William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby
William Stanley | |
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Earl of Derby | |
Known for | Travels, Shakespeare authorship candidate |
Born | 1561 |
Died | 29 September 1642 (aged 80–81) Chester, Kingdom of England |
Nationality | English |
Locality | Lancashire, Cheshire |
Noble family | Stanley |
Spouse(s) |
Elizabeth de Vere (m. 1595; died 1627) |
Issue More... | |
Father | Lady Margaret Clifford |
William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby,
His own literary works are lost or unidentified, but in the 1890s he was put forward as one of the contenders to be the true author of the works of William Shakespeare, according to some proponents of the Shakespeare authorship question.
Early life
William Stanley was a younger son of
Travels
Stanley was educated at St John's College, Oxford. In 1582 he travelled to the continent to study in university towns in France and may also have attended Henry of Navarre's academy at Nérac. In 1585 he returned home but was once more sent to Paris as part of an embassy to Henry III of France. He then remained on the continent for a further three years of personal travels before returning home once more. He may have been accompanied on his travels by the young John Donne.[1]
During his travels, William Stanley is said to have led an adventurous existence, being involved in duels and love affairs and travelling in disguise as a friar while in
These colourful adventures are traceable to a popular ballad entitled Sir William Stanley's Garland, which exaggerates his three years away from England to "twenty-one years travels through most parts of the world". This was recorded in 1800 and its contents published in 1801. There is no extant documentary evidence for these supposed adventures, but the stories were regularly repeated in 19th-century biographies of the sixth Earl.[3]
Inheritance dispute
Hypothetical succession in the female line from Henry VII, through his daughter Mary and her second marriage | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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After the death of his father in 1593, William as the second son was bequeathed a number of Manors and Lordships including Bicester, Oxfordshire; Holborn, Middlesex; Burton in Lonsdale, Yorkshire and West Lidford in Somerset, his elder brother
Career
The Stanley family, as the lawful heirs to the throne of
There were many rumours surrounding the untimely death of Ferdinando Derby, who had been approached to lead an attempt to overthrow Queen Elizabeth, but had remained loyal to her. Due to the sudden and violent nature of his final illness, poisoning was widely suspected. Possibly because of the potential for military rebellion in alliance with Irish Roman Catholics, the 6th Earl was expressly forbidden by the Queen to take part in the Earl of Essex's campaign in Ireland.[5]
He, therefore, limited his involvement with national politics, devoting himself primarily to the management of his estates and his dominant position in local administration in Lancashire and Cheshire. In 1603 he became a member of the Privy Council of England.
Queen Elizabeth granted Derby the
Shakespearean authorship question
Derby is one of several individuals who have been claimed by proponents of the
Greenstreet argued that the comic scenes in Love's Labour's Lost were influenced by a pageant of the Nine Worthies only ever performed in Derby's home town of Chester.[6] Greenstreet attempted to develop his ideas in a second paper,[7] but died suddenly in 1892, leaving his arguments incomplete. The theory was revived in The Silent Shakespeare (1915) by the American writer Robert Frazer, who concluded that "William Stanley was William Shakespeare".[8]
The idea was then taken up in France and was first advocated in scholarly detail when the
While accepting Shakespeare's own authorship of the canon, Leo Daugherty, who wrote an account of Derby's life for the
Family
On 26 January 1595, he married
- James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby (31 January 1607 – 15 October 1651).
- Robert Stanley (d. 1632).
- Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Ancram.
- Elizabeth Stanley. Died young.
- Elizabeth Stanley. Named after deceased older sister. Died young.
References
- ^ a b Leo Daugherty, "William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby", Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
- ^ Thomas Aspen, Historical Sketches of the House of Stanley and Biography of Edward Geoffrey 14th Earl of Derby, Comprising numerous brilliant Adventures, Thrilling Incidents and Interesting Sketches and Debates. With Portraits and Fac-Similes of the Autograph of the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Earls, Preston, 1877.
- ^ Barry Coward, The Stanleys, Lords Stanley, and Earls of Derby, 1385–1672: the origins, wealth, and power of a landowning family, Manchester University Press, 1984, p. 64, n. 6.
- ^ Lawrence Manley, "From Strange's Men to Pembroke's Men: 2 "Henry VI" and "The First Part of the Contention".", Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 54, No. 3 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 253-287.
- ^ Barry Coward, The Stanleys, Lords Stanley, and Earls of Derby, 1385–1672: the origins, wealth, and power of a landowning family, Manchester University Press, 1984, p. 140.
- ^ Greenstreet, James. "A Hitherto Unknown Noble Writer of Elizabethan Comedies", The Genealogist, New Series, 1891, Vol. 7
- ^ Greenstreet, James, "Testimonies against the accepted authorship of Shakespear’s Plays", The Genealogist, Vol.8, p. 141. London 1892.
- ^ Robert Frazer, The Silent Shakespeare, Philadelphia, (1915), p. 210.
- ISBN 978-1-60497-712-7
- ^ Paul Edmondson & Stanley Wells, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 18
- ^ public domain: Gosse, Edmund William (1911). "Barnfield, Richard". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.> This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Kathy Lynn Emerson, A Who's Who of Tudor Women, retrieved 18-12-09
- ISBN 978-0-7190-5425-9