to pass.
He went a second voyage to Holland, being abroad six months, and had with him eight men; and his allowance was 40s. per diem. Passing the seas, he and his company were spoiled of 250l. ready money, besides all their apparel and other furniture.
He made a long and winter journey, making a circuit to and fro of 1400 English miles at the least; repairing personally to nine princes, and sending her majesty's letters to three others.
“Although I never desired to be employed, yet being put into it, my endeavour hath been to discharge the credit committed to me, as might be for her majesty's honour. And as for her highness's sake great honour was in sundry places shewed me, so could I not but by some remembrance requite the same. And I protest upon my allegiance, that the gifts that I gave at the duke of Brunswick's and the landgrave's in ready money, and money's worth, for her majesty's honour, being her gossips, and having had nothing to my knowledge sent unto them, (and in other places,) came to better than 100l. And whoso knoweth the fashions and cravings of those princes' courts may well see, that, having been at so many places, I could not escape with less. My charges came in this voyage to 932l. one ways or other.
Before my going over I sold a chain, which I had of the queen of Scots, for 65l. The duke and duchess of Brunswic gave me a present of 1500 dollars, which is at the least in current money 340l.”
Strype informs us that these journeys into Holland and Germany were about the years 1577 and 1578.
In a second letter to Burghley, of April 15783, Beal makes his case at greater length:
Besides the losses of money and other things I sustained upon the seas, I would not be in like danger to be assaulted, and so violently taken hurt, kept under hatches, menaced with killing and drowning, in so terrible a sort, as it amazeth me to think of it: and after left without bread, drink, money, or other furniture, to the mercy of the seas, for ten times the charge her majesty hath been at being appointed to take the charge in hand, [that of an ambassador from the queen,] although I bear low sail in court; yet was I not in that service forgetful of her majesty's honour and my duty, but so far forth as my allowance and ability could stretch, I omitted not to do that became me.
Besides my six years continual attendance and service, I will not report the good-will I had to serve her majesty's ambassador in France, since the year 1564, and in Germany; as Mr. Henry Knowles and Mr. Killigrew can witness, without any charge to her highness.
Collecting one's wages from the Queen was clearly not an easy task.
1 Strype, John. Annals of the Reformation... During Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign (1842).
2 Ibid. IV.117-8.
3 Ibid. 119.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
Invention in a Noted Weed: the Poetry of William Shakespeare. September 21, 2024. “The coward conquest of a wretches knife,...”
The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 108. Edward de Vere to his son, Henry. “That may expresse my love, or thy deare merit?”
- Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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