The Lewkenor Circle · Biography
Jaques Francesco: Stanley’s Lieutenant and the Melancholy Jaques
“One born in Antwerp of Italian parents, but from his infancy brought up in England.”
The soldier in Lewkenor’s account
Jaques Francesco served under Sir William Stanley and rose to be his lieutenant-colonel in the Low Countries. Born in Antwerp to Italian parents and brought up in England, he crossed the national and political boundaries that give Lewkenor’s account of English fugitives its particular force.
Lewkenor presents him as a man indebted to English patrons, especially Sir Christopher Hatton, whose subsequent service abroad raised questions of gratitude and allegiance.
The Privy Council’s alarm
When Sir William Stanley surrendered Deventer and Rowland Yorke delivered the fort near Zutphen to the Spanish in January 1587, the authorities examined the loyalties of those associated with them. A Privy Council letter to the Lord Deputy of Ireland on 30 January singled out Stanley’s lieutenant:
And because we have received many advertisements of some foreign invasion intended this year by the Spaniard against that realm, wherein his long travail and experience may make him a dangerous instrument for the enemy, we have thought it meet to give your lordship knowledge thereof, to the intent you may carry a watchful eye upon all such as you know to have been his secret friends and defenders, and specially over Jacques de Francesco, his lieutenant, of whom both in respect he is a stranger, ill affected in religion, and noted to have had some intelligence with Ballard, lately executed here for the conspiracy against Her Majesty’s life, we think fit to be removed out of his charge, and sent hither before this fact of his captain be divulged.
Privy Council to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, 30 January 1587; spelling modernised.
The language records suspicion and an instruction to remove him from command and send him to England. The allegation of intelligence with John Ballard belongs to the authorities’ case for investigation; it should not be silently converted into proof that Jaques participated in the conspiracy.
The name appears in several forms, including Jacques de Francesco and Giacomo Francesci. Lewkenor’s printed account calls him Jaques Francesco. The variations matter when following him through English administrative records and later historical discussions.
“His lieutenant coronel”
“Lately (the old English and Irish soldiers being worn out) Sir William Stanley was fain to fill up his regiment with Wallons and Dutchmen, appointing new captains over them, and making one Jaques Francesco his lieutenant coronel; one born in Antwerp of Italian parents, but from his infancy brought up in England, and in many duties tied both to the nation, and to sundry gentlemen of the same, for many their loves and liberalities towards him, especially to the late Lord chancellor, whom he served, and who had always been his especial good friend and favorer.”
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), passage on Jaques Francesco; spelling modernised.
The depleted regiment is an important part of the story. Stanley’s command has lost its original soldiers and is being rebuilt with Walloon and Dutch recruits. Jaques’s advancement occurs within that changing army.
Service in Ireland and release from England
“He followed a while the wars of Ireland, where he behaved himself so well, that he was advanced to honest degrees in her majesties service, such as among soldiers are accounted honourable and of reputation; at length being brought thence, not without great suspicion of ill carrying himself in matter of allegiance to her majesty, yet he found such assured friends, that he did not only recover his liberty and freedom, but also tasted very deeply of their liberalities, such, as I think some of them, though very honourable, scarcely ever used the like to any; and engaged with these courtesies, which for ever would have tied a thankful mind, he was suffered to depart the realm.”
Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives; spelling modernised.
Lewkenor acknowledges Jaques’s earlier military merit before attacking his later conduct. The contrast makes the accusation of ingratitude more pointed: advancement, protection and financial assistance have, in Lewkenor’s telling, failed to secure his loyalty.
Conscience and ingratitude
Lewkenor follows the account of patronage with an accusation about Jaques’s conduct after leaving England:
All which notwithstanding, it is reported, that there is not any beyond the sea that doth run a more violent and unreverent course against the person of her majesty, and the state of our country, than he doth; at which truly I do much wonder, how a mind not altogether void of reason and humanity, can suffer itself to sink into so deep a degree of ingratitude. Let him yet at length look into his own conscience, and if so many benefits received claim not his fidelity and service, yet at least let them keep him from attempting villainy.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
“It is reported” marks the evidential limit of the accusation. Lewkenor writes as an opponent of the fugitives’ political choices, trying to discourage further departures from England. Yet his account also preserves Jaques’s previous military merit, the help of English patrons and the opportunities he had received.
The moral issue is obligation: what does a soldier owe to the country that raised him and the patrons who secured his advancement and freedom? Lewkenor’s answer is uncompromising, but the preceding narrative exposes the complicated relationships beneath that judgement.
The melancholy Jaques
Carol Enos proposed Jaques Francesco as a historical comparison for the melancholy traveller in As You Like It. The resemblance brings together the name, travel, life abroad and the experience of exile. Shakespeare’s Jaques explains his particular melancholy:
JAQUES: I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation, nor the musician’s, which is fantastical, nor the courtier’s, which is proud, nor the soldier’s, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer’s, which is politic, nor the lady’s, which is nice, nor the lover’s, which is all these; but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.
ROSALIND: A traveler! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men’s. Then to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.
JAQUES: Yes, I have gained my experience.
ROSALIND: And your experience makes you sad. I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad—and to travel for it too.
The exchange refuses to make travel a simple accomplishment. Jaques has acquired experience, but Rosalind asks what it has cost him. Her contrast between “rich eyes and poor hands” brings worldly knowledge back to material loss—a concern that runs through Lewkenor’s descriptions of service abroad.
Two accounts of exile
Enos describes the play as:
picturing life in exile as an idyllic, Christian antithesis to the duplicitous and dangerous life at Court
Carol Enos, “Catholic exiles in Flanders and As You Like It: or, what if you don’t like it at all?”, in Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare.
That interpretation brings out a productive contrast. Lewkenor presents the foreign world as a place of disappointed hopes, dependence and political danger; the comedy allows the forest to become a refuge from the court. Jaques complicates that refuge by carrying his dissatisfaction and accumulated experience with him.
The historical comparison does not make the comedy’s Jaques a documentary portrait. Lewkenor describes an officer’s career and allegiance; Shakespeare gives his traveller a distinct theatrical voice. Reading them beside one another identifies the points of contact without treating the play as a record of Jaques Francesco’s life.
Sources
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives under the King of Spain and His Ministers (1595), passage beginning “Lately (the old English and Irish soldiers being worn out)”.
Privy Council to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, 30 January 1587, instruction concerning Jacques de Francesco after the surrender of Deventer and the Zutphen fort.
Carol Enos, “Catholic exiles in Flanders and As You Like It: or, what if you don’t like it at all?”, in Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, IV.i. Prose quotations use modernised spelling.