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Around the time that William Shakespeare left the grammar school in Stratford, a Jesuit priest named Edmund Campion secretly returned to England from Italy to begin a mission to return people to the Catholic faith. Campion was received at various houses in the Midlands where he recruited young men to travel with him as subseminarians, with the intention of their being sent abroad to train for the priesthood. Perhaps William Shakespeare, whose teacher at the grammar school was the brother of one of Campion’s associates, Thomas Cottam, was just the sort of intelligent young man that Campion was seeking. Maybe it was at a meeting with Campion that John Shakespeare reaffirmed his faith and signed the Borromeo Testament. Maybe William joined Campion’s mission.
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After Campion’s arrest in 1581, he was tortured and revealed the names of some of those who had helped him. Hoghton Tower was searched and soon after, Alexander Hoghton died, but before his death he wrote a will in which he mentions a William Shakeshaft and recommends him to Thomas Hesketh of Rufford Old Hall. Who was William Shakeshaft? Was he William Shakespeare? No one knows, but it is an intriguing connection, especially as it was once claimed that ‘Shakespeare, in his younger days, had been a schoolmaster in the country’. Other clues are that Shakespeare is known to have been a member of Lord Strange’s Men, the acting company of the Lancashire based, Ferdinando Stanley, and his backer at the Globe was Thomas Savage, a Lancashire man whose wife was a Hesketh.
Maybe Edmund Campion’s arrest changed Shakespeare’s future and he became a poet rather than a priest. The clues cannot be dismissed and in my new novel Many Kinds of Silence I follow Shakespeare through his ‘lost years’ where he becomes embroiled with spies and murderers at the Tudor court. Elizabeth Ashworth
About the book
When William Shakespeare leaves his home in Stratford in the company of a Catholic priest he knows that he is walking into danger, but the vast libraries held in the name of God are enough to tempt him to risk his life in the pursuit of knowledge. However, the capture and death of his mentor, Edmund Campion, and his return to Stratford set William on an altogether different path. Marriage to Anne Hathaway means he must turn his back on the priesthood, but there are other ways for a clever and charming young man to be of use to the faith.
Many Kinds of Silence traces the story of a young William Shakespeare and his patron, Ferdinando Stanley, and reveals how religion, science and choosing in whom to place your trust meant the difference between life and death in Elizabethan England.
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