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Poets, Patrons, and Professors (1962)

Poets, Patrons, and Professors

(1962)–J.A. van Dorsten–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists


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VI The eclipse of Rogers

Rogers' opportunities for mediation between English and Dutch literary circles were unfortunately brought to an abrupt end in 1580. His travels had often taken him through dangerous regions. Only recently, in the early spring of 1578, there was a rumour that he had been taken prisoner. On hearing it. Melissus (in Nuremberg) had immediately sent two worried letters, one to Ortelius in Antwerp1 and one to Dousa at Leiden, begging for news about Rogers ‘for whom my love is extraordinarily great’2. Davison, however, could report that ‘some of the Prince's horsemen, arriving by chance, had ... rescued him and conducted him on his way’3. But on his way to Rudolph II and the Duke of Saxony in 1580 Rogers was less fortunate4. He was imprisoned and put under the guard of that same Maarten Schenk - at the time on the Spanish side - on whom Leicester was to bestow such exceptional honours at Utrecht on St. George's Day 15865.

The news soon spread, and his gaoler, eager for a liberal ransom, did little to prevent it. Its effect was remarkable in that it moved to activity the pens of those learned gentlemen who had so far figured as his closest ‘intellectual friends’

rather than cause any serious political disturbance. It is curious, also, that the earliest (surviving) letter concerning his captivity should be addressed to Sidney and written by Languet who reported from Antwerp that ‘our mutual friend Daniel Rogers, whom your Queen has sent to Germany, has been taken prisoner by bandits near the town of Cleves, and abducted to the castle of Blyenbeck which belongs to Maarten Schenck’1, Languet's point in writing was plain: for, he continued, ‘it is your business to procure his liberty, since the Prince of Orange can do nothing about this case, the men who have seized Rogers being his most embittered enemies.’ That Sidney did intervene on behalf of ‘communis noster amicus’ seems plausible when one finds that it was probably his father-in-law Walsingham who at last undertook negotiations. Rogers needed this concern, for Schenk's own instructions illustrate only too well how powerless he desired his prisoner to be:

Monsieur et frere Son Excellence m'a commandé de vous escrire que l'Intention et volonté unicque de son Excellence est que l'ambassadeur [D. Rogers] de 'Angleterre prisonnier soit par vous estroitenant tenu et gardé en sa chambre, sans y admettre personne pour communicquer avecq luy, et sur et sur tout porter soing que ne luy soit permis d'escrire a personne. Item que vous faciez courir le bruit que Ledit prinsonnier est transporté ailleurs.2

‘We are very worried about Mr. Rogers here,’ Camden said to Ortelius, ‘and I am anxious to know whither you will direct the force of your inventiveness.’3 But as long as no

effective measures were taken, Rogers was left to his own devices. Languet continued his alarming reports:

The roads along which one goes into Germany are infested with bandits, so that no one dares to expose himself to them. Our unfortunate Rogers experienced this to his great disadvantage, and I am very unhappy about his situation. He has recently succeeded in deceiving his appointed guards to escape from there with the help of some woman, but he was stayed, and I learn that he is now detained in even closer custody than before.1

Languet repeated the case of ‘Daniel Rogers, our mutual friend, who honours you to an exceptional degree’, to George Buchanan in a letter from Delft, where he spent the winter, ‘only three hours’ distance from Leiden, or Lugdunum Batavorum as they already say, where Justus Lipsius and the Poet Janus Dousa live, learned and famous men’.2

The sad chorus of anxious friends was not a little strengthened by the poet Melissus. Verses to George Gilpin - twice successor to Rogers3 - included a request for royal instructions to act on the prisoner's behalf.4 It showed his genuine interest in a man to whom he often referred in his poems, to whom he dedicated some elegant lines on the swans of the Thames,5 and whom, moreover, he was to select for an honourable part in the opening lines of a book of poetry addressed to the Queen:

I want the witnesses of my verses to be both Sidney and Rogers.6

Gilpin was not the only one to whom Melissus looked for support, but Dousa and Lipsius were also enlisted:

I am forced to be idle and yet to hear at a distance in my unwilling ears the iron chains and cruel fetters of Rogers in his captivity, and through the silent air to ply the mute plains of Pegnitz with my weeping complaint ... Who will report to me
- and when? - that cheerful Rogers' chains have been broken, and that he may at last in liberty enjoy the open air?1

By now everybody knew about his predicament - except some gentleman in Groningen who still hoped to get three travelling noblemen introduced to him on their arrival in England2. But in spite of whatever pressure may have been exercised, his relief was not procured. Plantin, for instance, was obliged to notify Buchanan that autumn about a delay in publishing a selection from his works, owing to the absence of Rogers3. The most personal efforts, meanwhile, seem to have come from his sister, who appears to have married into another literary family, the Proctors4. For when it looked as if his captive brother-in-law Daniel would have to endure the hardships of another winter, James Proctor appealed to Walsingham in these moving terms:

My humble dutye to your honour considerid, my poore wyfe being sister to mr Daniell Rogers, (whoe as your Honour dooth well know,) was an yarnest suyter allmost all the last wynter, as well to your selfe, as to the rest of the honorables of her majesties prevy counsayle, for her sayd brother beyng sent of her majesties affayres beyonde the seas, and now a presoner in thoes partes; to be inlarged; all which suytes and travell as yet hath taken smale effecte or none, for the poore man continueth a presoner still in most miserable case, sethence which tyme: his poore sister hath once more renewed her suyte to her majesties owne personn. and to the rest of the counsayle, being alltogether at the counsayle table: and booth of her Majestie and them hath recevid most gratious and comfortable promisses; all this was donn in your honors Absence, which was no smale grefe to the poore wooman, for that her gretest trust was in your Honour. not withstanding this, the poor man continueth still A presoner without all hoope of deliveraunce, with out comfort any way, saving in god aloune; his lodging not swete, without Lyght, nether bookes, penn, ynke,
or paper, his diet worse then I dare for shame speake of; and every day worse and worse; in consideration where of, he hath found the meanes to signify unto me, and other of his frendes of his miserable estate, praying us to become humble suyters unto your Honour for his inlargement, which as we subpoose must be wrought by your good meanes, and that wheras two hundred poundes was appoynted, by your Honour to be deliverid unto him by the governour of the Inglish howse at Antwarpe, whereof he hath recevid as yet but fyftie poundes his humble suyte is that your Honoures commandeme[nt] may be renewed, and the money to be deliverid to such as he shall appoynt there to receve hit, for his relese, or other wyse there is no hoope of his lyfe to continue any time, and thus leaving all the rest to your ryght honourable good consideration, very sorry and ashamed to truble your Honour with so many wordes, I leave you to god.1

‘Poore man’ indeed, for in spite of repeated attempts by Leicester and Walsingham to have Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in London, imprisoned as a hostage,2 it was to be January 1584 before a collection was held to pay for Rogers' return3. And - with Melissus still pressing Dousa ‘see that I know whether Rogers has been freed’4 - it was a further year before Joannes Sturmius, once Sidney's teacher, could at last write this cheerful note to Walsingham:

Behold! Even before you, I have seen your and my Rogers: of whom I have so frequently written to you ... I was grateful and happy to hear Mr. Rogers' confession about your benevolence
and interest and patronage towards him: I am certain that you can imagine for yourself how grateful I am - I do not say ‘have been’ for I shall always be grateful.
First of all I thank God for his deliverance from long and great oppression. Next I am grateful that he first came to me before returning to you, believing and trusting that you would give him the greater preferment since his dangers and anguish, too, had been the greater on account of you: so that this prolonged sadness would be compensated by greater happiness: and therefore, o let me soon have a letter from you - not a fatal, killing letter, but one that is happy and festal ...
[P.S.] You must divert our Rogers with a good wife1 before his grey hairs become more numerous.2

Full of expectations as to the justice of his cause he travelled home, and on his way to England another man of influence and mutual friend of Walsingham and Rogers, Christophorus Ehemius, Duke Casimir's Chancellor, gave him a rather similar letter to deliver3.

But, strangely enough, Walsingham, whom one might have imagined as duly embarrassed over the unnecessary adversities of one of his most loyal adherent, seemed hesitant to support his client. Since his past extremities would have made Rogers reluctant to continue his former career, it is surprising that Walsingham soon destined him for another continental visit, without much improvement. Rogers wrote verses on Nonsuch4, and a letter to his ‘approved patron’ Walsingham to make it quite clear that ‘truelie it is highe tyme, that some better consideration weare had for my advancement’5, but in vain. Then, a little later, he saw his chance when the prebend of Windsor was available, and made his claims still clearer in this desperate appeal:

No man knoweth better, then your honor, in how great affayres I have bene employed this. 18. yeares, and how I have not used my selfe after the common devotion, as also, how littell recompence I have felt. The present neede in which I presently am, after my
so great and longe calamitie, constrayneth me to crave your favour and ayde at this tyme.... my present neede, requireth present helpe. God strengthen your honour.1

Melissus, in London at the time, composed a poem in commendation of him, which somehow found its way into the State Papers.2 The Queen intervened and offered him the treasureship of St. Paul's, but Rogers insisted on the prebend of Windsor, and rightly added: ‘I doo not doubt, but that [inserted your Honour iudgeth] I have deserved better recompense, then a prebende.’3 What exactly followed is not quite clear, but probably resulted in some form of a compromise. He was not sent back to the Low Countries, but was made a Clerk of the Privy Council in 1587, and travelled to Denmark on diplomatic business a few times.

In February 1591 Daniel Rogers died, ‘whereupon his body, accompanied by an Herald or two, was buried on Shrove Tuesday the 16th of the same Month near to that of Nicas. Yetswiert ... in the Church of Sunbury near to Hampton Court in Middlesex.’4

 

It takes no far-fetched theory to explain the almost total disappearance of Daniel Rogers from the Anglo-Dutch scene after 1580. Leicester, when Governor General in the Netherlands, at certain critical moments sent repeated requests for this Dutch expert:

I would gladly have Daniell Rogers here, for some good service which I thincke he is fitt for. Yf you fynde that her majestie meane to continue me in service here, I hartely pray you that Daniell Rogers may be sent to me.5

But Rogers was obviously no longer interested in the hazards of the enterprise, and presumably disgusted with those men at Court on whom the political union depended. For all his personal zeal and all his labour had only resulted in one disappointment after another, an appalling lack of interest in the cruel treatment of her Majesty's envoy (perhaps even more so after the death of his main advocate, Languet, in 1581), and a still more infuriating display of ingratitude on his return. It is revealing, meanwhile, to note that those few who appear to have remained personally concerned for him throughout were his humanist friends in England, Germany, and the Low Countries: Buchanan, Camden, Sturmius, Languet, Melissus, Ortelius, Dousa, Lipsius. The extent of his influence is indicated by their reactions to his imprisonment.

Though he occasionally had opportunity to display his interest in foreign visitors, and though his name did not vanish altogether from their books of verse1, within the unprecedented opportunities for greater Anglo-Dutch literary contacts which were to present themselves in 1586 Daniel Rogers was never to play the leading part which ‘that great Daniel, the envoy of the most glorious Elizabeth Queen of England, no less remarkable for his literary prowess than for his courtesy,’2 had deserved, more than anyone else.


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