How I discovered the real Shakespeare

Reading this paragraph in May 2008 turned our lives upside down comprehensively and completely. It was another piece of a puzzle that I had unwittingly stumbled into, which was beginning to take over our lives and has since changed our purpose and direction forever:

The Virginia Company was first formed as two separate companies in 1606: the Virginia Company of London and the Virginia Company of Plymouth. Both sent ships to the New World, but only the London Virginia Company had early success, in the settling of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.

It was established on 14th May 1607 by an expedition under the command of Captain John Smith. At Jamestown leadership was a problem, although Smith exerted some sort of control, and so 1609 the Company obtained a new royal charter establishing a governing council composed entirely of company members who were empowered to appoint an all-powerful governor or governors in the colony.

The new council decided on a single governor and appointed Sir Thomas West, Lord De la Warr, to the post. Sir Henry Hobart (Attorney-General) and Sir Francis Bacon, the latter being the Solicitor-General, prepared the charter for King James’ signature. This charter of 1609 and the latter one of 1612 were the beginnings of constitutionalism in North America and the germ of the later Constitution of the United States.

The Shakespeare Enigma by Peter Dawkins, p 279

 For me, reading this, was as much a moment in my story as it was the history of the United States, in particular the highlighted sentence.  

In February 2002, through a bizarre home burglary, I discovered that Sir Henry Hobart was my 12th great-grandfather. My grandmother had painstakingly hand written her family tree and had placed it in an envelope with a lot of other notes etc. Its contents had been strewn across the floor of our bedroom, perhaps in the search for money and as I was cleaning up the mess, I found a photocopy of a portrait that hangs in Blickling Hall, a stately home in Norfolk. Scribbled around the edge were a couple of comments, Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Chief Justice of Great Britain in the reign of James 1st.

To say I was surprised is an understatement. In 1994, through some strange coincidences, I discovered that some of the streets of the city we were living in were named after an incident concerning King James 6th of Scotland, 1st of England. Apparently, on the 5th August 1600, he was nearly killed by the brothers Ruthven, one of whom was the Earl of Gowrie and Herries and Ramsay came to his aid. The brothers Ruthven were killed in the ensuing fight. (Highlighted words are street names.)

I was astonished to discover that I had an ancestor who was actually in King James’ Parliament. A few years later again I discovered that Mary and Anne Boleyn were both born in Blickling Hall and that Mary is my 13th great-grandmother which makes Queen Elizabeth my 1st cousin those generations removed. (For some reason all this matters to God. He has been a long time in developing this story and revealing its truth.)

What started as a very blurry picture in 1970, has over the years developed into an interesting montage of life and events from 400 years ago. For many years I had no idea what was going on and I was certainly not aware of signing on to anything that was going to lead me down this particular path. Neither did I have any interest in anything remotely historical.

I failed History and English in my Grade 10 exams and had to repeat the year. This meant I actually had to study an extra Shakespeare play. Macbeth was bad enough, but it was followed by Julius Caesar and King Lear which were both just dull. I found them all dark and dreary and the language was difficult to comprehend.

I eventually realised that King James 1st and Shakespeare were alive at the same time and both were living in London. As I delved deeper into this period of time it was obvious that Henry Hobart was a “bit player” and Francis Bacon was far more influential. In fact, the revelations about Francis Bacon are stunning.

Publicly and historically he is known as a fine politician and the “father of empirical science”. What very few people know is that he is the son of Queen Elizabeth 1st and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Because of her commitment and pledge to the people of England to be “wed to the state” and because of the fragile truce between Catholics and Protestants she never formally acknowledged her marriage to Leicester or the birth of her two sons Francis Bacon and Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex.

These events were all State Secrets and anyone who revealed them was under threat of death. Only Elizabeth’s closest advisors knew but she was severely compromised at times because of it.

Robert Cecil, the son of William Cecil, (Lord Burghley) the Queen’s Secretary of State was so jealous of Francis and his abilities that it was he who limited Francis from becoming the eventual King of England and did everything in his power to make his life as miserable as possible. It was even he, who in a fit of pique, revealed to Francis that the Queen was actually his mother.

Francis was a prodigy and finished at Cambridge University when he was 15. He had a group of friends with whom he wrote plays but that was cut short because the Queen sent to him France the day after the revelation of his birth. He was devastated by the news and she was also very shocked that it had come out in the heat of a hectic moment at court.

While in France, Francis became acquainted with Pierre Ronsaard who was a poet and the leader of an eclectic group of men who established the French Renaissance whose Patron was Marguerite de Guise, the sister of the French King.

Having lost all hope of being invested as the Prince of Wales and one day of becoming king, Francis dreamt, from that time on, of beginning “The Reformation of the Whole Wide World”. He began writing plays through which he could educate the common man in order to lift him out of the feudal system.

He was well educated in the ‘Ancient Mysteries’ and began to reconfigure the Knights Templar’s ‘world view’ by adding his own levels of initiation and establishing a Rosicrucian Order through which he taught ethics and a new way of relating to the common man.

The participants/adherents could ‘supposedly’ reach immortality through initiations, magic and altered states of consciousness. He was steadfastly against the notions of Pope and King/Queen both of whom kept people in subjection to them. This is why he was intent on lifting the ‘common man’ out of obeisance and why he constructed his own (faulty) path to immortality.

It’s actually quite curious that he did that because he was responsible for publishing the King James Bible which he knew intimately having brought cohesion to the manuscript after the translators had finished with it. He surely knew from reading it that the only way to eternal life is through the Lord Jesus Christ.

His plays consumed a lot of his time. He loved to soliloquise to his “Good Pens” who wrote down every word he spoke, as his scribes.. so there was more than one copy if someone (like the Queen) tore it up and burnt it.

The ‘Good Pens’ were also called the Knights of the Helmet. Pallas Athena, who was a Greek Goddess, was their ‘muse”. She wore a helmet to denote hiddenness and she held a spear which she shook at ‘the dragon of ignorance’. So, the Good Pens were “spear shakers” or “shakers of the spear”.

One day, somehow, the Queen received a copy of Richard II, which after reading, she became incensed and insisted on finding out the name of author. Francis went to ground, and his friend Southampton went to the Globe Theatre to find a man called William Shaksper, who worked there.

Having a name similar to Shakespeare, he was hoping to get him to change his name to Shakespeare for 1000 pounds plus a ‘title’ and asking him to leave town for twelve months until the Queen’s anger abated.

The rest as they say, ‘is history’. He did leave town. He did change his name. Francis Bacon continued to write history through his plays and develop his ethical notions through his writings with no one realizing that he was the son of  Queen Elizabeth.

Francis wrote his life story through ciphers. He hid himself for protection so that his voice could be heard even under an assumed name. He was taught basic ciphers, but he also developed other more sophisticated ciphers one of which became the basis for Morse code and the binary system on which computers are based.

It has been no small thing to come to the realisation that Francis is actually my relative. The Lord has taken me on an often-torturous journey to get to this point over nearly 50 years. I have often asked why me? Because it is been dark and difficult. The more I have gotten to know Francis, the more I understand his heart and his desire  to be known for who he is - 'the son of the Queen' and the positions he should have held.

The sad part of his story is that he fell in love with Marguerite de Guise when he was in France and the Queen refused to approve the wedding. He was deprived of being king though he was the legitimate heir and he was the author of the Shakespeare plays but never acknowledged for them.

Here are a few lines which he wrote in cipher, to describe his dilemma and to explain himself. It is aid that in virtually every Shakespeare play he is in some way trying to reveal himself, none more evident than in Hamlet where at the end he says to …. “in your great pain, tell my story”.. ….

For it stirred within me when first told of my great birth, and took form shortly after that scene at the Court of our mother which led so quickly to my being sent to France in the company and care of Sir Amyas Paulet.

It weighed on me constantly, until I devised a way by which I could communicate this strange thing to the world, as you know, and my restless mind unsatisfied with one or two good Ciphers, continually made trial of new contrivances, in order to write the true full story fully, that wrongs of this age may be right in another….

It is not easy to reveal secrets at the same time that a wall to guard them is built, but this hath been attempted. How successful it shall be I know not, for though well contrived so no one has found it, the clear assurance cometh only in the dreams and visions of the night, of a time when the secret shall be fully revealed.

That it shall be now, and that it shall be then – that it shall be kept from all eyes in my own time, to be seen at some future day, however distant – is my care, my study.”

The Great Vision by Peter Dawkins pp 187-188

Life is not easy for any one but thankfully God does help us make sense of our circumstances if we invite Him into them. I used to get into a lot of trouble from my mother for asking “but why?”…

God has never told me not to be ridiculous or to stop asking. He loves it when we ask questions. He doesn’t always answer us when we want or tell us what we want to hear but He does always answer us eventually.

This verse sums up my path through life… John 13:7,

“Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”

In other words, when I have been going through something it makes no sense but when I have looked back on it and processed what I’ve been through, it has become very clear.

Francis Bacon’s favourite verse was Proverbs 25:2 -

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter.”

He was playing hide and seek with his readers.

My journey started with trying to sort out my troubled relationship with my family of origin but rather than sorting that out God has taken me back to where it all started… Hebrews 11: 6 says,

“But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

I have no doubt that He has led me all these years and all this way. The truth about Francis Bacon aka Francis Tudor, the Prince of Wales and the rightful King of England is a story that has needed to come to light and The Lord has chosen it to be revealed “for such a time as this”.

Finally, Isaiah 45:3 says,

“I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the Lord, Who call you by name, Am I the God of Israel.”

I cannot begin to enumerate the number of years I have been following this trail. It is nearly fifty years since I failed Grade 10. About twenty years later I discovered that I am descended from Malcolm III who was the last king standing in Macbeth. His wife was called Margaret which is my middle name which is how all this started in the first place. I thought the characters in Macbeth were fictional. It was pretty wild to discover that one of them was my 27th great-grandfather.

Somehow this is my destiny and somewhere, before time began God and I must have had a chat about what He had planned for me and my family. My husband, Jim’s middle name is Arundel. Lord Arundel was a close friend and was the last person to see Francis Bacon alive. It is thought that in Lord Arundel’s house, he took opium and put himself into an altered state and in that state he faked his own funeral. He was then transferred to Germany where he remained for the rest of his life. There is no burial site for Francis Bacon anywhere, so it stands to reason that this is the case.

He was a conundrum. He did so much good but through but his hurt and pain he did massive damage to God’s kingdom.