Agnes Beaupenny Blewitt was born in 1509 in Somerset, England. Even though her father could trace his line back to King Edward I, their family was no longer wealthy. They lived modestly in a small place on a large estate. When she was fifteen or sixteen, she apparently had an affair with a thirty-four-year-old married man who sometimes came to the estate in Somerset to hunt. Agnes got pregnant.
Probably to save her reputation, she married another man named William Blewitt. Her son Richard was born just a few months later. William and Agnes went on to have three more boys all of whose births are recorded. While William, by all accounts, recognized young Richard as his own, no official baptismal record for him survives.
The supposed father of her first son was already restless when Agnes met him. His lawful wife had given him a daughter nine years before, but he wanted a son. It was all well and good that Agnes had delivered a boy, but he couldn’t claim it as his own without causing a major scandal. He was very much in the public eye.
Agnes is one of my 13th great-grandparents and, if the story of Richard’s conception is true, then so is King Henry VIII. That is, of course, who the visiting man was. That same year that Richard was born, King Henry also met a woman named Anne Boleyn. If you are at all in the dark as to what happened next, I would suggest that you buy a ticket to see the Broadway musical, Six.
Richard Blewitt Edwards must have gone to school as a young boy. He was intelligent and creative. So much so that he was admitted to Corpus Christi College at Oxford. Corpus Christi pops up every so often in my family’s history in a way that the other Oxford colleges don’t. My mother’s father Geoffrey also studied there. It is generally supposed that Henry paid for Richard’s tuition as Agnes’s family would not have been able to afford it.
At fifteen Richard then enrolled in Christ Church at Oxford to study law. He received both his bachelor’s and his master’s degrees. After that, he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn. The Honorable Society of Lincoln’s Inn is one of London’s four Inns of Court. All barristers who practice are required to join one of them. “Called to the bar” is a phrase that signifies that one is qualified to argue cases in court. The bar in question is, quite literally, the barrier separating the great unruly public from the judge and barristers. Even today, lawyers in America are required to pass an exam called the bar.
Richard doesn’t seem to have ever tried a case. Instead, he went to work at the Chapel Royal in Hampton Court. Hampton Court was the palace that belonged to King Henry. The fact that Richard was called to work there is another piece of evidence in favor of the fact that Henry was, indeed, his father. Royal illegitimate children often ended up with positions in Court.
Richard taught music there and within a few years was appointed to the post of Master of the Children, or choirmaster. Master of the Children at the Chapel Royal was, at the time, the most important choral director position in England. In addition to training their voices, one of his responsibilities was to stage entertainments involving the choir for the enjoyment of the Sovereign. As time went on, the audiences for these came to include the paying public.
Over the course of his career, Richard wrote several plays. In later years, one of them, Palamon and Arcite, was staged for Queen Elizabeth I at Oxford. During that performance, the stage collapsed, killing three people, and injuring several others. Nowadays an accident like that would almost certainly have closed the theatre. In this case, however, with Queen Elizabeth’s encouragement, the show, apparently went on. I know that we have a different attitude toward death than Elizabethan people did, but even so, I cannot imagine what that must have been like. How do you plunge back into a play after three people died?
Sadly, the script of Palamon and Arcite no longer exists. The only play by Richard Edwards that we still have is called, The Excellent Comedie of Two the moste Faithfullest Freends, Damon and Pithias.
The play explores the ideal of male friendship which the ancient Greek, Pythagoras, and, later, Cicero, called amicitial perfecta. They both felt that there could be no greater bond than the one between two socially compatible men who love each other. It was meant to refer to a deep spiritual relationship and not a sexual one. Such a relationship, according to Cicero is, “above all other things in life.” Achilles and Patroclus in Homer’s Iliad have this kind of connection. It’s all very noble. The Richard born in 1525 may have bought into this ideal, but this Richard, born four hundred and thirty-seven years later, has some questions.
In the play, Damon and Pythias are two gentlemen from Greece who arrive in Syracuse. The Sicilian city is ruled by the tyrannical King Dionysius.
An ambitious courtier, Carisophus, sees the two men and decides he can use them to advance his own interests with the King. Carisophus informs against them and has Damon arrested on suspicion of spying. Dionysius believes him and condemns Damon to death.
Pythias makes an impassioned plea on behalf of his friend which moves King Dionysius to strike a deal. Damon will be given two months to return to Greece to settle his affairs if Pythias will agree to take his place in prison until he comes back. If Damon does not return, then Pythias will be put to death in his place.
Pythias agrees and so Damon sets off. Pythias is thrown into jail. The days pass, and then the weeks. The two months are almost up, and plans are made to execute Pythias. Unafraid of death, he is brought to the gallows fully believing that Damon will return.
Just as the hangman is about to do the deed, Damon rushes in to save the day. The two men are reunited. King Dionysius is so moved in the face of this true love that he immediately renounces his evil tyrannical ways. He asks the two men if he can join with them in friendship. Damon and Pythias agree thereby creating what might be the world’s first literary throuple.
The scheming Carisophus is summarily banished from court. The play ends with a speech wishing that Queen Elizabeth be granted the boon of having such true friends.
Thirty some-odd years later, Shakespeare makes reference to the play in Hamlet. After Claudius storms out having seen the players perform the Murder of Gonzago, Hamlet laments the corruption of the House of Denmark to Horatio:
"For thou dost know, Oh, Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
of Jove himself, and now reigns here
A very, very — pajock."
A pajock is a peacock, meaning that the person now in charge, Claudius, is all show without having any substance or merit.
In addition to his theatrical entertainments, Richard was also the author of several poems and musical compositions including one called, “In goinge to my naked bedde.” Hmm.
Agnes outlived both Henry VIII and her husband William as well as her son, Richard. She died at age 69 and is buried in Surrey. Richard married a woman named Margaret Babb. Their great-granddaughter Sarah Edwards ended up in the Virginia Colony where she married a man named Thomas William Bush II. Eight generations later my great-grandfather Fred Lockhart Wilson appeared which, eventually, led down to me.
Whether or not Richard Blewitt Edwards was Henry VIII’s son, I am still happy to have discovered him in my tree. Maybe it’s simply because we share our name that I feel a connection to him. He’s the first ancestor of mine that I’ve found who shares not only my name but also my profession and possibly a bit more. I‘m probably reading too much into what he chose to write about, but, really, if it swims like a duck and quacks like a duck… I’m going with it.
That is INCREDIBLE! As a lay scholar in Tudor history, I’m completely entranced by the idea of you being a distant relation. Have you researched where HVIII was during the time when Agnes conceived?
🦆🦆🦆