Come Rack! Come Rope! By Robert Hugh Benson, Post #1

This is the third book this blog will discuss by Robert Hugh Benson, the second work of fiction.  This first post will limit itself to an introduction on Benson, the time period of the novel, and the critical history of the period.  The first book, in which I posted on Benson in 2018, was his non-fiction confessional memoir, Confessions of a Convert, his conversion story to Catholicism, and I gave this introduction to his life.  

 

Robert Hugh Benson was an Anglican priest and son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest office in the Church of England, at the end of the 19th century.  He had brothers who were Anglican clergy as well, and so Robert caused some controversy when in 1903, at the age of thirty, converted to Roman Catholicism, and within a year was ordained a Roman Catholic priest.  Perhaps Benson is best known today as a writer, and from 1907 to his death in 1914 wrote over forty books, some of which were published posthumously.  He wrote novels in the genres of science fiction, historical fiction, and contemporary fiction.  He wrote devotionals and apologetics and religious biographies.  He wrote plays, poems, and children’s books.  He was incredibly prolific.  His best known work is the dystopian science fiction work titled, Lord of the World,  a work cited by both Popes Benedict XVI and Frances as an important, prophetic work to the current state of society.  I have not read Lord of the World, but it is on my near term short list of “want-to-read.”

 

Two years later, in introducing his great novel, Lord of the World I said the following:   

 

Benson had quite a career as a writer which included devotionals, apologetics, autobiographical, and fiction.  He was quite a prolific writer of novels.  Lord of the World is a dystopian novel written in 1907 but set a hundred years into the future.  That would make the novel setting now!  The novel’s premise is that the world has come to be dominated by secular humanists through Freemasonry and Catholicism is the only religion left to oppose its worldview.  The novel reaches an apocalyptic conclusion.

Now we turn to Come Rack! Come Rope! which is set not in the future but some three hundred and fifty years prior to its writing.  Given that this is a historical novel, with characters both fictional and historical, an understanding of the time period I think is necessary.  The quickest way to grasp the time is to put up a timeline of the period.  This is certainly not comprehensive.  In fact it’s selective, selective to grasp several key elements which I will summarize at the end.  We all know how tumultuous a period this was.  Henry VIII for personal reasons challenged the Catholic Church and saw his objectives met by joining with the Protestant Reformation which had suddenly come on continental Europe.  The plot of the novel centers around the Babington Plot, a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I and install Mary, Queen of Scots as the ruler of England.  I’m going to present three timelines here, that of the Protestant Reformation, that of England over this period, and that of Mary, Queen of Scots.

 

Protestantism Timeline 

1517 Luther nails 95 thesis to wall

1521 Luther excommunicated

1522 The Reformation spreads to Switzerland through former priest Huldrych Zwingli

1525 Anabaptists formed.

1534 Henry VIII is declared head of the Church of England

1536 John Calvin starts his Protestant church in Switzerland

1538 Most Scandinavian countries declare themselves Lutheran

1560 The French Wars of Religion (1560-1598)

1618 The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) Officially ends the conflict between Catholics and Protestants though unofficial battles still go on.

Timeline in England

1534 Henry VIII is declared head of the Church of England

1535 Thomas More Executed

1536 Pilgrimage of Grace Uprising

1537 Henry VIII executes 178 Catholic protestors from the Pilgrimage of Grace

1539 Legislation passes to close all monasteries

1540 Waltham Abbey is last monastery in England to close.

1547 Henry VIII dies; Edward VI (b. 1537) becomes king

1549 Kett Rebellion ends in Catholic massacre

1553 Edward VI dies

1554 Mary I (b. 1516) becomes Queen; tries to reverse Protestantism

1558 Mary I dies; Elizabeth I (b. 1533) becomes Queen; restores Protestantism

1559 Catholic Mass banned

1570 Pope excommunicates Elizabeth I

1571 Ridolfi Plot to assassinate Elizabeth & replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots

1586 Babington Plot and trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, for treason

1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, executed

1588 Defeat of the Spanish Armada

1597 Second Spanish Armada defeated

1603 Elizabeth dies; James I of Scotland becomes King

1604 Peace Treaty between England and Spain

1605 Gunpowder plot to assassinate King James uncovered

1607 Jamestown Colony of Virginia founded

1608 James approves the establishment of plantations owned by English Protestant colonists in Ireland.

1611 King James Bible published

1620 The Mayflower lands in Massachusetts

1625 King James dies;

 

Mary Queen of Scots Timeline

1542 Born; Catholic, Niece to Henry VIII, Cousin to Elizabeth I

1543 Crowned Queen of Scotland

1547 Scotland defeated by England at the Battle of Pinkie

1548 Mary sent to France and betrothed to the heir of France

1558 Mary marries Francis, dauphin of France, in Paris

1559 King of France dies; Francis and Mary are crowned king and queen of France

1560 Francis, Mary’s husband, passes away

1561 Mary returns to Scotland

1565 Mary marries her 19-year-old cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley

1566 Mary’s only child James born (later king of Scotland and England)

1567 Mary’s husband, Lord Darnley, murdered; Mary weds James Hepburn, the 30-year-old Earl of Bothwell; the Carberry Hill confrontation; Mary is imprisoned at Lochleven Castle; Mary’s one-year-old son James is crowned as James VI of Scotland

1568 Mary escapes from Lochleven Castle; Battle of Langside, Glasgow; Mary flees to England

1568-87 Mary is held captive in various English prisons

1569 Elizabeth exonerates Mary from the charges made against her

1578 Mary’s third husband, the Earl of Bothwell (age 41), dies in a prison in Denmark

1580 Mary writes Essay on Adversity in prison

1586 Mary is tried for conspiring to kill Elizabeth

1587 on 8 February, Mary is executed in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire

 

I must confess something I have mixed up for a very long time.  For as long as I can remember I have conflated Queen Mary I of England with Mary Queen of Scots.  They are separate women, separate Queens.  I didn’t realize that.  I thought they were the same person.  In my defense I didn’t know this history in detail and they are both Catholic, both tried to restore Catholicism, and they more or less overlapped.  Also the successor to Queen Elizabeth to the throne of England was James, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.  If you have made that mistake in the past, I hope this corrects your understanding too.

A number of points should be taken away from the above timelines.

·         The Protestant/Catholic conflicts were incredibly bloody.  Nothing stirs people more than disagreements over the nature of religion.  Both the French Religious wars and the Thirty Years War had huge casualties. 

·         The Protestant/Catholic conflict pulled in almost every country in Europe: Germany, Italy, England, Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland, France, Spain, and the rest.  It was truly an international conflict with high stakes international politics. 

·         International politics produces a high level of espionage.  Foreign plots and conspiracies were common.

·         In England, the number of revolts indicates a high level of resistance against Protestantism.

·         The north of England seemed to be the Catholic center.

·         When outright rebellion failed for the English Catholics, they seemed to switch over to secret plots and assassinations to reach their objectives.

·         Executions were common and merciless. 

·         Despite the high level of Catholic resistance, by and large the English preferred Protestantism. 

I hope this helps.  I’ll provide an introduction to the author and novel in a few days.

###

Kerstin Commented:

The Thirty Years War left a huge wound. So many places in southern Germany still remind you of it. One of the most famous is the shrine of Maria Vesperbild outside of Augsburg. It is one of the most visited pilgrimage shrines in southern Germany. It is also a stop on a spur of the famous "El Camino" pilgrimage way leading into Spain.

 

Maria Vesperbild means Maria's Pieta. It is a woodcarving (painted) from the 16th century over the altar. Mary lifts her hand in grief and sorrow up with a kerchief in her hand, and Jesus is pointing down to the tabernacle.  

 

The shrine in the little town of Ziemetshausen dates back to 1650 when a small field chapel was build in thanksgiving to the end of the Thirty Years War (ended 1648 only two years prior to the building of the chapel). The present church dates back to 1756. It looks like the church is undergoing renovations at this time. There is also a large grotto in the woods behind it.  

 

Kerstin replied to My Comment:

Manny wrote: "Was I the only person who never distinguished Mary I from Mary Queen of Scots?"

I've never spent in-depth time with this time period, so I would have put the two together as well.

 

Frances Commented:

I hadn’t realized that James I of England was the same person as James VI of Scotland, nor that he’d been taken away from his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, as an infant.