#sir henry vane the younger

[chaotic-history]

personally I think that bate should've poisoned cromwell cromwell should've died in '52 and then had harry vane take over everything

[nellygwyn]

Covent Garden Lovers

courtesy of Hallie Rubenhold’s “The Covent Garden Ladies”

A list of the notable and famous frequenters of London’s brothels in the latter half of the 1700s. “Patrons du peche” (patrons of sin)

Look out for the royalty, and the great and the “good.”

Lord Chief Justice Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth

Admiral George Anson, 1st Baron Anson

Sir William Apreece

Sir Richard Atkins

Sir John Aubrey, MP

Richard Barry, 7th Earl of Barrymore

Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl of Bathurst

Sir Charles Bingham, 1st Earl of Lucan

Captain George Maurice Bisset (yes, THAT George Bisset, of Lady Seymour Worsley’s scandal)

Admiral Edward Boscawen 

Hugh Boscawen, 2nd Viscount Falmouth

James Boswell (diarist, great friend of Samuel Johnson)

Sir Orlando Bridgeman

Thomas Bromley, 2nd Baron Montfort

Captain John Byron (Lord Byron’s grandfather)

John Calcraft, MP

Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll

John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll

John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun

George Capell, 4th Earl of Essex

David Carnegie, Lord Rosehill

John Cleland (writer of the pornographic novel “Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure”)

Henry Fiennes Clinton, 9th Earl of Lincoln.

Robert “Cock-a-doodle-doo” Coates

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess of Cornwallis

Colonel John Coxe

William Craven, 6th Baron Craven

His Royal Highness, Prince Ernest, Duke of Cumberland

His Royal Highness, Prince Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland

His Royal Highness, Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland

The Honourable John Damer

Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord Despenser (founder of “The Hellfire Club” and Chancellor of the Exchequer)

Francis Drake Delevel

Reverend William Dodd

George Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe

William Douglas, 4th Duke of Queensbury

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville

George Montagu Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax

Sir Henry Elchin

Richard Edgecumbe, Lord Mount Edgecumbe

Sir Charles Fielding, son of the Earl of Denbigh

The Honourable John Finch

John Fitzpatrick, 1st Earl of Upper Ossory

Samuel Foote (theatre manager and dramatist)

Charles James Fox (prominent Whig statesman, arch-enemy of William Pitt the Younger)

Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland

George Fox-Lane, 3rd Baron Bingley

John Frederick, 3rd Duke of Dorset

His Majesty, King George IV (oh, what a surprise)

Sir John Graeme, 3rd Duke of Montrose

Charles Hamilton, Lord Binning

Charles Hanbury-Williams (British envoy to the court of Russia, introduced Catherine the Great to her lover, Stanislaw Poniatowski)

Colonel George Hanger

Count Franz Xavier Haszlang, Bavarian Envoy to London

Judge Henry Gould

Robery Henley, 1st Earl of Northington

Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton (great-great-great-great grandson of King Charles II)

Henry Herbert, 10th Earl of Pembroke

Joseph Hickey

William Hickey

William Holles, 2nd Viscount Vane

Rear-Admiral Charles Holmes

Admiral Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood

Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk

Thomas Howard, 3rd Earl of Effingham

Admiral Lord Richard Howe, 4th Viscount Howe

Thomas Jefferson (not that TJeffs; manager of the Drury Lane Theatre)

John Phillip Kemble

Augustus Keppel, 1st Viscount Keppel

William John Kerr, 5th Marquess of Lothian

Sir John Lade

Penistone Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne

William Longhorne (the poet laureate)

Lord Edward Ligonier

Field Marshall John Ligonier, 1st Earl of Ligonier

Simon Luttrell, 1st Baron Carhampton

Thomas Lyttleton, 2nd Baron Lyttleton

Kenneth Francis Mackenzie, 4th Earl of Seaforth

Charles Macklin

The Honourable Captain John Manners

John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland

Charles Maynard, 1st Viscount Maynard

Captain Anthony George Martin

James Macduff, 2nd Earl of Fife

Captain Thomas Medlycott

Isaac Mendez

Major Thomas Metcalfe

Sir George Montgomerie Metham

John Montague, 4th Earl of Sandwich

Alexander Montgomerie, 10th Earl of Eglinton

Arthur Murphy

Richard “Beau” Nash (famous dandy, popularised ballroom etiquette at the assemblies in Bath)

Francis John Needham, MP

Henry Nevill, 2nd Earl of Abergavenny

John Palmer (actor)

Thomas Panton

William Petty, 1st Marquess of Landsdowne

Evelyn Meadows Pierrepoont, 2nd Duke of Kingston

Thomas Potter

John Poulett, 4th Earl of Poulett

William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath

William Powell (manager of Drury Lane)

Charles “Chace” Price

Richard “Bloomsbury Dick” Rigby

Admiral George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney

David Ross (actor)

Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford

Frederick John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset

Sir George Saville

George Selwyn (politician and wit)

Edward “Ned” Shuter (actor)

John George Spencer, 1st Earl of Spencer

Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl of Harrington

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Sir William Stanhope, MP

Edward Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby

Sir Thomas Stapleton

John Stewart, 3rd Earl of Bute

Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke

Colonel Sir Banastre Tarleton

Commodore Edward Thompson

Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Thurlow

Robert “Beau” Tracy

John Tucker, MP

Arthur Vansittart, MP

Sir Henry Vansittart, MP

Robert Vansittart

Sir Edward Walpole

Sir Robert Walpole (Britain’s first Prime Minister)

John Wilkes

His Majesty, King William IV

Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl of Egremont

Henry Woodward (actor)

His Royal Highness, Edward, Duke of York

His Royal Highness, Frederick, Duke of York

Lieutenant Colonel John Yorke

Joseph Yorke, 1st Baron Dove

Extra information is my own

[dalsy-l]

Smoke and mirrors: Willy Clarkson and the role of disguises in inter-war England.

MLA style: "Smoke and mirrors: Willy Clarkson and the role of disguises in inter-war England.." The Free Library. 2007 Journal of Social History 04 Nov. 2019 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Smoke+and+mirrors%3a+Willy+Clarkson+and+the+role+of+disguises+in...-a0162457471

Questions of identity and disguise certainly fascinated late nineteenth and early twentieth-century English culture. A society made anxious by shifting class, gender, and racial relationships was naturally preoccupied by dress and role playing, by visual codes and clues. One has only to recall the stratagems used by those in positions of power to penetrate the underworld. This was the great age of "slumming" by members of the middle and upper classes including James Greenwood, Jack London, Beatrice Webb, and last but not least George Orwell. In the world of fiction Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and E. W. Hornung's Raffles perhaps best embodied the elite's conviction that gentlemen detectives could easily "pass" as workers.

Homosexuals, who necessarily had to lead double lives, were perhaps the most appreciative of the multiplicity of roles one individual could play

"We are what we wear," was Virginia Woolf's optimistic view, "and, therefore, since we can wear anything, we can be anyone."

At the turn of the century disguises empowered, frightened, and amused. The anxious repeatedly warned the naive that confidence men and painted women employed false fronts to entrap their victims. (11) Yet in the music halls and early movies male and female impersonators who toyed with gender expectations and "swells" who appropriated the dress and manners of gentility were a staple form of entertainment. (12) In the arts the younger generation was tired of the nineteenth century's fixation on realism. In "A Defense of Cosmetics" which appeared in the Yellow Book in 1894 Max Beerbohm presented the fin-de-siecle interest in makeup as evidence of a cultural revolution. "Artifice must queen it once more in the town ... For behold! The Victorian era comes to an end and the day of sancta simplicitas is quite ended. The old signs are here and the portents to warn the seer that we are ripe for a new epoch of artifice."

"I am the great Clarkson," was the favorite boast of William Berry Clarkson, (better known simply as Willy or Willie Clarkson) a familiar theatrical personality of early twentieth-century London. Were he alive today he would no doubt be disappointed to discover that he has been almost completely forgotten, even by the historians of the theater. 

A key complaint of those made anxious by a more urbanized, anonymous world was that it was increasingly easy for outsiders to assume false fronts. Clarkson actually made his living in providing just such deceptive dressing and accordingly my hope in tracing his activities was to gain insights into the process of how and why particular notions of sex, race, and respectability were "forged." 

a man who knew more than most of the importance of being elusive

it was a skilled trade, nineteenth-century wigs being made of human hair which had to be purchased on the continent. (15) Clarkson would be best known as a wig-maker but extended his line into make-up and costumes.

He was always the self-promoter. His apartment was full of portraits of himself and inscribed photographs from the leading actors testifying to their friendship. When he was asked to write a chapter titled "On Making-Up" for A Guide to the Stage he took the opportunity of puffing the quality of "Clarkson's Lillie Powder" and his "well-known Kleeno" which, he boasted, was "used by Sir Henry Irving and most other theatrical celebrities."

supplying the wardrobes for the private plays and entertainments that Queen Victoria had her children and courtiers put on at Windsor and Balmoral. (18) Edward VII appointed him "Royal Perruquier and Costumier."

At the peak of his career he purportedly had on hand 50,000 costumes and on occasion employed a staff of close to a hundred.

he had a reputation for being pompous and vane. For half a century he was a fixture at every theatrical event, gossiping in his lisping Cockney accent to the cream of London society who had made of him a sort of pet. (25) His betters enjoyed laughing at the nervous, "queer little man."

Clarkson's funeral service took place at St. Paul's cathedral, his friends placing a "wig" of white flowers on the alter step. 

It was only after his death that contemporaries found themselves asking "Who was Willy Clarkson?" It was, of course, fitting that a man who was an expert in wigs and make-up might not always show his true face. 

Women of easy virtue who wished to pass themselves off as ladies were also reputed to have availed themselves of his services. In one of Marie Lloyd's music hall songs a prostitute was portrayed "bedecked with make-up and a wig from Clarkson's, the theatrical supplier."

Clarkson provided costumes and disguises for a variety of reasons and took his role as costumier and perruquier seriously. "Before an actor can act a part thoroughly," he asserted, "he must look it, and he cannot look it unless he knows how to make up." (68) The question which was posed after his death was, did he disguise himself? Those who wrote about him all mentioned that there were mysterious or unexplained aspects of his life. Did he take a personal as well as a business interest in the playing of roles? 

Clarkson was a supplier of "nigger-black" and burnt cork for making up minstrels and nose-paste and crepe hair for "all the stage Jews." (93) He prided himself on being a friend of Beerbohm Tree whose portrayals of Fagin, Shylock, and Svengali continued to reinforce Jewish stereotypes on the London stage.

Homosexual acts could be punished by a two year prison term and the discreet accordingly tried not to draw attention to themselves. The barrister and legal historian C. E. Bechhofer Roberts believed that Clarkson was driven to arson because of his need to obtain hush money.

the theatre has been a safe-house for unconventional behavior. Although its public nature has required it to endorse norms, its space is specially licensed to harbor unorthodox individuals and otherwise inadmissible conduct. Commonly accepted reality may be inverted or parodied within this space." (97) Yet, if the London stage was quite liberal, everyone recalled how a charge of indecency had so swiftly destroyed Oscar Wilde's brilliant career. Noel Coward, for example, took great care to avoid any open avowal of his sexual orientation for fear that it might endanger his pursuit of fame and fortune.

Was Willy Clarkson an arsonist? a Jew? a homosexual? It is a testimony to his cunning that it is difficult to answer. Did it make any difference if he was any or all of these? He certainly thought so, as did respectable society. Arson was, of course, a crime but so too were homosexual practices. And evidence of flare ups of anti-Semitism at home and abroad necessarily worried English Jews. In a world in which identities--be they racial or sexual--took on an ever greater importance so too would the anxieties of those who hoped to "pass." Clarkson's story thus highlights the enormous importance modern societies attribute to questions of identity and disguise. It throws into relief several key cultural preoccupations of the inter-war period. The Clarkson case particularly reminds us how, in the twentieth century, both courts and blackmailers policed and punished sexual deviants. It foregrounds the teeming metropolis as the site where such encounters would most likely occur. 

[peopleofmassachusettsquotes]

George Bancroft, History of the United States v. 1, 1839

Page 273: The prohibition of the Book of Common Prayer at Salem produced an early harvest of implacable enemies to the colony. Resentment rankled in the minds of some, whom Endecott had perhaps too passionately punished; and Mason and Gorges persistently kept alive their vindictive complaints. A petition even reached King Charles, complaining of distraction and disorder in the plantations; but Massachusetts was ably defended by Saltonstall, Humphrey, and Cradock, its friends in England; and, in January, 1633, the committee of the privy council ordered the adventures to continue their undertakings cheerfully, for the king did not design to impose on the people of Massachusetts the ceremonies which they had emigrated to avoid. The country, it was believed, would in time be very beneficial to England.

Page 279: What liberal English statesmen thought of the people of Massachusetts we know from D’Ewes, who wrote: “All men whom malice blunted not, nor impiety transverseth, may see that the very finger of God hath hitherto gone with them and guided them.” On the other hand, the government of Charles were of the opinion that “all corporations, as is found by experience in the corporation of New England, are refractory to monarchical government and endeavor to poison a plantation with facets spirits.”

Page 285: Such were the most important of the liberties and laws, established at the end of 1641, for the government of Massachusetts. Embracing the freedom of the commonwealth, of municipalities, of persons, and of churches according to the principles of Congregationalism, “the body of liberties” exhibits the truest picture of the principles, character, and intentions of the people of Massachusetts, and the best evidence of its vigor and self-dependence.

Page 311: Saltonstall wrote from Europe that, but for their severities, the people of Massachusetts would have been “the eyes of God’s people in England.” Sir Henry Vane, in 1651, had urged that “the oppugners of the Congregational way should not, from its own principles and practice, be taught to root it out.” “It were better,” he added, “not to censure any persons for matters of a religious concernment.” The elder Winthrop relented before his death, and professed himself weary of banishing heretics; the younger Winthrop never harbored a thought of intolerant cruelty; but the rugged Dudley was not mellowed by old age. “God forbid,” said he, “our love for the truth should be grown so cold that we should tolerate errors. I die no libertine.” “Better tolerate hypocrites and tares than thorns and briers,” affirmed Cotton. “Polypiety,” echoed Ward, “is the greatest impiety in the world To say that men ought to have liberty of conscience is impious ignorance.” “Religion,” said the melancholic Norton, “admits of no eccentric motions.” But Massachusetts was in the state of transition when expiring bigotry exhibited its worst aspect.

Page 370: Henceforward legal proceedings were transacted in the king’s name; and, after a delay of two years, the elective franchise was extended to all freeholders who paid an annual tax of ten shillings, provided the general court, on certificates to their orthodoxy and good life, should admit them as freemen. But the people of Massachusetts regarded not so much the nature of the requisitions as the power by which they were made. Complete acquiescence would have seemed to recognize in the monarch the right of reversing the judgments of their courts; of dictating laws for their enactment; and of changing by his own authority the character of their domestic constitution. The question of obedience was a question of liberty, and gave birth to the parties of prerogative and of freedom.

Page 372: In July, the fleet, equipped for the reduction of the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, arrived at Boston, bearing Commissioners nominated by the duke of York and hostile to colonial liberties. “The main end and drift” of their appointment was to gain “a good footing and foundation for a further advance” of English power, by leading the people to submit to alterations in their charter; especially to yield up to the king the nomination or approbation of the governor, and the chief command of the militia. This instruction was secret; but it was known that they were charged to investigate the manner in which the charters of New England had been exercised, “with full authority to provide for the peace of the country, according to the royal instructions and their own discretion.” No exertion of power was immediately attempted; but the people of Massachusetts descried the approach of tyranny, and their general court assembled to meet the danger.