Great Expectations
Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel: a bildungsroman that depicts the personal growth and personal development of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be narrated in the first person; the novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman and Hall published the novel in three volumes; the novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most memorable scenes, including the opening in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict, Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery—poverty, prison ships and chains, fights to the death—and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture; these include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith.
Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty and rejection, the eventual triumph of good over evil. Great Expectations, popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages and adapted numerous times into various media. Upon its release, the novel received near universal acclaim. Although Dickens's contemporary Thomas Carlyle referred to it disparagingly as that "Pip nonsense," he reacted to each fresh instalment with "roars of laughter." George Bernard Shaw praised the novel, as "All of one piece and truthful." During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with public response to Great Expectations and its sales. On Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, an orphan, about seven years old, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard, while visiting the graves of his parents and siblings. Pip now lives with her kind husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith; the convict scares Pip into stealing a file. Early on Christmas morning Pip returns with a pie and brandy.
During Christmas Dinner that evening, at the moment Pip's theft is about to be discovered, soldiers arrive and ask Joe to repair some shackles. Joe and Pip accompany them as they recapture the convict, fighting with another escaped convict; the first convict confesses to stealing food from the smithy. A year or two Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster who still wears her old wedding dress and lives as a recluse in the dilapidated Satis House, asks Mr Pumblechook, a relation of the Gargery's, to find a boy to visit her. Pip falls in love with her adopted daughter Estella. Estella remains hostile to Pip, which Miss Havisham encourages. Pip visits Miss Havisham until he is old enough to learn a trade. Joe accompanies Pip for the last visit, when she gives the money for Pip to be bound as apprentice blacksmith. Joe's surly assistant, Dolge Orlick, is envious of dislikes Mrs Joe; when Pip and Joe are away from the house, Mrs Joe is brutally attacked, leaving her unable to speak or do her work. Orlick is suspected of the attack.
Mrs Joe becomes kind-hearted after the attack. Pip's former schoolmate Biddy joins the household to help with her care. Four years into Pip's apprenticeship, Mr Jaggers, a lawyer, tells him that he has been provided with money, from an anonymous benefactor, so that he can become a gentleman. Pip is to leave for London. Pip sets up house in London at Barnard's Inn with Herbert Pocket, the son of his tutor, Matthew Pocket, a cousin of Miss Havisham. Herbert and Pip have met at Satis Hall, where Herbert was rejected as a playmate for Estella, he tells Pip how Miss Havisham was defrauded and deserted by her fiancé. Pip meets fellow pupils, Bentley Drummle, a brute of a man from a wealthy noble family, Startop, agreeable. Jaggers disburses; when Joe visits Pip at Barnard's Inn, Pip is ashamed of him. Joe relays a message from Miss Havisham. Pip returns there to meet Estella and is encouraged by Miss Havisham, he is disquieted to see Orlick now in service to Miss Havisham. He mentions his misgivings to Jaggers.
Back in London and Herbert exchange their romantic secrets: Pip adores Estella and Herbert is engaged to Clara. Pip meets Estella. Pip and Herbert build up debts. Mrs Joe Pip returns to his village for the funeral. Pip's income is fixed at £ 500 per annum. With the help of Jaggers' clerk, Pip plans to help advance Herbert's future prospects by anonymously securing him a position with the shipbroker, Clarriker's. Pip takes Estella to Satis House, she and Miss Havisham quarrel over Estella's coldness. In London, Bentley Drummle outrages Pip, by proposing a toast to Estella. At an Assembly Ball in Richmond, Pip witnesses Estella meeting Bentley Drummle and warns her about him. A week after he turns 23 years old, Pip learns that his benefactor is the convict he encountered in the churchyard, Abel Magwitch, transported to New South Wales after that escape, he can not return to England on pain of death. However, he returns to see Pip, the motivation for all his success. Pip is shocked, stops taking money from him.
Subsequently and Herbert Pocket devise a plan for Magwitch to escape from England. Magwitch shares his past history
Gunpowder Plot
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, as the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands during which James's nine-year-old daughter, was to be installed as the Catholic head of state. Catesby may have embarked on the scheme after hopes of securing greater religious tolerance under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed, his fellow plotters were John and Christopher Wright and Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham. Fawkes, who had 10 years of military experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in the failed suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives.
The plot was revealed to the authorities in an anonymous letter sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, on 26 October 1605. During a search of the House of Lords at about midnight on 4 November 1605, Fawkes was discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder—enough to reduce the House of Lords to rubble—and arrested. Most of the conspirators fled from London as they learned of the plot's discovery, trying to enlist support along the way. Several made a stand against the pursuing Sheriff of his men at Holbeche House. At their trial on 27 January 1606, eight of the survivors, including Fawkes, were convicted and sentenced to be hanged and quartered. Details of the assassination attempt were known by the principal Jesuit of England, Father Henry Garnet. Although he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death, doubt has been cast on how much he knew of the plot; as its existence was revealed to him through confession, Garnet was prevented from informing the authorities by the absolute confidentiality of the confessional.
Although anti-Catholic legislation was introduced soon after the plot's discovery, many important and loyal Catholics retained high office during King James's reign. The thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot was commemorated for many years afterwards by special sermons and other public events such as the ringing of church bells, which have evolved into the Bonfire Night of today. Between 1533 and 1540, King Henry VIII took control of the English Church from Rome, the start of several decades of religious tension in England. English Catholics struggled in a society dominated by the newly separate and Protestant Church of England. Henry's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, responded to the growing religious divide by introducing the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which required anyone appointed to a public or church office to swear allegiance to the monarch as head of the Church and state; the penalties for refusal were severe. Catholicism became marginalised, but despite the threat of torture or execution, priests continued to practise their faith in secret.
Queen Elizabeth and childless, steadfastly refused to name an heir. Many Catholics believed that her Catholic cousin, Queen of Scots, was the legitimate heir to the English throne, but she was executed for treason in 1587; the English Secretary of State, Robert Cecil, negotiated secretly with Mary's son and successor, King James VI of Scotland. In the months before Elizabeth's death on 24 March 1603, Cecil prepared the way for James to succeed her; some exiled Catholics favoured Philip II of Isabella, as Elizabeth's successor. More moderate Catholics looked to James's and Elizabeth's cousin Arbella Stuart, a woman thought to have Catholic sympathies; as Elizabeth's health deteriorated, the government detained those they considered to be the "principal papists", the Privy Council grew so worried that Arbella Stuart was moved closer to London to prevent her from being kidnapped by papists. Despite competing claims to the English throne, the transition of power following Elizabeth's death went smoothly.
James's succession was announced by a proclamation from Cecil on 24 March, celebrated. Leading papists, rather than causing trouble as anticipated, reacted to the news by offering their enthusiastic support for the new monarch. Jesuit priests, whose presence in England was punishable by death demonstrated their support for James, believed to embody "the natural order of things". James ordered a ceasefire in the conflict with Spain, though the two countries were still technically at war, King Philip III sent his envoy, Don Juan de Tassis, to congratulate James on his accession. In the following year both countries signed the Treaty of London. For decades, the English had lived under a monarch who refused to provide an heir, but James arrived with a family and a clear line of succession, his wife, Anne of Denmark, was the daughter of a king. Their eldest child, the nine-year-old Henry, was considered a handsome and confident boy, their two younger children and Charles, were proof that James was able to provide heirs to continue the Protestant monarchy.
James's attitude towards Catholics was more moderate than that of his predecessor even tolerant. He promised that he would not "persecute any that will be quiet and give an outward obedience to the law", believed that exile was a better solution than capital punishment: "I would be glad to have both their heads and their bodies separated from this whole island and transported beyond seas." Some Catholics believed that the martyrdom of James's m
James J. Van Alen
James John Van Alen was a sportsman and politician. He was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Italy on October 20, 1893, but declined the appointment, he was well known as a New York Society leader and was referred to as the "American Prince of Wales." He was the son of James Henry Van Alen, who served as a brigadier general in the Union Army during the Civil War, Mary Young Steward. He graduated from Oxford University. Van Alen donated $50,000 to Grover Cleveland's successful campaign for President, he was rewarded with an appointment as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Italy on October 20, 1893, but declined the appointment, owing to public disapproval. He was rumored to have been appointed the United States Ambassador to Great Britain under President Cleveland, his father became wealthy from real estate, which he inherited upon his death in 1886. In 1919, he sold his house at 15 East 65th Street in Manhattan, to Rufus L. Patterson, due to his opposition to Prohibition.
He lived abroad, spending most of his time at a villa in Cannes, from February 1920 until his death. In 1919, Van Alen stated: I know of lots of people that will leave the United States and make their home in countries where the laws are not so strict." In 1921, Van Alen sold eight three-story Harlem Houses in the 130th Street block, 28 to 42 West 130th Street, each on a lot 25 by 100 feet, between Fifth and Lenox Avenues to James H. Cruikshank. In 1876, he married Emily Astor, the eldest daughter of William Backhouse Astor, Jr. and Caroline Webster Schermerhorn. Together and Emily had three children: Mary Van Alen, who married Griswold A. Thompson in 1913. James Laurens Van Alen, who married Margaret "Daisy" Louise Post in 1900 Sarah Steward Van Alen, who married Robert Joseph Collier in 1902, his wife died in 1881. Van Alen died in 1923 while in London, his entire estate was estimated at $20,000,000. After his property and stock was given to his son, taxes were paid, the residual estate was valued at $2,061,617.
His will provided trust funds of $500,000 each for his daughters and Sarah, the principal to go to their descendants. His son, received all real estate and life estate in the residue and his grandson, James H. Van Alen, a surviving life estate. An additional trust of $12,000 was set aside for Mary M. Griffith. Upon her death, the residual went to his grandchildren. Van Alen was one of several rich men who leased, but did not buy, Rushton Hall in Northamptonshire, from the Clarke-Thornhill family. Rushton was the ancestral home of the Tresham family; the estate is about 227 acres of. The River Ise flows from west to east south of the Hall. Van Alen's father had a home in Newport, Rhode Island called " The Grange " and lived there year-round. In 1887, seven years after his wife's death in 1881, Van Alen's father gave him the land and he commissioned American architect Dudley Newton to build a replica of Wakehurst Place in Newport from plans designed by Charles Eamer Kempe; when completed the home had cost Van Alen some $750,000.
Salve Regina University purchased the mansion from the Van Alen family in 1972. His two daughters did not have children, however his son, James Laurens Van Alen, had three children. James' eldest child was James Henry "Jimmy" Van Alen II, the founder of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, who married Eleanor Langley, his second born was William Laurens Van Alen, founding president of the United States Court Tennis Association, who married Elizabeth Brinton Kent, daughter of Arthur Atwater Kent, in 1931. His youngest, only daughter was Louise Astor Van Alen. Louise was married three times, first in 1931 to Prince Alexei Mdivani, they divorced in 1932. In 1936, after Alexei's death, she married her first husband's older brother. Sergei tragically died that year in a polo accident. In 1947, she married for the third and final time, to Alexander Saunderson, grandson of Edward J. Saunderson, an MP and Lord Lieutenant of Cavan
Henry V of England
Henry V called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England from 1413 until his early death in 1422. He was the second English monarch of the House of Lancaster. Despite his short reign, Henry's outstanding military successes in the Hundred Years' War against France, most notably in his famous victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, made England one of the strongest military powers in Europe. Immortalised in the plays of Shakespeare, Henry is known and celebrated as one of the great warrior kings of medieval England. In his youth, during the reign of his father Henry IV, Henry gained military experience fighting the Welsh during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr and against the powerful aristocratic Percy family of Northumberland at the Battle of Shrewsbury. Henry acquired an increasing share in England's government due to the king's declining health, but disagreements between father and son led to political conflict between the two. After his father's death in 1413, Henry assumed control of the country and asserted the pending English claim to the French throne.
In 1415, Henry embarked on war with France in the ongoing Hundred Years' War between the two nations. His military successes culminated in his famous victory at the Battle of Agincourt and saw him come close to conquering France. Taking advantage of political divisions within France, he conquered large portions of the kingdom and Normandy was occupied by the English for the first time since 1345–1360. After months of negotiation with Charles VI of France, the Treaty of Troyes recognised Henry V as regent and heir apparent to the French throne and he was subsequently married to Charles's daughter, Catherine of Valois. Following this arrangement, everything seemed to point to the formation of a union between the kingdoms of France and England, in the person of King Henry, his sudden and unexpected death in France two years condemned England to the long and difficult minority of his infant son and successor, who reigned as Henry VI in England and Henry II in France. Henry was born in the tower above the gatehouse of Monmouth Castle in Wales, for that reason was sometimes called Henry of Monmouth.
He was the son of Henry of Bolingbroke and Mary de Bohun, thus the paternal grandson of the influential John of Gaunt, great-grandson of Edward III of England. At the time of his birth, Richard II, his first cousin once removed, was king. Henry's grandfather, John of Gaunt, was the king's guardian; as he was not close to the line of succession to the throne, Henry's date of birth was not documented. However, records indicate that his younger brother Thomas was born in the autumn of 1387 and that his parents were at Monmouth in 1386 but not in 1387, it is now accepted that he was born on 16 September 1386. Upon the exile of Henry's father in 1398, Richard II took the boy into his own charge and treated him kindly; the young Henry accompanied King Richard to Ireland. While in the royal service, he visited Trim Castle in County Meath, the ancient meeting place of the Irish Parliament. In 1399, Henry's grandfather died. In the same year, King Richard II was overthrown by the Lancastrian usurpation that brought Henry's father to the throne and Henry was recalled from Ireland into prominence as heir apparent to the Kingdom of England.
He was created Prince of Wales at his father's coronation and Duke of Lancaster on 10 November 1399, the third person to hold the title that year. His other titles were Duke of Earl of Chester and Duke of Aquitaine. A contemporary record notes that during that year, Henry spent time at The Queen's College, Oxford under the care of his uncle Henry Beaufort, the chancellor of the university. From 1400 to 1404, he carried out the duties of High Sheriff of Cornwall. Less than three years Henry was in command of part of the English forces, he led his own army into Wales against Owain Glyndŵr and joined forces with his father to fight Henry "Hotspur" Percy at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403. It was there that the sixteen-year-old prince was killed by an arrow that became stuck in his face. An ordinary soldier might have died from such a wound, but Henry had the benefit of the best possible care. Over a period of several days, John Bradmore, the royal physician, treated the wound with honey to act as an antiseptic, crafted a tool to screw into the broken arrow shaft and thus extract the arrow without doing further damage, flushed the wound with alcohol.
The operation was successful, but it left Henry with permanent scars, evidence of his experience in battle. For eighteen months in 1410–11, Henry was in control of the country during his father's ill health and took full advantage of the opportunity to impose his own policies; when the king recovered, he dismissed the prince from his council. The Welsh revolt of Owain Glyndŵr absorbed Henry's energies until 1408; as a result of the king's ill health, Henry began to take a wider share in politics. From January 1410, helped by his uncles Henry Beaufort and Thomas Beaufort, legitimised sons of John of Gaunt, he had practical control of the government. Both in foreign and domestic policy he differed from the king, who discharged the prince from the council in November 1411; the quarrel of father and son was political only, though it is probable that the Beauforts had discussed the abdication of Henry IV. Their opponents endeavoured to defame the prince, it may be that the tradition of Henry's riotous youth, immortalised by Shakespeare, is due to political enmity.
Henry's record of involvement in war and politics in his youth, disproves this tradition. The most famous incident, his quarrel wi
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, campaigned vigorously for children's rights and other social reforms. Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour and keen observation of character and society.
His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense; the instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, he modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features, his plots were constructed, he wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age, his 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are frequently adapted, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London.
His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell, G. K. Chesterton and Tom Wolfe—for his realism, prose style, unique characterisations, social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, a vein of sentimentalism; the term Dickensian is used to describe something, reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters. Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at 1 Mile End Terrace, Landport in Portsea Island, the second of eight children of Elizabeth Dickens and John Dickens, his father was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger to His Majesty's Navy and head of an established firm, to act as godfather to Charles. Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son.
In January 1815, John Dickens was called back to London, the family moved to Norfolk Street, Fitzrovia. When Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness, thence to Chatham, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11, his early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". Charles spent time outdoors, but read voraciously, including the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas, he reread The Arabian Nights and the Collected Farces of Elizabeth Inchbald. He retained poignant memories of childhood, helped by an excellent memory of people and events, which he used in his writing, his father's brief work as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office afforded him a few years of private education, first at a dame school, at a school run by William Giles, a dissenter, in Chatham. This period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House, the family moved to Camden Town in London.
The family had left Kent amidst mounting debts, living beyond his means, John Dickens was forced by his creditors into the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark, London in 1824. His wife and youngest children joined him there. Charles 12 years old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town. Roylance was "a reduced old lady, long known to our family", whom Dickens immortalised, "with a few alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs Pipchin" in Dombey and Son, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, "a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman... with a quiet old wife" and lame son, in Lant Street in Southwark. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in The Old Curiosity Shop. On Sundays—with his sister Frances, free from her studies at the Royal Academy of Music—he spent the day at the Marshalsea. Dickens used the prison as a setting in Little Dorrit. To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings
Francis Tresham
Francis Tresham, eldest son of Thomas Tresham and Merial Throckmorton, was a member of the group of English provincial Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a conspiracy to assassinate King James I of England. Tresham joined the Earl of Essex's failed rebellion against the government in 1601, for which he was imprisoned. Only his family's intervention and his father's money saved him from attainder. Despite this, he became involved in two missions to Catholic Spain to seek support for English Catholics, with the Gunpowder Plotters. According to his confession, Tresham joined the plot in October 1605, its leader, Robert Catesby, asked him to provide a large sum of money and the use of Rushton Hall, but Tresham provided neither, instead giving a much smaller amount of money to fellow plotter Thomas Wintour. Tresham expressed concern that if the plot was successful, two of his brothers-in-law would be killed. An anonymous letter delivered to one of them, William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, found its way to the English Secretary of State, Robert Cecil, an event which proved decisive in the conspiracy's failure.
Historians have long suspected that Tresham wrote a hypothesis that remains unproven. Catesby and Wintour shared the same suspicion and threatened to kill him, but he was able to convince them otherwise, he was confined to the Tower of London. In his confession, he never mentioned the letter, he died of natural causes on 23 December 1605. Born in about 1567, Francis Tresham was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Tresham, of Rushton Hall in Northamptonshire, Meriel Throckmorton, daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coughton in Warwickshire. According to the antiquary Anthony Wood, Tresham was educated in Oxford at either St John's College or Gloucester Hall or both, although biographer Mark Nicholls mentions that there appears to be no other evidence to corroborate that claim. Francis is said to have been a fellow prisoner with Robert Catesby held in Wisbech Castle at the time of the Spanish Armada, he married Anne Tufton, daughter of Sir John Tufton of Hothfield in Kent, in 1593. The couple had three children, twins Lucy and Thomas, Elizabeth.
Thomas died in infancy, Lucy became a nun in Brussels, Elizabeth married Sir George Heneage of Hainton, Lincolnshire. Tresham's father, born near the end of Henry VIII's reign, was regarded by the Catholic community as one of its leaders. Thomas was received into the Catholic Church in 1580, in the same year he allowed the Jesuit Edmund Campion to stay at his house in Hoxton. For the latter, following Campion's capture in 1581, he was tried in Star Chamber. Thomas's refusal to comply with his interrogators was the beginning of years of fines and spells in prison, he proclaimed the accession of James I to the English throne, but the king's promises to Thomas of forestry commissions and an end to recusancy fines were not kept. His finances were depleted by fines of £7,720 for recusancy, the spending of £12,200 on the marriages of six daughters meant that when he died in 1605, his estate was £11,500 in debt. Author Antonia Fraser suggests that as a young man Francis became "resentful of his father's authority and profligate with his father's money."
Authors Peter Marshall and Geoffrey Scott describe him as possessing a "somewhat hot-headed nature", while another source calls him a "wild unstayed man". The Jesuit priest Oswald Tesimond wrote, he knew how to look after himself, but was not much to be trusted". While still young he assaulted a man and his pregnant daughter, claiming that their family owed his father money. Tresham spent time in prison for this offence. On 8 February 1601 he joined the Earl of Essex in open rebellion against the government. Essex's aim was to secure his own ambitions, but the Jesuit Henry Garnet described the young men who accompanied him as being interested in furthering the Catholic cause. Captured and imprisoned, Tresham was rebuked, his sister, Lady Mounteagle, alerted his cousin John Throckmorton, who turned to "three most honorable parsons and one especiall instrument" for help. The identity of these individuals is unclear, but Tresham was promised freedom on the condition that over the next three months his father pay £2,100 to William Ayloffe, to "save his lyef attainder in bloode."
He was released on 21 June. The experience did not dissuade him from engaging in further conspiracies. However, upon James's accession to the throne, he told Thomas Wintour, that he would "stand wholly for the King", "to have no speech with him of Spain." English Catholics had hoped that the persecution of their faith would end when James succeeded Elizabeth I, as he appeared to hold more moderate views toward Catholics than his predecessor. But Robert Catesby, a religious zealot imprisoned for his involvement in the Essex rebellion, had grown tired of James's supposed perfidy and planned to kill the king, he hoped to achieve this by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder and inciting a popular revolt to install James's daughter Princess Elizabeth as titular Queen. Catesby was running out of money. With his debts, with an annual income of over £3,000 Tresham was one of the wealthiest people known to the plotters, Cates
Rushton Triangular Lodge
The Triangular Lodge is a folly and constructed between 1593 and 1597 by Sir Thomas Tresham near Rushton, England. It is now in the care of English Heritage; the stone used for the construction was alternating bands of light limestone. The lodge is Grade I listed on the National Heritage List for England. Tresham was a Roman Catholic and was imprisoned for a total of fifteen years in the late 16th century for refusing to become a Protestant. On his release in 1593, he designed the Lodge as a protestation of his faith, his belief in the Holy Trinity is represented everywhere in the Lodge by the number three: it has three walls 33 feet long, each with three triangular windows and surmounted by three gargoyles. One wall is inscribed'15', another'93', the last'TT'; the building has three floors, upon a basement, a triangular chimney. Three Latin texts, each 33 letters long, run around the building on each facade; the quotations are: Aperiatur terra & germinet Salvatorem: "Let the earth open and … bring forth salvation" Quis separabit nos a charitate Christi?: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
Consideravi opera tua, Domine, et expavi: "I have contemplated thy works, O Lord, was afraid" The windows on each floor are of different designs, all ornate. The largest, those on the first floor, are in the form of a trefoil, the emblem of the Tresham family; the basement windows are small trefoils with a triangular pane at their centre. The windows on the ground floor are of a lozenge design, each having 12 small circular openings surrounding a central cruciform slit. Heraldic shields of various families surround these windows; the raised ground floor has an entrance in the south-east facade. Over the door, beneath Tresham's coat of arms, is the Latin inscription: Tres testimonium dant, meaning "The number three bears witness" or "Tresham bears witness". Above the door are the numbers "5555"; the figures are oddly shaped, architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner speculated that this may once have read "3333", but that number seems to have no particular significance. It has, been pointed out that if 1593 is subtracted from 5555, it leaves 3962.
The principal room on each floor is hexagonal. The building is crowned, above the quotations on each facade, by three steep gables each surmounted by a three-sided obelisk at the apex. Among the emblems carved on the gables are, on the southeast side, the symbolic seven-branched candelabrum within an octagonal plaque, a heptagonal plaque depicting the seven eyes of God. On the north side are a Pelican in her piety, a symbol of Christ and the Eucharist, a Hen and Chickens; the triangular chimney is adorned with the holy monogram "IHS", a lamb and cross, a chalice. While the lodge is indisputably a testament to Tresham's faith, it is an example of the Elizabethan love of allegory. Carved in the gables are the numbers "3509" and "3898": these are said to be the dates of the Creation and the Calling of Abraham. Among the more recent dates carved on the building are 1580, thought to be the date of Tresham's conversion, the future dates 1626 and 1641 - to what do they refer? One suggestion is that not only are they divisible by three, but that, when 1593 is subtracted from them, they give 33 and 48, the years in which Jesus and the Virgin Mary are said to have died.
The broken inscriptions inscribed on each gable combine to read "Respicite non mihi laboravi", which means "Behold I have not laboured for myself alone". The Lodge was the only building Tresham designed which he saw completed before his death in 1605. Nikolaus Pevsner in his The Buildings of England: Northamptonshire states: "as a testament of faith this building must be viewed with respect", he considered the lodge so architecturally important that he chose its photograph for the front cover of the first edition of his book. Moore, a Northampton native, touches on the history of several local sites in his speculative magical realist history of the town, it is featured on the cover of the album Sun Structures released in February 2014 by the English psychedelic band Temples, is visible from the Midland Main Line between Kettering & Market Harborough Lyveden New Bield Rushton Triangular Lodge page at English Heritage Rushton Triangular Lodge details 360 degree views of the lodge Historic England.
"Grade I". Images of England; some of the Lodge's symbolism interpreted on everything2.com South-west elevation of the lodge, drawn by JA Gotch, 1882 Details of the upper windows of the lodge Details of the decoration of the lodge A Catholic blog with photos and description of Rushton Hall and the Lodge
