The Lewkenor Circle · Soldiers and commanders
Martin Schenck: Service, Revenge and the Price of Loyalty
I have heard Skinke earnestly protest, that he had not in his purse wherewithal to buy him so much as a pair of shoes—for those were his very words.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
A commander whose complaints Lewkenor heard for himself.
Martin Schenck van Nydeggen was one of the most formidable soldiers in the wars of the Low Countries. He served the Spanish crown, then changed sides and fought for the States. In Lewkenor’s account, that change follows a sequence of service, imprisonment, unpaid expenses and denied preferment. The story asks what happens when a commander’s loyalty is repeatedly tested by his employer’s failure to reward him.
The man Lewkenor calls “Skinke”
The name appears in several forms: Martin Schenck, Maarten Schenk and, in Lewkenor’s English, “Skinke” or “Schinke”. His career moved between opposing armies in the Netherlands. Lewkenor uses him as an example of a valuable soldier whose services exceeded the rewards he received.
The connection is unusually direct. Lewkenor says he saw Schenck petitioning Parma and heard his complaints. This is stronger evidence of personal contact than a shared appearance in the same campaign.
“As I have often heard him say”
Lewkenor describes a substantial cavalry reinforcement that Schenck brought into Spanish service:
Skinke brought him a second supply of at least five and twenty hundred horsemen, which, as I have often heard him say, he had levied in a manner wholly upon his own charge.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
The qualification identifies the source of the claim: Schenck himself. Lewkenor could report what he had heard, but the assertion that the force was raised largely at Schenck’s expense remains the commander’s account of his own contribution.
Military service here is an investment as well as an obligation. Men, horses and equipment have to be provided before the hoped-for rewards arrive.
Captivity and ransom
Schenck was captured and imprisoned at Guelders. According to Lewkenor, the governor tried to persuade him to abandon Spanish service, then imposed a heavy ransom when he refused:
finding him still most resolutely faithful and constant to the party which he followed, he caused him to be imprisoned in a great obscure filthy tower of the town, and withal, set him at an excessive ransom, such as he did think would exceed the compass of his ability to discharge.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
Lewkenor then describes Schenck’s unsuccessful efforts to obtain help from Parma:
Skinke, in the mean time, by his friends, earnestly solicited the duke of Parma to help him with somewhat towards his ransom; but in fine, seeing there came nothing from thence but delays and dilatory excuses, he used such means by the sale of his goods and the help of his other friends, that after fifteen months imprisonment he procured his liberty.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
In this telling, Schenck remained loyal under pressure from the enemy. His allegiance changed only after his own side failed to provide the assistance he expected.
Lewkenor sees him at Parma’s camp
After his release, Schenck went to Parma during the siege of Antwerp. Lewkenor places himself at the scene:
where it was my chance to see him a long suitor, without obtaining any the least help at all, such was at that time the duke’s necessity; insomuch I assure you, that I have heard Skinke earnestly protest, that he had not in his purse wherewithal to buy him so much as a pair of shoes—for those were his very words; neither had he known where to have gotten meat or drink, but that by good hap he met there with Chenows, a German, to whom he was much beholding for relief in these great extremities.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
The remembered shoes make the complaint tangible. A commander who claimed to have raised thousands of horsemen now says he cannot afford basic clothing. Lewkenor’s repeated insistence that these were Schenck’s words gives the passage its character as personal testimony.
The governorship refused
Unable to obtain money, Schenck sought another form of recognition:
In fine, seeing no money was to be gotten, he desired the government of Nieumegen, the which by a devise of his plotting was newly rendered; nevertheless he was denied, and the same given to monsieur de Haultpenne. Then he desired the King’s commission to levy a standing regiment of Dutch footmen, that likewise was denied. Lastly, to stop his mouth, he had a company of horsemen granted him, with which, going down into Gelderland, he put himself presently into employment.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
The alternatives narrow from governorship to regiment to cavalry company. Yet even the final concession fails to secure Schenck’s position. When winter quarters and contributions were allocated, he was told that his company was not enrolled among the king’s horsemen and therefore could not receive the same provision.
“Bending his mind presently to revenge”
Lewkenor makes the refusal a turning point:
Nothing ever more moved Skinke than the indignity of this dealing; and so telling the duke, that he would be loath, now he had spent all that ever he had in the King’s service, to be accounted a captain of freebooters, took his leave, bending his mind presently to revenge.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
Schenck then entered the service of the States. Lewkenor presents the change of allegiance as the consequence of accumulated indignities: an unpaid ransom, poverty, rejected claims to command and a company denied ordinary support.
The military grievance beside Iago
The refused governorship and displaced soldier invite comparison with Iago’s grievance about Cassio’s appointment:
’Tis the curse of service.
Preferment goes by letter and affection,
And not by old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to th’ first.
Iago, Othello, I.i.
Schenck’s story provides a military context for the speech: experience and service create expectations that the distribution of command can frustrate. The further movement from resentment to revenge makes the comparison more pointed.
This is a comparison of situations and motives. It does not require Schenck to be the single historical original of Iago. Rowland Yorke’s separate story supplies another account of disappointed preferment in the same military world.
What can a prince afford?
Lewkenor turns from Schenck’s personal grievance to the finances of the Spanish monarchy:
this not requiting the deserts of men of such exceeding value, argueth either an unwillingness, or else an unableness to do the same; if an unwillingness, what comfort then shall a man have to spend his years and fortunes in so ungrateful a service?
He is mighty, but he gripeth at more than he is able to embrace; he is rich, but the infiniteness of his charge exceedeth the measure of his riches.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
The criticism reaches beyond an ungrateful commander. Lewkenor questions whether Spain can sustain the scale of its commitments. Schenck’s unpaid service becomes an example in a larger argument about power, expenditure and the gap between promised riches and actual provision.
The last attack on Nijmegen
Schenck drowned in the Waal during a failed attack on Nijmegen in August 1589. The Rijksmuseum identifies the attack depicted in its historical prints as 10 August 1589. This is a later episode in his career, separate from the earlier refusal of the governorship described by Lewkenor.
The contrast gives his career a grim shape: the soldier who had sought command of Nijmegen ultimately died trying to take the city for the opposing side.
Sources
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), account of Schenck’s services, captivity, petition to Parma and change of allegiance. Prose quotations use modernised spelling.
John Lothrop Motley, History of the United Netherlands, for the later campaigns. Rijksmuseum, Mislukte aanval op Nijmegen, 1589, depicting the failed attack and Schenck’s drowning.
William Shakespeare, Othello, I.i.