| Chapter 1: | The Traditional Story, the Revisionist Story, and the Story |
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This story—again, as mainstream secular historians tell it—turns now to Ferdinando, who, up in Lancashire, was quite pleased with the proceedings. Once again, the man who had everything had done everything right. He had every reason to believe (as many knowledgeable people today do) that if his luck and impeccable behavior continued on course, Elizabeth would name him her successor. According to the will of Henry VIII, Ferdinando’s mother, Countess Dowager Margaret, was technically the first in line, with Ferdinando standing second. But, as was earlier noted, Elizabeth, who had the legal right to name her successor, hated Margaret and would never have named her. Thus, if Ferdinando expected a normal life span in early 1594 (he did not get it), and if he also expected at that time to outlive his aged mother (he did not), he would have believed himself, as long as he remained in Elizabeth’s favor, to be the front-runner. So would most other insiders—of whom, in one way or another, there were all too many in the eyes of the Queen and her chief minister, Lord Burghley.
This brings the story back to where it left off, on April Fool’s Day 1594, with Ferdinando standing in front of his castle at Lathom listening to the local witch, who claimed to have a channel to God. The works of Elizabethan historians, gossips, and official reporters then take over the traditional narrative with their all-too-brief account of Ferdinando’s next sixteen days on earth. On the night of the fourth, a Thursday, Ferdinando had horrible dreams in which he saw the death of his wife, Countess Alice, and imagined himself being attacked with knives and swords. His cries awakened the other sleepers in the house. Awakening himself, he remained convinced that the dreams were real until he had been fully conscious for some time—and until he was assured that his beloved Alice was fine. Having been pronounced the very model of health by his physician, dear friend, and former Oxford tutor, Dr. John Case, who had been visiting at Lathom, he went with the doctor and his secretary John Golborne to visit a small private hunting lodge—a “seclusion lodge”—at his nearby second great house, Knowsley Hall.7 Case was riding along with Ferdinando on his way back to Chester (Knowsley lies between Lathom and Chester). As these men rode through the lodge’s arched entryway, they may have