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Aphra Behn’s first marriage?

Karen Britland

To cite this article: Karen Britland (2019): Aphra Behn’s first marriage?, The Seventeenth Century,
DOI: 10.1080/0268117X.2019.1693420

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2019.1693420

Published online: 04 Dec 2019.

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THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2019.1693420

ARTICLE

Aphra Behn’s first marriage?

Karen Britland
English Department, UW-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article discusses three new documents that seem to pertain to Received 4 September 2019
the early life of the Restoration playwright, Aphra Behn. These Accepted 11 November 2019
documents suggest that Behn was betrothed in 1657 to KEYWORDS
a gentleman named John Halse; that she corresponded from Aphra Behn; marriage;
London in the mid 1660s with William Scot, son of the parliamen- documents
tarian and regicide Thomas Scot; and that, after her journey to
Flanders as a spy, she borrowed money from the Devonshire
Butler family to facilitate her return to England. Providing new
contexts for Behn’s development as a playwright, these documents
not only help to revise our understanding of Behn’s early life, but
open opportunities for further research and discoveries.

On 21 May 1657, a funeral took place at St Botolph Aldgate near the Tower of London.
The church’s parish register documents the burial of a certain “Edward Johnson”, noting
that he was the son of “Bartholomew Johnson & Elizabeth his wife”, who lived in the
Minories, an area famous for its metal-working shops and warehouses.1 At first glance,
there is little in this record to make us pause, but two months later, Bartholomew Johnson
and his family recorded another event in the St Botolph Aldgate registers. This time, the
entry reads:
John Halse gentleman and Aphara Johnson daughter of Bartholomew Johnson both of this
parrish were published in our Church three Lordes dayes (vizt) vpon the 19th and 26th of
July and vpon the second of August 1657.2

Aphra Johnson, the daughter of Bartholomew and Elizabeth Johnson of Harbledown in

Kent, is the prime candidate for the role of Aphra Behn, the seventeenth-century female
playwright who travelled to the Americas and then worked abroad as a clandestine agent
for her country.3 Archival evidence strongly indicates that the Aphra Johnson who was
contracted to John Halse at St Botolph Aldgate in 1657 was the sixteen-and-a-half-year-
old daughter of the Kentish Bartholomew and Elizabeth Johnson: that is, she was the
sister of the recently deceased Edward, and the young woman who would grow up to be
Aphra Behn.4
How should a scholar who comes across this record, and who is aware of the
complicated nature of Behn’s biography, handle such information? While it might be
argued that we have moved beyond the need for biographical details about the authors we
study, notions about Behn’s social class and her religious and political affiliations still

CONTACT Karen Britland britland@wisc.edu UW-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

© 2019 The Seventeenth Century
2 K. BRITLAND

condition the ways we read her work. As theories about her background have shifted and
changed, they have revealed as much about earlier class and gender stereotypes as they
have about Behn herself. In 1913, to take the most starkly biased example, Ernest
Bernbaum asserted that Behn – a Kentish yeoman’s daughter – was a liar who could
never have travelled to the American colony of Surinam.5 In 1934, Harrison Gray Platt
challenged this theory when he drew attention to two letters which seemed to corroborate
the young woman’s presence in the settlement.6 Historical documentation here plausibly
underwrites Behn’s transatlantic journey, vindicating her from the accusation that she
trafficked in falsehoods. However, since Behn is not explicitly named in the Surinam
letters, the possibility remains that they pertain to someone else. Such documentary
uncertainty is part and parcel of any archival work on earlier periods, presenting us, not
with transparent contextual information for literary works, but with a patched and partial
web of information with which to engage.7
To complicate matters further, Behn is acknowledged as a writer adept at the produc-
tion of masks and fictional personae. Janet Todd has remarked upon her “lethal combi-
nation of obscurity, secrecy and staginess which makes her an uneasy fit for any narrative,
speculative or factual”. Behn “is not so much a woman to be unmasked”, Todd observes,
“as an unending combination of masks”.8 Germaine Greer, in her turn, has termed Behn
a “palimpsest” who has “scratched herself out”; Catherine Gallagher has associated
Behn’s “rhetoric of authorship with one of dispossession”; and Margaret Ferguson has
explored the “cipher” or “enigma” effects in Behn’s writing, noting that “the question of
whether the spectator or reader should believe a given persona created by Behn’s ‘female
pen’ is central to the interpretive knots she so often creates by tying fictional images with
ones that seem to be drawn from the (authorial) life”.9 Behn’s biography, Ferguson notes,
“has provoked much scholarly speculation”, in a manner connected with the quasi-
autobiographical effects of Behn’s own writing, as well as with early accounts of her
origins and adventures, which often “read like novels gemmed with clues that readers are
invited to pursue”.10 In other words, right from the start, not least through the first-
person narrators of her short stories and in the seventeenth-century biographical
descriptions of her life, Behn’s personal biography has been bound up with her fiction.
While the documents I discuss here are predominantly administrative, not discursive,
they nevertheless constitute a form of early modern “life-writing” that, as Adam Smyth
has investigated, precedes and complicates notions of autobiography articulated around
historically later forms such as “the diary” or “the autobiography”. The prominence given
to diaries and autobiographies in discussions of life-writing, Smyth says, “represents
a critical missed opportunity” that can end up privileging particular types of narratives,
such as “those produced by elite men”.11 Instead, Smyth encourages us to explore
instances of life-writing in documents such as financial accounts, commonplace books
and parish registers to bring to light information about “elusive” and “liminal” figures,
such as women and the poor.12 The desire to uncover empirical evidence about Behn’s
early years not only underlines our fascination with linear narratives that contain
a beginning, middle and end, but also helps to draw attention to the biases of, and
lacunae in, our archives, asking us to develop collaborative ways of reading and writing
that can acknowledge and work within these limitations.
This article therefore takes up the notion of “life-writing” as a means of investigating
the necessarily fragmented documentary record of Behn’s early life. I have deliberately
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 3

avoided any attempt to reinterpret Behn’s literary works in the light of the documents
I discuss, and I have not brought forward moments from her fictional works as evidence
to support my contentions, yet I remain aware that the tantalising and seemingly
autobiographical “clues” in Behn’s fictional narratives play a large part in driving modern
critics’ desires to uncover more documents and information about her life. I therefore
submit what follows in the spirit of Janet Todd’s biography of Behn – in which, as Todd
notes, not everything can be considered “true” or “likely to be proven one way or the
other”.13 Non-élite early modern women’s life stories are necessarily fragmentary and –
where they can be recovered at all – they invite the collective efforts of a community of
scholars, both now and across time. Continuing the debate about Behn’s origins not only
highlights the ways in which documentary evidence has been used to construct narratives
about Behn’s truthfulness and integrity as a writer in the past, but calls into question the
notion of narrative integrity per se, drawing attention to the contingencies of interpreta-
tion and what Frances Dolan has called the “complexity” of the “relationship between
evidence and reality”.14
Behn is often presented as a loyal monarchist who surmounted her humble birth,
pulling herself up by her bootstraps to succeed in London’s literary world. In this article,
I suggest that, although her success on the London literary scene remains surprising, her
endeavours were bolstered by her family’s broader social connections. Proposing that, by
1657, the young Aphra Johnson had travelled from Kent to London with her parents,
I suggest that she was there contracted into a gentry family with strong colonial connec-
tions, whose broader network of acquaintance contributed to her travels to Surinam.
After Surinam, I then place Behn in Westminster, in a lodging close to that of Sir Philip
Howard of Naworth, suggesting that Howard’s connections with the Duke of Albemarle
and James Halsall, the nation’s scoutmaster general, led to Behn’s mission to Flanders.
Finally, I identify the Edward Butler to whom Behn owed money in 1667, revealing his
family’s connections with the Benedictine convent at Ghent in a manner that helps us to
understand Behn’s seeming familiarity with cloisters and nuns. In sum, I substantiate
Maureen Duffy’s identification of Aphra Behn with the Kentish Aphra Johnson, before
adding to our understanding of the writer’s background by linking her more closely to
a number of influential people in London and overseas.15 Most importantly, I present this
information in the spirit of communal scholarship, hoping that it will lead to further
work that will elucidate our understanding of Behn and her contacts with the theatre and
the colonial Atlantic world.

Aphra Behn: the story so far

In 1977, Duffy identified Aphra Behn with the Aphra Johnson who was baptised on
14 December 1640, at St Michael’s church in Harbledown, Kent, by Bartholomew
Johnson and his wife Elizabeth, née Denham.16 Bartholomew and Elizabeth had married
in 1638, with Aphra’s older sister, Frances, born shortly thereafter. Aphra is also credited
with a brother, George Johnson, son of Bartholomew, who was buried in Canterbury in
1656.17 However, this attribution – which seems to be solidifying into fact – can only be
conjectural since there were other Bartholomew Johnsons in Canterbury, making George
quite possibly a member of a different family. After the burial of Behn’s putative brother,
4 K. BRITLAND

the Johnson family’s trail goes cold until the future playwright shows up in Surinam in
the early 1660s.
Behn’s presence in Surinam is suggested first by her novella, Oroonoko (1688), which
describes the experiences of its young, female narrator, who – we are informed – visited
the colony in the early years of Charles II’s reign in the company of her mother, sister,
brother and a maid, while her father, said to have been appointed “Lieutenant-General of
Six and thirty Islands, besides the Continent of Surinam”, died on the outward voyage.18
Even while it invites its readers to imagine that it is a transparent reflection of historical
events, the novella is a clear fiction, published 20 years after the adventures it purports to
describe. Nevertheless, certain contemporary documents do seem to corroborate Behn’s
presence in the colony. As Platt has demonstrated, its governor, William Byam, sent two
letters back to England, which appear to refer to Behn’s departure from the Americas,
and which link the young woman to a gentleman believed to be William Scot, the son of
the late parliamentarian Thomas Scot, a notorious republican and regicide.19 In 1666,
Behn would correspond with Scot using the code names “Astrea” and “Celadon”. In the
first of Byam’s letters (dated February 1664), the governor observes: “I found . . . a full
ship freighted and bound for London, on whom I sent off the fair shepherdess . . . with
what reluctancy and regret you may well conjecture”.20 In the second letter, dated
14 March, he records the departure of “Celadon”, noting: “I need not enlarge But to
advise you of the sympatheticall passion of ye Grand Sheapheard Celedon who is fled
after Astrea, beeing resolvd to espouse all distresse or felicities of fortune w[i]th her”.21
Here, in a manner that makes evident the contingency of historiographical interpreta-
tion, the use of pseudonyms not only occludes the identity of the couple under discus-
sion, but provides tantalising intertextual clues that enable a reader to speculate upon
their relationship (“Astrea” and “Celadon” were chaste lovers in Honoré d’Urfé’s famous
French romance, L’Astrée). Nevertheless, although Byam’s letter implies that “Celadon”
has a strong and perhaps emotional connection with “Astraea”, it is also sardonic and
later suggests that Celadon’s flight was motivated, more pragmatically, by his debts and as
an escape from his creditors. Most scholars concur with Platt that these documents both
indicate Behn’s presence in Surinam and provide an indication of the date of her return
to London: that is, in the early spring of 1664.
Behn next appears in the historical record in 1666 as a clandestine agent, recruited by
Charles II’s intelligence officers to travel to the Low Countries to encourage William
Scot – who had fled to Holland – to work for the English state.22 Importantly, in the
letters Behn exchanged with Lord Arlington, Thomas Killigrew and James Halsall during
her time abroad, Behn was now, for the first time, identified by the name of “Behne” or
“Beane”. On 17/27 August 1666, for example, Behn wrote to Halsall, signing herself
“ABehne”.23 She repeated this signature on further letters, always employing the spelling
“Behne”.24 She was also known by the name in public: another English agent in Flanders,
Thomas Corney, wrote home to complain about her presence, observing in his letter that
“a faire Lady whose name is Affera Beane” had arrived in Antwerp, apparently at Halsall’s
behest.25 Although “Beane” was a pseudonym adopted by Arlington and at least one
other agent in his office, scholars tend to agree that Behn was now using her married
name.26 Thomas Culpeper, who knew the Johnson family, makes no bones about calling
her “Mrs. Been”, and an early biography of the playwright notes that Behn’s husband was
“a merchant of [London] though of Dutch extraction”.27 What is most important,
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 5

however, is that, by 1666, when she travelled to Flanders, Aphra Behn had adopted the
name she would use for the rest of her life and through which she would become known
to successive generations of playgoers, historians and literary scholars.
Behn’s mission in Flanders was dogged with financial problems, about which she
complained to Halsall, Killigrew and Arlington. She was forced to borrow £150 in
Antwerp and subsequently returned to England via Ostend, sailing in the company of
Sir Bernard Gascoigne and arriving home in a violent storm at the end of April 1667.28 In
debt for the money she had borrowed to pay the arrears for her lodging and to facilitate
her voyage, she was threatened with prison by a certain Edward Butler. Arlington,
Killigrew and Halsall ignored her pleas for help and, finally, in desperation, Behn sent
her mother to the king with a petition, asking Charles to relieve her troubles.29 In the face
of penury, not to mention the plague that had been ravaging England and the Great Fire
that burned a substantial part of London to the ground, Behn nevertheless managed to
begin her career as a professional playwright, with her first play, The Forced Marriage,
performed, not at Killigrew’s Bridges Street theatre, but at the Duke’s Theatre in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields in 1670.

Recording possibilities
The St Botolph Aldgate records help to fill in the gap between Behn’s documented
presence in the environs of Canterbury in the mid 1650s and her arrival in Surinam
around 1663, with the putative connection to the Halse family providing additional
information through which to interpret her voyage to the Americas. It should be
noted, however, the St Botolph Aldgate parish register does not record a marriage
between John Halse and Aphra Johnson, but only the publication of banns, in
a manner that bears witness to a change in the laws surrounding marriage in the early
1650s.
A poetic couplet, written into a gap in one of the church’s registers immediately after
the marriage entries for September 1653, marks the significance of this legal change. The
couplet reads:
Hence will I cease because an acts come forth
Mariage by ministers shall bee of littell worth.30

These lines, written by St Botolph’s disgruntled minister, refer to an Act of Parliament,

“touching Marriages and the Registering thereof”, that came into effect in August 1653.31
This Act required couples to ensure that banns for their intended union were published
three times in a public meeting place, and then to go before a justice of the peace and
document their right to marry. If the justice deemed the marriage to be lawful, the couple
was required to speak prescribed vows in his presence, and he was given the authority to
declare them “from thenceforth Husband and Wife”.32 While the Act effectively trans-
ferred the authority for performing marriages from the church to the secular authorities,
couples were nevertheless required to ensure that “a true and just accompt” of their union
was inscribed in their church’s parish register.33
After the passage of the Act until July 1656, the minister of St Botolph’s continued to
record marriages in his old parish register alongside the names of the justices of the peace
who performed them. At the same time, however, a new register was purchased by the
6 K. BRITLAND

parish to record the details required by the 1653 Act. This new register provides
information about the dates upon which banns were declared and upon which marriages
were solemnised, alongside information about the participants and the location of the
events. So, for example, on 31 October 1653, the marriage of Thomas Kingman and Mary
Thomas was briefly recorded in the old register.34 It then appeared again in the new
register with the further information that the groom was a “seaman”, that both partici-
pants were from the parish of St Botolph’s, that their banns were published on 16, 23 and
30 October, and that their marriage was solemnised, not at St Botolph’s, but “in
Katherines” on 31 October by Justice Smith.35
John Halse and Aphra Johnson’s banns are recorded in this new register on a page
entitled “August: 1657: Publications & Marriages”. Of the eight marital contracts regis-
tered on this page, three (including that for Halse and Johnson) detail only the publica-
tion of banns. Three of the remaining August couples were married at St Botolph’s by
“Mr Zachariah Crofton”, the minister of the parish; one couple was married by Thomas
Swalow, a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex; and one by Alderman Andrewes, a Justice of
the Peace for the city of London.36 On the following page of the register, which deals with
September 1657, nine marital contracts are recorded. This time, four of the entries record
only the publication of banns and not the full solemnisation of the marriage, while, on the
next page, there are a further nine records, six of which record only the publication of
banns.37 This pattern, in which thirteen out of twenty-six records (or 50%) are for banns-
only events, makes one wonder whether all of these prospective marriages fell through, or
whether these entries constitute a record of marriages that were solemnised elsewhere,
outside the purview of the parish and the immediate civil authorities.38 It is possible that
some couples travelled beyond the parish to other areas of London or the surrounding
countryside for their marriages. It is also possible that some couples’ religious affiliations
meant that they obeyed the 1653 Act by publishing banns, but that they then chose to
solemnise their marriages (illegally and privately) in a manner that was in line with their
non-conformist beliefs. Of course, if the bride or groom died between the publication of
the banns and the solemnisation of the marriage, this would void the contract. However,
there is no record of the death or burial of either John Halse or Aphra Johnson in the St
Botolph’s records, nor in the records of any adjacent parishes, in the months after
July 1657. Although their final marriage was not recorded in the St Botolph’s register
(nor in the registers of adjacent parishes), John Halse and Aphra Johnson – like the
numerous other couples in the parish who only recorded their banns – may well have got
married elsewhere. In what follows, then, I explore the ramifications of a connection –
and possible marriage – between the two families, first to illuminate the mechanisms
through which a yeoman’s daughter from Kent might travel to the Americas, and then to
examine the circumstances through which she went abroad to spy for her country.

Issues of connection
John Halse is described in the St Botolph Aldgate’s register as a gentleman, which
narrows the scope of the inquiry into his family considerably. In an attempt to establish
his identity, I have examined a number of different English gentry families, who –
because of the vagaries of early modern spelling – might have been his progenitors.
Among the families I have investigated are the Hall family from Greatford in
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 7

Lincolnshire, who had connections to Jamaica; the Hales family from Kent, who had
colonial interests and were related to Thomas Greene, deputy governor of Maryland; and
the Halsall family from Lancashire, whose representative James Halsall (Behn’s handler
during her stay in Flanders) had interests in Barbados.39 The ease with which these
various families can be linked to colonialism and slave ownership has become starkly
apparent through this research, revealing that, by the late 1650s, direct contact with the
Americas and West Indies was increasingly prevalent amongst the noble and gentry
classes in England.40
Although, like the elusive Mr Behn, John Halse’s identity remains a mystery, I suggest
that the most productive avenue of inquiry links him with the Halse family from the West
Country, members of which, as I will show, were implicated in overseas travel and trade,
including the trade in enslaved Africans. While this attribution involves a certain amount
of conjecture, not least because many Devonshire documents were destroyed during
the Second World War, I propose what follows in the spirit of collaborative inquiry,
since, as is already abundantly clear, the skein of Behn’s biography will never be
untangled by one person alone.
The Halse family owned lands in Devon and Cornwall, and counted among their
number Richard Halse, Canon of Exeter Cathedral (who died in 1417); John Halse of
Kenedon, a Justice of the King’s Bench in 1423; and his son John Halse, Dean of Exeter
and Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (1459–90).41 Around 1600, the gentleman Richard
Halse of Kenedon in Devon married Anne Sutcliffe, the daughter of Dr Mathew Sutcliffe,
Dean of Exeter, and produced a number of children, including Mathew (born c. 1606), as
well as sons named Richard (born c. 1610), and John.42 These children were brought up,
in part, at Walreddon Manor near Tavistock, an area dominated by the Fitz family, whose
manor was nearby at Fitzford.43 This is significant to Behn’s later biography since the Fitz
family had a strong marital connection to the noble Howard family, with whom Behn was
later closely associated.
In 1605, the young Mary Fitz (born 1596) inherited Fitzford when her father, Sir John
Fitz, committed suicide.44 As the richest heiress in Devonshire, she was an attractive
proposition for eligible suitors and, before she reached the age of sixteen, had been
married to two successive husbands.45 Outliving both, she was then contracted to her
third husband, Sir Charles Howard, the fourth son of Thomas Howard, first earl of
Suffolk. The marriage was not a happy one and the couple were soon estranged. Sir
Charles retired to the continent and Mary was left alone on her estates, which were
managed by her servant George Cutteford, the cousin of Richard Halse. In 1622,
18 months after her husband’s departure, Mary gave birth to an illegitimate son, who
was baptised George and given the surname Halse (Cutteford’s mother’s maiden
name).46 This son, it has been conjectured, was then fostered by Richard and Anne
Halse nearby at Walreddon Manor, alongside their older children.47
Mary Howard and the extended Halse clan were securely, if sometimes irascibly,
connected.48 This connection later proved indispensable for James Halse, one of
Richard Halse of Kenedon’s nephews, who was saved from execution during the civil
wars by the intervention of Sir Richard Grenville, Mary Howard’s fourth and final
husband, who offered the young man his protection “upon account of [their]
consanguinity”.49 Following her well-established pattern, Mary Howard became
estranged from Grenville, filing a divorce suit against him and taking up lodgings on
8 K. BRITLAND

the Strand in London with Theophilus Howard, second earl of Suffolk, her former
brother-in-law, and the uncle of the playwriting Howard brothers with whom Behn
was later to be connected.50
It is possible that “John Halse gentleman” was a son from the next generation of
Devon Halses.51 Richard Halse of Kenedon’s second son, Richard (born c. 1610), became
minister of Philleigh in Cornwall and baptised a son John, who was active in London in
1689.52 If the marriage with Behn was proposed and fell through, this younger John
would be a prime candidate for “John Halse gentleman”. However – in the face of the
archival destruction in Devon in the 1940s – I have been unable to find any further
information about him. I have also been unable to find out anything about his uncle John,
who, after being mentioned in Mathew Sutcliffe’s 1629 will, disappears from the records
with no discernable trace. It is possible that he survived to have a son, but, again, I can
find no records to confirm or deny that conjecture.
Richard Halse of Kenedon had a half-brother, Nicholas, who, during the reign of
Elizabeth I, left Devon and purchased land in Fentongollan, Cornwall, eventually rising
to the position of governor of Pendennis Castle. In 1601, he married Grace, the daughter
of Sir John Arundel of Tolverne, and, after the accession of James I, was appointed “a
Domestic Servant to Prince HENRY”, spending time in London where he profited from
his invention of a new type of kiln for drying hops, associating (among others) with
a certain Mr William Howard.53 Nicholas and Grace had a number of sons, including
John (the eldest), William (a captain in the navy), and the fortunate James (who was
saved from execution by Grenville).54
John, Nicholas’s eldest son, followed his father’s example by marrying into the
Arundel family, taking to wife a certain Jane Arundel.55 He, too, had a number of sons:
the parish registers for St Michael’s Penkevil Church in Fentongollan record the baptisms
of John’s namesake John (on 25 March 1631/2), Grenville (on 13 October 1633), and
William (who was baptised on 5 October 1634, but died in infancy).56 The St Michael’s
Penkevil records cease to register the presence of John Halse and his family in the mid-
1630s, although – according to a much later family tree – John Halse senior became
a widower in 1642.57 William Hals – John Halse’s nephew and a local historian – tells us
that, shortly after 1655, “having spent his whole paternal estate elsewhere”, his “unthrifty”
uncle John “went beyond the seas”, and was never heard of again.58 Both John Halse
senior and his son, John Halse junior, are candidates for Behn’s potential husband.
Perhaps the widowed John Halse senior took Aphra Johnson as his (much
younger) second wife? Or perhaps Aphra Johnson married his son, the younger John
Halse? In August 1657, this John would have been 25 years old – that is, nine years older
than Behn, but still of a suitable age to marry. Again, though, I have been unable to find
out anything more about him.
While John Halse senior was apparently wasting his inheritance, his brothers William
and James joined the army, serving in Charles I’s campaign at the Ile de Rhé and La
Rochelle, before being sent to Barbados with a company of foot soldiers to reinforce the
garrison there.59 William died on his journey home to England, but James spent seven
years in the West Indies, ending up in Montserrat where he was reputed to have become
governor.60 Recalled to England, he took up residence in Merther, Cornwall, and
espoused the parliamentarian cause, fighting as a lieutenant colonel in Nicholas
Boscawen’s troop of horse until he was captured at Plymouth and saved from execution
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 9

by Sir Richard Grenville’s timely intervention.61 He had a number of children with his
wife Anne: one of his sons was baptised Grenville; none were called John.
The Halse family, then, had strong colonial connections, with members scattered
about the Caribbean as merchants and plantation owners. In 1647, for example, a certain
Matthew Halse died in Barbados, leaving an estate of 90 acres.62 His brother Richard
Halse remained on the island, and was probably the same man who signed a document
from the Assembly of Nevis, asserting conformity with the Navigation Act in 1660.63
Thomas Halse, one of the Cornish John Halse senior’s younger sons, joined Oliver
Cromwell’s 1654–5 expedition to wrest the island of Hispaniola from the Spanish, ending
up in Jamaica where he was granted an estate. Upon this land he built Halse Hall and
founded a sugar plantation, which brought him a huge fortune proportionate to the large
number of enslaved Africans he bought to toil there.64 In sum, the men of the Halse
family were Caribbean merchants, seafarers, colonists and slave-owners, who maintained
close patronage ties with other county families from Devon and Cornwall.
The identity of “John Halse, gentleman” nevertheless remains elusive, returning us to
the issue of fragmented archives and underlining the ways in which careful conjecture
might stimulate collaboration and future work. Until further information comes to light,
the identity of the man to whom “Aphara Johnson” was betrothed must remain unsub-
stantiated. What seems plausible, though, is that the young woman who would later
become Aphra Behn travelled to Surinam buoyed up by familial connections that went
beyond those of her immediate blood relations, and that there, in the colony, she met
William Scot, the son of the regicide Thomas Scot, striking up a friendship with him that
continued even after her return to England.

After Surinam: Aphra Behn in London

At some point in the mid-1660s after Behn’s return from Surinam, a Dutch spy was
dispatched to London with a set of instructions that included several items pertaining to
William Scot.65 By this time, Scot had already established himself in Holland, since the
spy was ordered to “meet w[i]th mr Hartlepe about Scots estate”, presumably in an
attempt to secure finance for Scot from England. The spy was also told to “treat with
Scott’s Brother in Law in answer to Lettres sent him” and was made aware that Scot
corresponded with a certain “Capt Kiffin” (probably William Kiffin, the wool merchant
and Baptist minister).66 Most pertinently, though, the spy was instructed to “goe to
Scott’s Shee correspondent”, who lived, it was explained, “by Sr Ph. Howards” in London.
Although this “Shee correspondent” is not named, the evidence suggests it was Aphra
Behn, not least because Behn was soon to be sent to Flanders to correspond with Scot.
If we accept that this document refers to Behn, then it belongs either to the period
immediately before her journey to Flanders, or it post-dates that journey. On balance,
given internal evidence in the letter, Behn’s financial troubles on her return from
Antwerp to England, as well as the state of the war with the Dutch and Scot’s imprison-
ment in Holland, it is most likely to pre-date her Flanders’ trip.67 In other words, it
suggests that Behn maintained a correspondence with Scot after her return from
Surinam, and indicates that this correspondence brought her to the attention of Lord
Arlington and precipitated her mission to Flanders. The information about her proximity
to Sir Philip Howard’s city lodging therefore provides a useful clue about Behn’s
10 K. BRITLAND

geographic and social environment, helping to explain her involvement in international

espionage.
Sir Philip Howard was the son of William Howard of Naworth, a descendant of
Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk. Born in the early 1630s, he was too young
to see action in the civil wars, but was elected to the third protectorate parliament in 1659
as the MP for Malton in North Yorkshire. He subsequently supported George Monck in
bringing back the king in 1660, and received a knighthood from Charles II for his pains.68
He was appointed a captain of the king’s life guards and, during the Dutch war,
participated in Sir Robert Holmes’s naval attack on the Vlie, incinerating Dutch ships
and the town of Brandaris on the island of Schelling.69 Sir Philip also owned a plantation
in Jamaica and was appointed governor of that island in 1685. In 1666, he was living on
Suffolk Street near the Haymarket in St Martin in the Fields, on the west side of London,
within walking distance of Thomas Killigrew’s theatre at Bridges Street (later known as
the theatre at Drury Lane).70
One of Sir Philip Howard’s neighbours was a certain Elizabeth Johnson, clearly
a woman of some wealth since she occupied a house that was taxed as containing ten
hearths.71 Suffolk Street was an affluent location, described in 1720 by John Strype as “a
very good Street, with handsome Houses, well inhabited, and resorted unto by
Lodgers”.72 Since the Dutch-spy document places William Scot’s “Shee correspondent”
in London close to Sir Philip Howard’s house, it seems plausible that this Elizabeth
Johnson was Behn’s now-widowed mother and that she and other members of her family,
including her daughter (now also perhaps a widow), were lodged there together. Whether
this was the case or not, an association between the Johnson family and Sir Philip
Howard is made more likely by the fact that Sir Philip was a captain in the Duke of
Albemarle’s guard, the regiment in which Behn’s brother (with whom she would soon be
sent to Flanders) was reputedly also employed.73 Even if we set aside a possible connec-
tion between Behn and the Howards through the Halse family, the most likely manner in
which Behn’s foreign assignment came about is through the Johnson family’s proximity
in London to Sir Philip Howard, combined with the probability that Behn was, indeed,
Scot’s “Shee correspondent”.

Aphra’s recruitment as a spy

As a member of Albemarle’s guard, Sir Philip Howard was associated with intelligence
work and involved in the interrogation of suspects accused of plotting against the Stuart
regime. For example, on 1 September 1665, Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist, visited
Albemarle’s residence and was there made privy to information pertaining to a number
of conspirators who had been arrested after the discovery of a plot against the king. This
plot – now called the Rathbone plot – came to light in August 1665 when a group of
schemers, many of whom were Anabaptists, were exposed in a conspiracy to seize the
Tower of London, kill the king, and re-establish a republic. Both Albemarle and James
Halsall, who was soon to be Behn’s chief handler, were involved in uncovering the plot
and interrogating suspects, a process which also involved Sir Philip Howard.74 In his
Diary, Pepys notes that he heard some of the plotters’ examinations read out and
discussed at Albemarle’s house, and includes a humorous account of one of Howard’s
interrogations.75
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 11

Pepys describes the company’s great amusement at Howard’s interrogation techni-

que, while also revealing that Howard was trying to recruit the plotter for the king’s
cause. Howard, Pepys says, promised the plotter that if he converted to the king’s side
he would be financially supported and set up with a horse and arms. The plotter
eventually agreed to be faithful to the king, whereupon Howard, evincing skepticism
about his examinant’s sincerity, turned to him and asked, “But, damn me . . . will you,
so and so?” At this point, Pepys reveals his amusement at the situation, interjecting the
observation, “I believe, twelve times Sir P. Howard answered him a ‘Damn me’ –
which was a fine way of Rhetorique to persuade a Quaker or anabaptist from his
persuasion”. Noting that Albemarle and his officers also made fun of Howard’s
methods of interrogation, Pepys finally observes that the plotter turned to Howard
and pointed out “that he had not told them what king he would be faithful to”.76 While
this anecdote is presented by Pepys with affectionate mockery, it also places Howard in
close proximity to Albemarle, links him to Halsall because of their mutual involvement
in examining suspected dissenters, and shows Howard engaging in the kind of con-
versionary tactics that would soon be advocated for Behn on her mission to Flanders
to bring Scot into the king’s fold. Behn’s association with Arlington, Killigrew and
Charles II’s intelligence service is therefore made much more comprehensible if we
take into account the young woman’s residential proximity to Sir Philip Howard in
London, while the suggestion that she was pursuing a cross-Channel correspondence
with Scot makes her even more likely to have come to Halsall’s – and then
Arlington’s – attention.

Financial traces from Flanders

The story of Behn’s journey to Flanders is well known and told in the letters she sent
home to Halsall, and – when he proved dilatory in his replies – to Killigrew and
Arlington.77 There is insufficient space here to explore the successes and failures of her
intelligence mission, which was compromised when Scot was arrested by the Dutch.
However, one final piece of evidence from this period serves to link Behn to merchants
from Devon.78 To pay off her debts in Flanders and to book passage to return to England,
she borrowed the sum of £150 pounds in Antwerp, expecting this to be paid by her
governmental masters when she returned to London. However, with her pleas for
financial assistance falling on deaf ears, her creditor Edward Butler threatened her with
imprisonment if she did not pay up, forcing Behn to send her mother with a petition to
the king asking for assistance.
Edward Butler was a West Country man, the third son of John Butler of Exeter, a cloth
merchant. Edward’s older brother – named John after his father – was based in Antwerp
and tasked with looking after the family’s business on the continent.79 Behn appears to
have borrowed money from John Butler in Antwerp to pay off her creditors in Flanders
and to finance her voyage home. When, in November 1667, John Butler died in Antwerp,
Behn’s debt reverted to his Devonshire family and Edward Butler was dispatched to
London by his father to reclaim the money by legal means. While there is no extant
evidence to suggest whether or not he was successful in his mission, his origins in
Devonshire again connect Behn to a group of West Country merchants trading
internationally.80
12 K. BRITLAND

The association with the Butlers also raises the issue of Behn’s religious allegiance and
political acquaintance. As Janet Todd has convincingly detailed, Behn’s later fiction
reveals a knowledge of continental convents and Catholic religious spectacle.81 John
Butler of Antwerp’s 1667 will makes it clear that he was a Catholic recusant: not only did
he set aside two hundred guilders to pay for a funeral mass, but he gave five hundred
guilders to the English Benedictine monastery at Ghent, with two hundred guilders
specifically identified for Dame Ursula Butler, one of the convent’s nuns.82 Moreover,
10 years earlier, reluctantly and somewhat fearfully, he had also transmitted papers
between John Tuckfield, his father’s Devonshire friend, and the royalist Lord Digby in
Antwerp.83 Behn’s financial connection with him helps to provide a direct link between
Devonshire royalists and the exiled and Catholic communities in Flanders. It also
strongly suggests that Behn’s circle of acquaintance was taking on a character visibly
compatible with the political and religious emphases in her later published work. Indeed,
despite Edward Butler’s aggressive behaviour towards Behn in London, there is evidence
to suggest that the pair remained in touch, with some of Behn’s contemporaries identify-
ing Butler as a character in her poem, “Our Cabal”.84

Patronage networks: back in London

As the fire-ravaged city of London rebuilt itself around her, Behn, too, picked up the
pieces, turning to her pen and leveraging her connections with the theatre. Her connec-
tion with Killigrew, the manager of the Bridges Street theatre, was seemingly well-
established even before her journey to Flanders, since she addresses him familiarly in
her letters from Antwerp. However, her first play, The Forced Marriage, was performed,
not at Bridges Street, but at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Laura Rosenthal explains this phenom-
enon by suggesting that Behn held a grudge against Killigrew after her trip to Flanders:
the playwright’s rewriting of Thomas Killigrew’s Thomaso in The Rover, Rosenthal adds,
might have been “fair payment for the suffering [Killigrew] brought upon her with the
spying mission”.85 A complementary explanation can perhaps also be found through
Behn’s connection with the extended Howard family.
On her return from Surinam, as Behn reported, a feathered headdress that she had
acquired on her travels was given “to the King’s Theatre” and used as “the Dress of the
Indian Queen”; that is, it was used in a production of The Indian Queen, a play written by
Robert Howard, who was a shareholder in Killigrew’s theatre, and by his brother-in-law
John Dryden, the future poet laureate.86 While, as Todd demonstrates, it is possible to
link Behn to the Howard family through her mother’s connection with Thomas
Culpeper – via Culpeper’s association with the Sidneys, and the Sidneys’ association
with the Howards – the situation is further contextualised by Behn’s geographical
location in 1665–6, near to the lodgings of Sir Philip Howard.87 Whether that geogra-
phical location was selected because of a possible earlier connection between the
Johnsons and the Suffolk Howards through the Halse family remains open to question.
All the seventeenth-century branches of the noble Howard family were descended
from Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk, who was executed in 1572 for his part in
the Ridolfi plot that had sought to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I and replace her with
Mary, Queen of Scots. The Arundel, Suffolk and Naworth branches of the family were
descended from the fourth duke of Norfolk’s sons – Philip, 13th earl of Arundel
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 13

(1557–1595); Thomas, first earl of Suffolk (1561–1626); and Lord William Howard of
Naworth (1563–1640) – while Thomas Howard, first earl of Berkshire (1587–1669), the
progenitor of the Berkshire Howards, was the fourth duke’s grandson and the son of
Thomas, first earl of Suffolk. While I am in no way arguing that all these various Howards
knew each other or even got along (an unlikely scenario since they ranked among their
number Roman Catholics, Protestants, as well as former royalists and parliamentarians),
they were all intricately connected, not only by marriage, but also – in some cases – by
geographical location: in the mid-1660s a number of Howards from various branches of
the family lived around Suffolk Street and the Strand in Westminster. In other words,
Behn’s social and geographical connections repeatedly put her in the vicinity of members
of the family, finally connecting her with the theatre and London’s literary scene.
As I have noted, shortly after Behn’s return from Surinam, a woman identified as
Scot’s “Shee correspondent” lodged near Sir Philip Howard of Naworth on Suffolk Street,
which was built on land owned by the earls of Suffolk (with whom Mary Fitz and the
Halse family were connected).88 Sir Philip had connections with Killigrew’s theatre, not
least because, as Samuel Pepys noted, he was having an affair with a certain Betty Hall,
one of Killigrew’s actresses.89 Sir Philip was also connected to the Berkshire branch of the
Howard family through his brother, Charles (1628–1685), who was married to the
playwriting Robert Howard’s first cousin, Anne, daughter of Edward, first baron
Howard of Escrick.90 These geographical and familial connections perhaps help to
explain how Behn’s gift of feathers ended up being used in Robert Howard’s The
Indian Queen, and they also help to shed light on overlaps between Behn’s playwriting
career and that of Edward Howard, Robert Howard’s brother, in a manner that unfortu-
nately necessitates another complicated exposition of Howard genealogy.
Edward Howard (1624–1712) began his career writing plays for Killigrew’s theatre.
However, he soon garnered a reputation as irascible and notoriously fell out with the
actor and theatre shareholder John Lacy, whose ad-libbed satire of Charles II’s court
during the performance of Howard’s The Change of Crowns led to the play’s suppression
and the theatre’s temporary closure in 1667.91 After this, Edward Howard seems to have
changed theatres, with his new plays produced, not at the Theatre Royal, but – like
Behn’s – at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In 1670, for example, his Women’s Conquest was
performed by the Duke’s company, and then mocked at the Theatre Royal in the duke
of Buckingham’s play, The Rehearsal (1671).92 Edward Howard also published an heroic
poem, The Brittish Princes (1669), which was dedicated to his distant cousin, Henry
Howard (1628–84), the Catholic son of Henry Howard, 15th earl of Arundel (1608–52).
In 1682, Behn, in her turn, would dedicate her City Heiress to Henry Howard, Baron
Mowbray (1655–1701), this Henry Howard’s son, declaring that she had come into the
world “with a Veneration for [Howard’s] Illustrious Family”, having been “brought up
with continual Praises of the Renowned Actions of [his] glorious Ancestors, both in War
and Peace”.93 Remarking that she was an “Eye and Ear-witness” to the “unusual Respect
and Ceremony” that people on “Forein Shores” accorded to “the very name of the Great
Howards of Norfolk and Arundel”, she explained that “when any one of [Howard’s]
Illustrious Family . . . pass’d the Streets, the People throng’d to praise and bless him”.94
Critics have usually taken this as a reference to Behn’s acquaintance with the Catholic
William Howard, viscount Stafford (1612–80), with whom she travelled to Flanders.95
Stafford, though, did not stay long in Antwerp, quickly moving on to Brussels, before
14 K. BRITLAND

travelling into Holland where he was ultimately arrested for spying.96 Also passing
through Antwerp at the same time, however, was Henry Howard (1628–84), Edward
Howard’s dedicatee and the father of Mowbray.97 Behn’s comment about the veneration
accorded the noble Howards in Flanders therefore applies just as well to this Henry
Howard as it does to Stafford. In 1677, Henry Howard (1628–84) would become the sixth
duke of Norfolk and would sit in judgement on his uncle Stafford when the latter was
tried and executed for his part in the Popish Plot. Behn’s 1682 dedication to his son,
Mowbray (1655–1701), was made in the wake of the Popish Plot to the only member of
the family who participated in Stafford’s trial, but who did not vote for his execution. It
bears witness to the playwright’s long-standing connection with the Howards, at the
same time as it links her to the same patronage network that Edward Howard was
exploiting.
In 1670, Behn’s first play, The Forced Marriage, was successfully debuted not at
Killgrew’s theatre, but by the Duke’s company in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Soon afterwards
Edward Howard’s comedy, The Six Days Adventure, was also performed by the Duke’s
company, but to a poor reception. Issued in print in 1671, it was prefaced by
a commendatory poem by Behn, who comforted Howard with the thought that “Great
Johnson scarce a Play brought forth/But Monster-like it frighted at its birth”.98 Ironically
playing upon her shared name with the famous Ben Jonson, as well as upon Edward
Howard’s borrowings from Jonson in his play, Behn acknowledged in print a connection
with the Howard family that was likely to date at least from her return from Surinam, if
not before. Where Edward Howard’s theatrical career was to be short-lived and dogged
with controversy, Behn’s was about to take off in a manner that underlines the social
mechanisms by which a yeoman’s daughter from Kent might achieve success in the
London literary world. Born from the union of a yeoman with a gentleman’s daughter,
Behn, I propose, was contracted at a young age to a gentleman whose family had colonial
connections and access to overseas trade. With her relatives’ social connections bolster-
ing her travel, she voyaged to the Americas, returning to England to lodge in
a fashionable part of town, whence she was able to leverage connections with various
local figures in a manner that took her first to Flanders and then into a close association
with the London stage. While she perhaps had more opportunities and connections than
other young women of her social class and circumstances, her subsequent theatrical and
literary achievements were nevertheless impressive and groundbreaking.
The 1657 record of banns published between “John Halse gentleman” and “Aphara
Johnson” is therefore important because it places the latter in London much earlier than
has previously been recognised. The familial connections suggested by this record also
reveal how a transatlantic journey to America might have become possible for a yeoman’s
daughter from rural England. While this evidence might orient us to future work and the
possibility of future discoveries, our desire for narrative coherence is nevertheless
complicated by the absence of a bona fide record of the Halse/Johnson marriage and
by the elusive identity of the groom, bringing into focus the fragmented, incomplete and
controversial nature of the documentary archive, particularly as it pertains to non-élite
figures.
Archival research is often driven by hunches, mights and maybes, and Marisa Fuentes
is right when she says that our scholarship should “allow for uncertainty, unresolvable
narratives, and contradictions”.99 Pointing out that historical archives are “structured by
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 15

privileges of class, race, and gender” that occlude the histories of enslaved peoples, as well
as those of women and the poor, Fuentes proposes a methodology of reading “along the
bias grain of the archive and against the politics of historiography”, encouraging us to
mine “archival silences” and “question historical methods that search for archival
veracity, statistical substantiation, and empiricism”.100 Behn’s biography fits into this
project in contradictory ways. Despite the knotty onomastics of early modern women’s
shifting names and identities, it is possible, as I have discussed, to identify traces of Behn’s
life in English archives in a manner that is not available for the lives of thousands of
enslaved people who were torn from their families and natal cultures and transported to
America and the West Indies. As a prolific female writer, Behn famously reflected on the
abuses perpetrated on the body of Oroonoko, an African prince, by a group of English
planters. Nevertheless, she did not condemn the English colonial project per se, instead
lamenting in the voice of her novella’s narrator – after the loss of the colony of Surinam
to the Dutch – that if “his late Majesty, of sacred memory, [had] but seen and known
what a vast and charming World he had been Master off in that Continent, he would
never have parted so Easily with it”.101 At once a critic of – and yet complicit in –
England’s colonialist endeavours, Behn, as Ferguson has noted, underwrote enslavement
by “idealizing a benignly ‘English’ form of agricultural plantation”, never questioning
“the system of colonial appropriation which fundamentally fueled the slave trade”.102
The overseas connections of the Halse family (as well as those of the other families
I have investigated whose surnames are variants on “Halse”) quickly reveal the extent of
England’s mercantile and colonising efforts in the early 1660s. I suggest, therefore, that
we should be open to the possibility that Aphra Johnson and John Halse’s marriage took
place, not only because it invites us to undertake further research into Behn’s representa-
tions of her travels and colonial encounters, but also because it encourages us further to
excavate her connections among merchants, planters and colonisers. At the same time,
the addition of the name “Halse” to a list that already includes names such as “Johnson”,
“Behn”, “Bean” and “Astrea” might help us to appreciate the significance of future
archival discoveries, not least the potential record of a marriage between an Aphra
Halse and a Mr Behn. Most of all, though, the new evidence presented in this article
underwrites Duffy’s identification of Bartholomew Johnson’s daughter as the best candi-
date for Aphra Behn. Before travelling to Flanders under this name, the young woman
born as Aphra Johnson may well have travelled to Surinam as Aphra Halse. It was
perhaps as Aphra Halse that she first met Thomas Killigrew and the play-writing Howard
brothers, and it was perhaps as Aphra Halse that she first began to think of making
a name for herself in London with her pen.

Notes
1. St Botolph Aldgate, “Register of Burials, 1625-1665”, London Metropolitan Archives
(LMA), P69/BOT2/A/015/MS09222/002, unfol. (21 June 1657); Stow, Survay, 90.
2. St Botolph Aldgate, “Register of Births and Baptisms 1653-4, of Publications of Marriage
and Marriages 1653-75, and of Burials 1653-4”, LMA, P69/BOT2/A/005/MS09229, 119
(fourth entry).
3. For discussions of Behn’s identity, see Duffy, Shepherdess, 18-23; Jones, “New Light”, 288-
93; O’Donnell, “Aphra Behn”, 1-11; Todd, Secret Life, 14-16. While other Aphra Beans can
be found in Kent, none were the daughter of a Bartholomew and Elizabeth Johnson. For
16 K. BRITLAND

example, the Kentish “Afra Bean” mentioned in a lawsuit with a certain “George Rooke”
(The National Archives, Kew, C4/156/48) was Afra Beane of Petham, who died in 1651. Her
identity is made clear in another document pertaining to the lawsuit, which explains that the
dispute concerned debts owed to the late William Rooke of Petham: see “Rooke v Beane”,
TNA, C2/ChasI/R1/3 (dated 1646); see also Afra Beane’s 1651 will (TNA, PROB 11/216/
729).
4. For clarity, I will refer to Aphra Behn as Behn throughout this article, even though her
surname changed in the period under consideration.
5. Bernbaum, “Mrs Behn”, 432-53.
6. Platt, “Astrea”, 544-59.
7. For a useful discussion of notions of fact and fiction as they pertain to seventeenth-century
document, see Dolan, True Relations, especially 1-26, 109-23. On archival bias and lacunae,
see Fuentes, Dispossessed, passim; Carter, “Of Things Said”, 215-33.
8. Todd, Secret Life, 1.
9. Germaine Greer in “The Roundtable Discussion”, cited in O’Donnell et al, eds, Aphra Behn,
282; Catherine Gallagher, Nobody’s Story, xx; Ferguson, “Authorial”, 226-7.
10. Ferguson, “Authorial”, 228, 232.
11. Smyth, Autobiography, 2-7.
12. Smyth, Autobiography, 7.
13. Todd, Secret Life, 6.
14. Dolan, True Relations, 17.
15. See Duffy, Shepherdess, 20.
16. Duffy, Shepherdess, 20. While Duffy’s identification is largely preferred, for alternative
suggestions see Goreau, Reconstructing, 6–16, and Mendelson, Mental World, 116–26.
17. See, for example, Jones, “New Light”, 291.
18. Behn, Oroonoko, 148.
19. Platt, “Astrea”, 544-59.
20. See Parker, Willoughbyland, 181. See also Todd, Secret Life, 66, quoting from the manu-
script: Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham, Portland MS Pw2
Hy221.
21. Transcribed in V. T. Harlow, ed., Colonising Expeditions, 191.
22. See Todd, Secret Life, 84-5. Goreau, Reconstructing, suggests Behn was perhaps recruited by
Killigrew or even suggested by Scot, 93-4. See also O’Donnell, “Verse Miscellany”, 204-5.
23. Behn to Halsall, 17/27 August 1666, TNA, SP 29/169/38, ff. 47-8v.
24. See Behn to Killigrew, 20/30 August 1666, TNA, SP 29/169/118, ff. 157-9v; Behn to
Killigrew, 25 August/4 September 1666, TNA, SP 29/170/75, f. 88.
25. Corney to Oudart, 21/31 August 1666, TNA, SP 77/35, f. 77b.
26. On the name’s use in Arlington’s office, see Marshall, “Memorialls”, 31. Hargreaves suggests
that Behn’s new husband was Joachim Beane, a merchant from Hamburg associated with
the ship, King David: Hargreaves, “Mister Behn”, 203-5; see also Fitzmaurice, “Aphra Behn”,
319-27. Ferguson believes that Behn’s husband, Mr Behn, was “an invention of conveni-
ence”: “Authorial Ciphers”, 231.
27. Jones, “New Light”, 289, 292.
28. See Behn, Histories and Novels, B6r-v. Since Gascoigne was blown ashore in Dover on
30 April 1667 by a tempest in the Channel that nearly sank his ship, the 1696 information
seems accurate: see Carlile to Williamson, 1 May 1667. TNA, SP 29/199/6, f. 7. Behn certainly
seems to have been in London by 29 May, since, under the name “Astrea”, she is mentioned on
that date as dancing all night at Spring Garden with a group of young men who included the
Kentish diarist Jeffrey Boys: see Bodleian Library, MS Don. e. 251 and https://blogs.bodleian.
ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/tag/aphra-behn/ (accessed August 2019).
29. See TNA, SP 29/251, ff. 124-7.
30. St Botolph Aldgate, “Register of Marriages 1625-56, Burials 1665-73 and Births and
Baptisms 1625-69”, LMA, P69/BOT2/A/004/MS09224, p. 68 (as per pencil pagination at
the bottom of the page).
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 17

31. See Firth and Rait, eds, Acts, 2.715-18.

32. Firth and Rait, eds, 2.716.
33. Firth and Rait, eds, 2.716.
34. St Botolph Aldgate, “Register of Marriages 1625-56”, p. 69 (as per pencil pagination at the
bottom of the page).
35. St Botolph Aldgate, “Register of Births and Baptisms 1653-4”, 3 (fifth entry).
36. St Botolph Aldgate, “Register of Births and Baptisms 1653-4”, 119.
37. St Botolph Aldgate, “Register of Births and Baptisms 1653-4”, 120-1.
38. From January to December 1657, 45% of the records are for banns-only events. For 1658,
this figure is 39%.
39. I have also investigated the Halsey family of Great Gaddesden in Hertfordshire; and I have
been particularly interested in the Hulse family from Kent. Ralph Hall, a lawyer from St
Martin’s in the Fields, whose widow, Frances, lived next door to Sir Philip Howard in 1661-
3, came from a gentry family in Spennithorne in Yorkshire and died in 1660 with no heirs,
leaving his estate to his wife and to his nephews, Josias, Ralph, Luke and Henry. I have also
looked at non-gentry families: for example, John Halls (also Hall) – a merchant at Dice Key
in Thames Street and a member of a Sussex family of drapers and haberdashers – died in St
Dunstan’s in the East in 1644 and was buried at St Nicholas Acons. His son, John, married
Rebecca Byley and lived in New England.
40. For a similar view, see Amussen, Caribbean Exchanges.
41. See J. L. Vivian, ed., Visitations of Devon, 439.
42. See the will of Doctor Mathew Sutcliffe, proved 24 November 1629, TNA, PROB 11/156/
497. Mathew and Richard matriculated at Oxford: see Foster, ed., Alumni Oxonienses, sub.
Halse.
43. For the family’s presence in the area, see Richard Halse’s conveyance of the Manor of
Walreddon to Sir Francis Glanville in 1623 (Devon Heritage Centre, 1508M/0/Moger/388)
and his sale of further rights to the Manor in 1625 (1508M/0/Moger/399). Richard Halse was
dead by 1631-2.
44. See Henning, ed., History of Parliament, 2.592. See also Radford, “Lady Howard”, 66-110
(especially 73-4).
45. She married (1) Sir Allan Percy, brother to the earl of Northumberland; (2) a son of Lord
Darcy of Chiche. See Radford, “Lady Howard”, 75-7.
46. See Henning, ed., History of Parliament, 2.592; Miller, “Lady Howard”, 87-104; see also
Quigley, Devil, 66-9, 92-100. Some suggest that George Cutteford was the child’s father, but
Richard Halse was closely associated with Sir William Courtenay, Mary Howard’s grand-
father, and was perhaps conveniently nearby and suitable to foster the child. That said,
letters between Mary Howard and Cutteford reveal the pair’s familiar closeness: see Radford,
“Lady Howard”, 85-92. See also Henning, ed., History of Parliament, 2.592.
47. Quigley, Devil, 68-9.
48. See the land disputes between Mary and George Howard, and Grace Cutteford: TNA, C 10/
465/61 and C 10/7/64.
49. Polsue, Parochial History, 3.324.
50. Radford, “Lady Howard”, 83.
51. In a 1651 will, Mathew, Richard Halse of Kenedon’s heir, named sons Mathew and Edmond,
but not John: see TNA, PROB 11/262/326 (proved 19 February 1657).
52. Mathew, Richard Halse of Kenedon’s heir, had a number of sons, but none called John. See
also Richard of Hals of Filly (Philleigh)’s will (proved 1689): Devon Heritage Centre,
“Oswyn Murray’s Collection of Wills”, 37 vols (typescript), vol. 14, 8/36; and Vivian, ed.,
Visitations of Devon, 440.
53. See Hals, Compleat History, 130. In 1637, after Nicholas Halse’s death, William Howard,
Robert Long, Robert Gifford and John Denny, Halse’s assignees, submitted a petition about
the kiln patent: see TNA, SP 16/323, fol. 30. Mr William Howard was possibly from the
branch of the Howard family established at Naworth Castle in Cumbria, although Thomas
18 K. BRITLAND

Howard, first earl of Berkshire, was also interested in Halse’s invention: see TNA, SP 16/348,
fol. 20.
54. See Anderson, “Nicholas Halse”. See also Considine, “Halse, Sir Nicholas”; Polsue, Parochial
History, 3.324.
55. The couple’s marriage licence, dated 10 March 1630-1, identifies John Hals, esquire, as from
“St. Michael Penkevell” and Jane Arundell as from “St. Colombe”: see Vivian, ed., Marriage
Licenses, 116. This is likely to make Jane Arundell a member of the Lanherne branch of the
Arundell family, probably the daughter of Thomas Arundell of St Columb Major (bur. 1633)
and his wife, Rachel Mompesson.
56. See the St Michael Penkevil Parish Church Register, Cornwall Record Office, P150/1/1.
57. See J. Hambley Rowe, “Genealogy of the Family of Hals of Cornwall, 1924”, British Library,
MS Add 41178 Q.
58. Hals, Compleat History, 37, 159. One of these John Halses was involved in a lawsuit with the
Walker family of Exeter between 1648 and 1657: see TNA, C6/5/82, C10/37/94, C10/54/85
and C7/578/79.
59. Polsue, Parochial History, 3.324.
60. Polsue, Parochial History, 3.324. James Halse is not listed among the governors of
Montserrat, but was perhaps a member of the island’s governing council: see Pestana,
“The Problem of Land”, 523.
61. Polsue, Parochial History, 3.324.
62. Will of Mathew Halse, gentleman of Barbados, proved 18 October 1647, PROB 11/202/77.
63. See Sanders, Barbados Records, 129, 287. See also Sainsbury, et al., eds, Calendar of State
Papers, Colonial Series, 9.138.
64. See Chubb, “John Halse”, 153-4. Chubb is incorrect when he says that Thomas was baptised
in 1634, for, as the St Michael’s Penkevil registers show, John and Jane’s children Grenville
and William were baptised in 1633 and 1634 respectively.
65. See TNA, SP 29/187, part 2/148, f. 57. The document is in English, undated, and endorsed
“spyes among Vs”. It is catalogued among the State Papers for 1666 and represents either the
transcription of an intercepted paper or notes taken during the interrogation of a spy.
66. Scot’s brother-in-law was William Rowe, husband of Alice Scot and formerly the parlia-
ment’s scoutmaster-general.
67. The document claims that “C[ol]. Desborough” is “now in ye States Seruice” and will “come
to head ye Dutch”, implying that John Desborough – formerly one of Cromwell’s most
trusted allies – is free and in Holland. In July 1666, Desborough returned to England and
was imprisoned in the Tower: see Carlisle to Williamson, TNA, SP 29/162/105, f. 136r. He
was still imprisoned on 23 February 1667, but was released by 17 April 1667, when Pepys
saw him. Stephen K. Roberts mis-dates his capture to 1665: see Roberts, “Disbrowe
[Desborough], John (1619-1690)”.
68. See Henning, ed., History of Parliament, 2:592-4. See also Cannon, British Army, 247.
69. See Cannon, British Army, 247-8.
70. See “Hearth Tax: Middlesex 1666, St Martin in the Fields, Haymarket East”: available online
at < ‘Hearth Tax: Middlesex 1666, St Martin in the Fields, Haymarket East’, in London
Hearth Tax: City of London and Middlesex, 1666 (2011), British History Online http://www.
british-history.ac.uk/london-hearth-tax/london-mddx/1666/st-martin-in-the-fields-
haymarket-east [accessed 10 August 2019]>. Between 1663 and 1666, Sir Philip moved from
a street near the Blue Mews, where one of his neighbours had been the widow of the
Yorkshire-born lawyer, Ralph Hall (see PROB 11/300/386). Sir Philip Howard later owned
property at Leicester Fields and Sissinghurst, Kent: Henning, ed., History of Parliament,
2.592-3. See also Pepys, Diary, ed. Latham and Matthews, 7.378.
71. “Hearth Tax”, ibid. Elizabeth Johnson remained in Suffolk Street until 1673, when she
disappears from the records, although she is likely be the Mrs Elizabeth Johnson who was
buried at St Margaret’s Westminster in August 1676.
72. Strype, Survey, volume 2, book 6, 68 (sub. Westminster).
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 19

73. See Thomas Corney’s letter of 31 August 1666, which describes the arrival in Flanders of “a
faire Lady whose name is Affera Beane accompanied with her brother . . . one of the Duke of
Albemarls Guard” (TNA, SP 77/45/77B).
74. See Newport to Williamson on Halsall’s fears of trouble from fanatics, 15 August 1665,
TNA, SP 29/129/30, f. 40. See also the examination of John Rede of Porton,
1 September 1665: TNA, SP 29/132/2, ff. 2-3v.
75. Pepys, Diary, 6.209-10.
76. Pepys, Diary, 6.209-10.
77. See Cameron, ed., New Light, passim.
78. On this, see TNA, SP 77/35, fol. 229.
79. See the will of John Butler of Antwerp, 25 November 1667: TNA, PROB 11/325/453.
80. John Butler of Exeter’s 1675 will mentions two amounts of money owed to him by the
crown: one for £1,266-04-02 lent to Charles I during the civil wars, and a further £149-05-00
due to him under the hand of Charles II. While I was initially hopeful that the smaller sum
might represent an account of the money borrowed by Behn in Antwerp, it is clearly related
to an earlier royal debt concerning malt unloaded from a ship named the Providence: see the
will of John Butler, merchant of Exeter, 26 Oct 1675: TNA, PROB 11/348/556; see also SP
28/143, f. 57 and following.
81. Todd, Secret Life, 32-4.
82. TNA, PROB 11/325/453.
83. Devon Heritage Centre, Z1/50/8/3 (the document is catalogued with the date of
11 January 1653, but actually reads “ii Jan 1657”).
84. Todd, Secret Life, 161.
85. Rosenthal, Playwrights, 130.
86. See Behn, Oroonoko, 5. For an examination of the symbolism attached to Behn’s feathers, see
Roach, Cities, 130–1.
87. Todd, Secret Life, 25-9.
88. Suffolk House, the former home of Theophilus Howard, the second earl of Suffolk (Mary
Fitz’s brother-in-law), was nearby on the Strand (although, by 1640, it had passed to
Algernon Percy, tenth earl of Northumberland, Theophilus Howard’s son-in-law, and was
renamed Northumberland House).
89. Pepys sat next to Betty Hall at the King’s playhouse to watch Catiline in December 1668,
noting that she “belong[ed] to this House” and was Sir Philip Howard’s mistress: Pepys,
Diary, 9.395.
90. Charles Howard of Naworth and his wife are notably mentioned in the autobiography of
Anne, Lady Halkett.
91. See Vander Motten, “Howard, Edward (bap. 1624, d. 1712)”, ODNB.
92. Ibid.
93. Behn, City-Heiress, A2r.
94. Behn, City-Heiress, A2r.
95. Todd, Secret Life, 89-90.
96. Stafford’s journey to Flanders and Holland was politically motivated. He moved quickly
from Antwerp to Brussels, whence he made his way to Amsterdam where an order was
issued for his arrest. He escaped, but was eventually captured by the Dutch at Maestricht: see
a letter from Godefroi, Count D’Estrades, dated 6/16 September 1666, in Estrades, Letters
and Negotiations, 2.609.
97. Henry Howard, sixth duke of Norfolk, was Stafford’s nephew and the Catholic son of Henry
Howard, 15th earl of Arundel. For his arrival in Antwerp in October 1666, see the letter
from an agent to Sir Philip Frowde, 19/29 October: TNA, SP 77/35 f. 211r.
98. Howard, Six Days Adventure, A2r.
99. Fuentes, Dispossessed, 12.
100. Fuentes, Dispossessed, 4-6, 11.
101. Behn, Oroonoko, 149.
102. Ferguson, “Feathers”, 237-8.
20 K. BRITLAND

Acknowledgments
For their astute comments on this article, I would particularly like to thank Mattie Burkert, Josh
Calhoun, Dympna Callaghan, David Como, Line Cottegnies and Elaine Hobby.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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