The Lewkenor Circle · Soldiers and military writers
Sir Roger Williams: The Professional Soldier and Fluellen
“Sir Roger Williams well remembreth this day’s work”—Lewkenor’s testimony and Shakespeare’s Welsh captain.
Sir Roger Williams (c.1540–1595) was a Welsh professional soldier whose career took him through the wars of the Low Countries and France. He also wrote about warfare, defending practical experience and contemporary weapons. His courage, argumentative confidence and concern for discipline make him a particularly suggestive comparison for Captain Fluellen in Henry V.
A life in continental warfare
Williams served in the Netherlands during Elizabeth I’s reign, fought under the Earl of Leicester, and took part in the defence of Sluys in 1587. He later served Henry of Navarre in France. His career belonged to the international military world in which English soldiers encountered Spanish, Dutch, French, Italian and Irish troops, often under changing commanders and precarious conditions of payment.
His A Brief Discourse of War appeared in 1590. The Actions of the Low Countries, drawing on his earlier experience, was published after his death in 1618. The distinction matters when comparing his books with a play already in print in 1600.
“Sir Roger Williams well remembereth this day’s work”
The later connection rests on Lewkenor’s own printed testimony. Describing English soldiers who had entered Spanish service, he recalls fighting at Wynochbergen and names Roger Williams on the opposing side:
Thence they were drawn to Wynochbergen to serve against the French and English that lay there encamped, where they behaved themselves with such desperate resolution that day, that monsieur de Balançon, brother to the marquess of Warambon, was taken prisoner; that besides the loss of many of their lives, they were a wonder to the whole army; which praise of theirs the pride of the Spaniards not enduring, did upbraid them, that they had served rather like giddy headed drunkards, than men wisely valiant. Sir Roger Williams well remembreth this day’s work, for he was there in service of the states; and unless I am deceived, lost a brother in that service.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595); spelling modernised.
This is a specific reference to Williams’s service, rather than an association inferred from two soldiers being in the Netherlands. Lewkenor qualifies the reported loss of Williams’s brother with “unless I am deceived”. The passage gives the battle’s human cost alongside its reputation for courage.
Lewkenor treats Williams as someone who could remember the action. He does not describe a meeting between them in this passage; the direct connection is his printed appeal to Williams’s knowledge of a particular engagement.
Roger Williams and Fluellen
Roger Williams was a Welsh professional soldier and military writer whose career extended through the Low Countries and France. Charles Wisner Barrell proposed him as a model for Fluellen. The comparison brings together Welsh identity, courage, quick temper, military learning and a strong concern for discipline.
Henry’s description of his Welsh captain captures that combination:
KING HENRY
For I do know Fluellen valiant
And, touched with choler, hot as gunpowder,
And quickly will return an injury.
Fluellen’s professional knowledge makes him valuable; his readiness to defend honour also makes him vulnerable to a joke. The proposed Williams comparison should be read through those particular characteristics, rather than as a claim that every incident in Fluellen’s story records something Williams did.
The breach and the practical soldier
Williams’s writing attends to the danger concealed by the language of glory. On assaulting a breach, he insists that the first attacking troops face exceptional risks:
the greatest warriors account the first troupe that entereth a breach in more danger than the first troupe that must charge in their several battles. They have reason, for I know it by good experience, whether they enter or retire the most of them are killed.
Roger Williams, A Brief Discourse of War (1590), discussion of assaults; spelling modernised.
In Henry V, the captains’ discussion outside Harfleur similarly concerns how a siege is actually conducted. Fluellen wants to debate the inherited rules of warfare:
Captain Macmorris, I beseech you now, will you voutsafe me, look you, a few disputations with you, as partly touching or concerning the disciplines of the war, the Roman wars?
Fluellen, Henry V, III.ii.
The comic friction between Fluellen and Macmorris puts military expertise into conversation and conflict. Rules matter, but the battle also creates an urgency in which the men cannot simply sit down to dispute them.
Sir John Smythe and the argument over weapons
Williams’s A Brief Discourse of War appeared in 1590, the same year as Sir John Smythe’s Certain Discourses. Their disagreement over the longbow and firearms forms part of the military controversy surrounding Shakespeare’s histories. Smythe defended the bow; Williams argued from the practices of contemporary warfare.
Fluellen’s reverence for Roman discipline adds another strand to the Williams comparison. It can invite comparison with conservative military argument as well as with Williams’s professional confidence. The play does not, however, make Fluellen deliver Smythe’s case for the longbow. Ancient discipline and opposition to firearms are different propositions.
Sir John Smythe of Essex must also be kept distinct from Captain John Smith of Norfolk, the soldier whose drunken quarrel and death Lewkenor describes. The latter belongs chiefly to the Falstaff comparison explored on the Henry IV page.
“I assure you”: recommending a soldier
Williams’s letter to Walsingham recommending “Mr. Were” gives the professional voice at greater length:
If you knew the virtue of this bearer, Mr. Were, I am sure he would be very well welcome to you. I am sure all his countrymen that served here will give him no less praise than I. I assure you I never saw a braver young gentleman afore his enemy. You have favoured me and a number of others for less valour and virtue than is in him. I do not doubt, after you have spoken with others that kept him company in these parts you will both favour and love him. I would trouble you with a large discourse, but that I am sure you will find more contentment in his speech than in my writing. He knows my mind. If you will help me, I humbly desire you.
Roger Williams to Sir Francis Walsingham, recommending Mr. Were; spelling modernised.
Robert Detobel drew attention to the resemblance between this repeated assurance and Fluellen’s personal testimony about service:
I assure you, there is very excellent services committed at the bridge.
Fluellen, Henry V, III.vi.
The shared habit is one of recommendation: a soldier stakes his own experience and judgement on the value of another man’s conduct. The phrases are ordinary in themselves; their interest lies in the fuller pattern of professional praise, qualification and insistence.
The Welshman and the leek
Welsh identity becomes a point of fellowship between Fluellen and Henry:
KING HENRY
I wear it for a memorable honor,
For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.
All the water in Wye cannot wash your Majesty’s Welsh plood out of your pody, I can tell you that.
Fluellen, Henry V, IV.vii.
Later, Fluellen forces Pistol to eat the leek with which he has mocked him. The professional soldier’s honour is defended through a comic humiliation. Fluellen remains both a capable captain and a man whose temper can be provoked.
A military voice, not a simple identification
Williams supplies a historical figure against whom Fluellen’s speech and behaviour can be examined. The comparison draws its strength from the combination of features: Welsh identity, practical service, the assertion of military knowledge, quick anger and professional honour. A resemblance in one stock expression would carry much less weight.
The connection to Lewkenor is more concrete than the proposed literary identification. Lewkenor names Williams, recalls the action at Wynochbergen and invokes his memory of it. The Fluellen comparison is an interpretation of Shakespeare’s character; the reference to Williams in The Estate of English Fugitives is part of the surviving primary evidence.
Sources
Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), account of the English troops at Oudenaarde and Wynochbergen.
Roger Williams, A Brief Discourse of War (1590), discussion of assaults and contemporary military practice; The Actions of the Low Countries (1618); letter to Sir Francis Walsingham recommending Mr. Were.
Sir John Smythe, Certain Discourses (1590), for the military controversy. Charles Wisner Barrell proposed Williams as a model for Fluellen; Robert Detobel compared Williams’s correspondence with Fluellen’s language.
William Shakespeare, Henry V, III.ii, III.vi, IV.vii and V.i. Prose quotations use modernised spelling.
Explore the plays and people
Henry V: Agincourt, Roger Williams and Fluellen →