George Puttenham's lewd and illicit career.(Biography)

Two works establish George Puttenham's claim to our attention as a significant Elizabethan writer. He is best known as the probable author of The Art of English Poesy (1589), a book unanimously considered by scholars "the central text of Elizabethan courtly poetics." (1) Of secondary importance is Puttenham's A Justification of Queene Elizabeth in Relacion to the Affaire of Mary Queene of Scottes. Puttenham's claim to this defense of Mary's beheading is based on two undisputed attributions among its dozen known manuscript copies. (2) A third work, his Partheniades, is a collection of original poetry that he wrote for the Queen. Despite its potential relevance to our understanding of Puttenham's idea of courtly poetics, scholars have all but ignored this work. His biographers, distracted by their concern over whether or not he was responsible for The Art, have gradually filled in much of his life story, yet not as fully as readily available sources permit. Moreover, with the deposit of the Jervoise of Herriard papers at the Hampshire Record Office during the 1960s, an invaluable new source of biographical information about the Puttenham family has come to light. (3) In aggregate these records create a three-dimensional portrait of George Puttenham, a portrait not easily reconciled with the established stereotype of The Art's court-wise and sophisticated author. Spouse abuse, sexual slavery, and multiple excommunications from the Church of England all figure in Puttenham's revised biography. The graphic, sometimes lurid details of his life story may not finally decide the authorship question, yet they affect significantly the received understanding of all the writings attributed to him.

George Puttenham was the second son of Robert Puttenham of Sherfield-on-Loddon, Hampshire, and his wife Margery, the sister of Sir Thomas Elyot. In November 1546, at age sixteen, he matriculated from Christ's College Cambridge, but did not take a degree. He was admitted to the Middle Temple on August 11, 1556. By early 1560 Puttenham had married the twice widowed Lady Elizabeth Windsor, a local heiress whose manor of Herriard was located just ten miles south of the Puttenham family seat at Sherfield. She separated from George in the spring of 1575, then spent more than a decade trying to coerce him into paying the alimony awarded her by the Court of Arches. In May 1588 the Crown granted George two leases in reversion, no doubt in gratitude for his authorship of the Justification. Richard Field published The Art in 1589 without indication of authorship but prefaced by a dedication to Lord Burghley. Puttenham died in London very late in 1590 or in early 1591.

Puttenham's admission to the Middle Temple was a pivotal event in his career. His membership was probably influenced by the fact that both his uncle, Sir Thomas Elyot (d. 1546), and brother-in-law, Sir John Throckmorton, were Templars. But George did not attend the Inns of Court for merely social reasons. As a younger son he needed a livelihood, and his subsequent career shows that he was well-versed in English law, a background he no doubt acquired during his years at the Middle Temple. (4) His knowledge of the law also encouraged George to initiate and pursue many of his lawsuits, while tempting him to make decisions and take risks that skirted the exact letter of the law, thus eliciting many of the legal proceedings filed against him. Puttenham's legal training ended prematurely, however, with his marriage to Lady Windsor, a circumstance also directly connected with his Middle Temple affiliation. Elizabeth's second husband, William, second Baron Windsor, was a professional lawyer and bencher of the society at the time of Puttenham's admission. Windsor died in August 1558, and George married his widow less than two years later (Cokayne, 12.797), not without Throckmorton's assistance, for Lady Windsor later lamented to the Privy Council that she had agreed to the match "onlye by the perswasion of Sr Iohn Throckmorton." She added that when she married him, Puttenham was not worth forty shillings and lacked" any porcon of livinge." (HRO, 44M69 F2/14/1, Bundle 1).

In marrying a well-to-do widow, Puttenham exchanged his legal career for what was ordinarily an even more dependable way for a younger son to secure his social and economic future. Elizabeth was far wealthier than her husband even though a part of her inheritance from Lord Windsor was forfeited upon her remarriage. (5) The couple was by birth of similar rank and had grown up in the same part of Hampshire. Lady Windsor was, however, some ten years Puttenham's senior, and had two children by each of her previous marriages. Her elder children by Richard Paulet were a son, John, and daughter, Mary, who became the wife of Thomas Aishe. Elizabeth's children by Lord Windsor were Philip, born about 1555 and who died about 1561, and Elizabeth, who died in 1576.

During the 1560s the Puttenhams resided at Herriard and in Trinity Lane, London. George's alliance with the nobility might well have provided an entree to the court. Indeed, officers of the Queen's Chamber prepared Herriard for a royal visit during the progress of September 1574, although Elizabeth chose to stay at nearby Abottsford (PRO, E 351/541, m. 164). By then, Puttenham's marriage had generated not social elevation but a series of lawsuits on the way to its own dissolution. At first these suits involved primarily Elizabeth's in-laws, including those from her first marriage to Richard Paulet. By the late 1560s, however, Puttenham was in constant conflict with his niece, Anne Morris, and her husband, Francis, over possession of Sherfield. After 1575, George was increasingly burdened as well with legal problems arising from his divorce from Lady Windsor. Professor Eccles's assertion that Puttenham"was constantly suing or being sued in Star Chamber and lesser courts" (109) only hints at the extent of his litigation and its consequences. In The Art, Puttenham wrote from extensive personal experience when he described the rhetorical device paramologia (conceding one point to advance another) as a "figure much vsed by our English pleaders in the Starchamber and Chancery" (312).