The Gay Cavalier?
A same-sex relationship in the English Civil War
A same-sex relationship in the English Civil War
In a historical period where homosexuality was roundly condemned, early-modern same-sex relationships were necessarily secretive. It is understandable, then, that evidence for such relationships is scanty. But such intimate feelings may be discerned in the case Richard Symonds, an English Civil War trooper.
Symonds served as a soldier in the King's Lifeguard from 1643-46. By 1650, following the King's defeat in the Civil War, Symonds had fled England and was living in Rome, indulging his love of fine art and happily spending his borrowed money on books, prints and paintings (Roy, 2004). Being an educated man (a former Cambridge scholar), he kept a journal of his experiences in Rome which provides us with a detailed record of the working practices of 17th century artists in their studios. One day during this period of artistic exile, whilst visiting the Palazzo Guistiniani to view a private art collection, the former Royalist cavalryman was unwittingly drawn into a revelatory encounter. On viewing one of the gems of the collection, Caravaggio's Amor Vincit Omnia, Symonds was casually informed by his guide that the male youth who had provided the model for the painting's depiction of Eros had been in a sexual relationship with the artist. “'twas his lover”, noted Symonds in his journal. So intrigued was Symonds by this piece of gossip that he returned to the subject later in his journal, explaining in more detail that the Caravaggio had painted “Ye body & face of his owne boy, or someone that laid with him”.
That Caravaggio had 'laid' with the young man is a moot point among the artist’s modern biographers. Langdon (1999) dismisses Symonds as an unreliable source, arguing that the incident in the Guistiniani gallery was “no more than a colourful anecdote”. Warwick (2006) argues that Symonds was only relaying “unreliable hearsay”, and that when Caravaggio himself had been forced to testify in court in 1603 on a charge of sodomy, he had denied any knowledge of the boy in question (well, he would, wouldn't he?). That Caravaggio was accused at this trial of a relationship with a Bardassa, a term used to refer to a passive sodomite, does not interest Warwick either, and she states that accusations of pederasty “does not prove their existence”. True enough, but what is interesting about Symonds’s anecdote is not what it reveals about Caravaggio but what it tells us about Symonds himself, for he displays none of the squeamishness or dismissive attitude to Caravaggio's sexuality shown by these modern scholars.
Symonds served as a soldier in the King's Lifeguard from 1643-46. By 1650, following the King's defeat in the Civil War, Symonds had fled England and was living in Rome, indulging his love of fine art and happily spending his borrowed money on books, prints and paintings (Roy, 2004). Being an educated man (a former Cambridge scholar), he kept a journal of his experiences in Rome which provides us with a detailed record of the working practices of 17th century artists in their studios. One day during this period of artistic exile, whilst visiting the Palazzo Guistiniani to view a private art collection, the former Royalist cavalryman was unwittingly drawn into a revelatory encounter. On viewing one of the gems of the collection, Caravaggio's Amor Vincit Omnia, Symonds was casually informed by his guide that the male youth who had provided the model for the painting's depiction of Eros had been in a sexual relationship with the artist. “'twas his lover”, noted Symonds in his journal. So intrigued was Symonds by this piece of gossip that he returned to the subject later in his journal, explaining in more detail that the Caravaggio had painted “Ye body & face of his owne boy, or someone that laid with him”.
That Caravaggio had 'laid' with the young man is a moot point among the artist’s modern biographers. Langdon (1999) dismisses Symonds as an unreliable source, arguing that the incident in the Guistiniani gallery was “no more than a colourful anecdote”. Warwick (2006) argues that Symonds was only relaying “unreliable hearsay”, and that when Caravaggio himself had been forced to testify in court in 1603 on a charge of sodomy, he had denied any knowledge of the boy in question (well, he would, wouldn't he?). That Caravaggio was accused at this trial of a relationship with a Bardassa, a term used to refer to a passive sodomite, does not interest Warwick either, and she states that accusations of pederasty “does not prove their existence”. True enough, but what is interesting about Symonds’s anecdote is not what it reveals about Caravaggio but what it tells us about Symonds himself, for he displays none of the squeamishness or dismissive attitude to Caravaggio's sexuality shown by these modern scholars.
Caravaggio's "Lute Player" (c.1600) Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Symonds’s interest was also piqued by another of Caravaggio’s paintings in the same collection: writing in his journal, he described this second picture as portraying “a young fellow playing the lute”. Yet Symonds corrected this note seven pages later, describing the same painting as “A woman that sounds a lute”. Brooks (2000) suggests that the sitter’s androgynous appearance had so piqued Symonds' curiosity that he had returned to the painting for a second look. Symonds, then, was certainly receptive to ideas of homosexuality and androgyny, and he made no criticism of sexual proclivities that, in his own time, were regarded as crimes severe enough to carry the death penalty. This unruffled acceptance of homosexuality suggests something about the Royalist trooper's own sexual preference tastes: Richard Symonds was homosexual.
Symonds was 26 when he joined King Charles's forces at Oxford in October 1643. By profession a lawyer, he was an amateur antiquarian with a strong interest in heraldry and English history. He was nature private man, one whose traditional world-view marked him out as a Royalist in his native county of Essex. By his own account he had been placed under arrest for his Royalism by a local MP and future Regicide, Miles Corbet, and held in prison for seven months until he escaped and took up arms with Royalist Oxford army.
Symonds saw a good deal of action with the Lifeguard of Horse and he kept a campaign diary in which he detailed the fighting at Cropedy Bridge, Lostwithiel and the second Battle of Newbury. His unit was present at the Battle of Naseby and was badly beaten-up at Rowton Heath in September 1645. Following these later defeats, Symonds served with Sir William Vaughan's forces in north Wales before joining the Leicestershire Royalists at Ashby-de-la-Zouch. He surrendered himself, along with his two servants, to Parliamentarian forces at Leicester in March 1646.
Symonds was 26 when he joined King Charles's forces at Oxford in October 1643. By profession a lawyer, he was an amateur antiquarian with a strong interest in heraldry and English history. He was nature private man, one whose traditional world-view marked him out as a Royalist in his native county of Essex. By his own account he had been placed under arrest for his Royalism by a local MP and future Regicide, Miles Corbet, and held in prison for seven months until he escaped and took up arms with Royalist Oxford army.
Symonds saw a good deal of action with the Lifeguard of Horse and he kept a campaign diary in which he detailed the fighting at Cropedy Bridge, Lostwithiel and the second Battle of Newbury. His unit was present at the Battle of Naseby and was badly beaten-up at Rowton Heath in September 1645. Following these later defeats, Symonds served with Sir William Vaughan's forces in north Wales before joining the Leicestershire Royalists at Ashby-de-la-Zouch. He surrendered himself, along with his two servants, to Parliamentarian forces at Leicester in March 1646.
Symonds's sketch of figures from Worcester Cathedral's west window, 1644. The nobility and reassurance that he found in art and history were similar to the sentiments that drew him to the King's cause. (British Library, Harley MS 965, via vidimus.org)
Roy (2004) describes Symonds as a 'lonely and introverted' man. This might explain why, while his younger brother served as an officer at Oxford, Symonds himself remained a trooper in the rank and file (albeit in a corps that largely comprised gentleman and their servants). Certainly, the pursuits that occupied his free time while on active service, and which he recorded in his diaries – the viewing and recording of monuments and their inscriptions, producing ink sketches of the Medieval stained glass he saw in churches and manor houses – argues for a quiet and sensitive individual. Unsurprisingly, he never married.
If a solitary nature and an interest in Renaissance art seem flimsy evidence for questioning Symonds's sexuality, it may be possible to understand him more fully by turning to his diaries. Written between April 1644 and February 1646, they provide a spare and impersonal narrative of the Royalist army on campaign. As noted above, most of the material deals with Symonds's visits to view church furnishings and other antiquities – a detailed but detached inventory in which Symonds never openly describes his personal feelings. References to other people are few. It is all the more interesting, then, that when Symonds does mention his travelling companions, he writes of them in a kind of private code.
On 29 March 1645 Symonds was quartered with the Lifeguard at Loughborough in Leicestershire, the day before the Royalists marched on Leicester to engage in what was expected to be a rather bloody storming of the Parliamentarian-held town. His final entry for this day read: “Ajourduy avec T.T.” (Long, 1997, 179) It is clear that Symonds spent a deal of time that day with someone, but does not disclose their identity. A similar diary entry occurs on 4 June, when Symonds and his troop were en route to the Battle of Naseby: “H.W. et moy avec Col. Sm” (ibid., 185). On this occasion, Symonds and two companions appeared to have left the main body of the army to visit the village of Noseley, Leicestershire, by themselves. The solitude of this rural backwater struck a chord with the diarist: “not above two cottages . . . a sweet place” (ibid.), finding there a similar seclusion to the parish churches whose interiors he spent so long describing in detail. A third entry of a similar nature occurred on the 3 July when Symonds’s regiment was at Raglan Castle. Here the note simply reads, “H.W. and R. S.”, the latter presumably being Symonds himself. Historian John Barratt has suggested that 'H. W.' may be Henry Wroth, an officer in the King's lifeguard who would be knighted for his services in September 1645.
Symonds’s use of initials to refer to his companions gives these entries a clandestine feel; other people he refers to in the diaries are named in full. That these entries are written in French also indicates that what was being written was of a secretive nature. This may have been done to conceal the events from a third party, such as a servant. Or perhaps Symonds felt that the moments he was sharing with these companions deserved to be rendered in another, more elevated, language. A similar use of French in certain, sexually heightened, diary passages was employed by Pepys (see Grey, Samuel Pepys [online]). William Laud, the archbishop who fell victim to the constitutional struggle between king and parliament, also kept a diary in which he masked the identity of individuals by using only their initials and which is thought to be a way of disguising incipient homosexual encounters (Hunneyball, 2020).
For a man who was accepting enough of an artist’s homosexuality to note it in his journal, and who seems to have been curiously drawn to a model’s androgynous appearance, the use of French by Symonds to indicate episodes of heightened intimacy between himself and his male companions should not be ruled out. There is no physical intimacy explicit in Symonds’s diary entries but the episodes quoted above all occurred within a period of five weeks, and the appearance of ‘H. W.’ in two entries suggests a particularly close friendship between Symonds and a fellow soldier in this short time.
It is not the intention in this paper to ‘out’ Richard Symonds, or to sensationalise early modern biography, but to demonstrate how a 17th century life can be given a new dimension if viewed from a contemporary perspective. Symonds’s time in Rome shows him to have had an affinity with the art world of the Italian Renaissance and his coded diary entries suggest that there was something in his behaviour or thoughts that he knew might be disapproved of by those around him.
Symonds returned to England in 1651 after his money had run out. He took up residence in London and died there in 1660, shortly after the return of the monarchy. His war diaries are in the British Library but, tantalisingly, a further volume of writing that “reveals him as a solitary, taciturn, and sensitive man” (Roy, 2004) remains in private possession. Perhaps, for a writer who was by his nature discreet and separable, this is fitting.
Robert Hodkinson
Valentine's Day, 2016
[updated, February 2020]
If a solitary nature and an interest in Renaissance art seem flimsy evidence for questioning Symonds's sexuality, it may be possible to understand him more fully by turning to his diaries. Written between April 1644 and February 1646, they provide a spare and impersonal narrative of the Royalist army on campaign. As noted above, most of the material deals with Symonds's visits to view church furnishings and other antiquities – a detailed but detached inventory in which Symonds never openly describes his personal feelings. References to other people are few. It is all the more interesting, then, that when Symonds does mention his travelling companions, he writes of them in a kind of private code.
On 29 March 1645 Symonds was quartered with the Lifeguard at Loughborough in Leicestershire, the day before the Royalists marched on Leicester to engage in what was expected to be a rather bloody storming of the Parliamentarian-held town. His final entry for this day read: “Ajourduy avec T.T.” (Long, 1997, 179) It is clear that Symonds spent a deal of time that day with someone, but does not disclose their identity. A similar diary entry occurs on 4 June, when Symonds and his troop were en route to the Battle of Naseby: “H.W. et moy avec Col. Sm” (ibid., 185). On this occasion, Symonds and two companions appeared to have left the main body of the army to visit the village of Noseley, Leicestershire, by themselves. The solitude of this rural backwater struck a chord with the diarist: “not above two cottages . . . a sweet place” (ibid.), finding there a similar seclusion to the parish churches whose interiors he spent so long describing in detail. A third entry of a similar nature occurred on the 3 July when Symonds’s regiment was at Raglan Castle. Here the note simply reads, “H.W. and R. S.”, the latter presumably being Symonds himself. Historian John Barratt has suggested that 'H. W.' may be Henry Wroth, an officer in the King's lifeguard who would be knighted for his services in September 1645.
Symonds’s use of initials to refer to his companions gives these entries a clandestine feel; other people he refers to in the diaries are named in full. That these entries are written in French also indicates that what was being written was of a secretive nature. This may have been done to conceal the events from a third party, such as a servant. Or perhaps Symonds felt that the moments he was sharing with these companions deserved to be rendered in another, more elevated, language. A similar use of French in certain, sexually heightened, diary passages was employed by Pepys (see Grey, Samuel Pepys [online]). William Laud, the archbishop who fell victim to the constitutional struggle between king and parliament, also kept a diary in which he masked the identity of individuals by using only their initials and which is thought to be a way of disguising incipient homosexual encounters (Hunneyball, 2020).
For a man who was accepting enough of an artist’s homosexuality to note it in his journal, and who seems to have been curiously drawn to a model’s androgynous appearance, the use of French by Symonds to indicate episodes of heightened intimacy between himself and his male companions should not be ruled out. There is no physical intimacy explicit in Symonds’s diary entries but the episodes quoted above all occurred within a period of five weeks, and the appearance of ‘H. W.’ in two entries suggests a particularly close friendship between Symonds and a fellow soldier in this short time.
It is not the intention in this paper to ‘out’ Richard Symonds, or to sensationalise early modern biography, but to demonstrate how a 17th century life can be given a new dimension if viewed from a contemporary perspective. Symonds’s time in Rome shows him to have had an affinity with the art world of the Italian Renaissance and his coded diary entries suggest that there was something in his behaviour or thoughts that he knew might be disapproved of by those around him.
Symonds returned to England in 1651 after his money had run out. He took up residence in London and died there in 1660, shortly after the return of the monarchy. His war diaries are in the British Library but, tantalisingly, a further volume of writing that “reveals him as a solitary, taciturn, and sensitive man” (Roy, 2004) remains in private possession. Perhaps, for a writer who was by his nature discreet and separable, this is fitting.
Robert Hodkinson
Valentine's Day, 2016
[updated, February 2020]
Caravaggio's "Amor Vincit Omnia" (1601-02), Gemaldegalerie, Berlin.
Sources:
Beal, M. “Richard Symonds in Italy: His Meeting with Nicolas Poussin”, The Burlington Magazine, vol.126, no.972 (March 1984), pp.139-144.
Brookes, A. Richard Symonds in Rome, 1649-1651. University of Nottingham: Unpublished PhD Thesis (2000).
Hunneyball, P. "Archbishop Laud's Secret 'Misfortunes': Decoding Sexual Identity in the Seventeenth Century" The History of Parliament [online]. Available: https://thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/archbishop-lauds-secret-misfortunes-decoding-sexual-identity-in-the-seventeenth-century/ [accessed:24/02/2020].
Langdon, H. Caravaggio: A Life. London: Pimlico (1999).
Long, C. E. (ed.) Richard Symonds’s Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army. Cambridge: University Press (1997)
Roy, I. “Symonds, Richard (bap. 1617, d. 1660)”, in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: University Press (2004).
Warwick, G. “Allegories of Eros”, in: Warwick, G. (ed.) Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion and Reception. Delaware: University Press (2006).
Grey, D. S. Samuel Pepys [online] Cambridge (2005-15). Available: http://www.pepys.info/ [Accessed 13/02/2016]
Beal, M. “Richard Symonds in Italy: His Meeting with Nicolas Poussin”, The Burlington Magazine, vol.126, no.972 (March 1984), pp.139-144.
Brookes, A. Richard Symonds in Rome, 1649-1651. University of Nottingham: Unpublished PhD Thesis (2000).
Hunneyball, P. "Archbishop Laud's Secret 'Misfortunes': Decoding Sexual Identity in the Seventeenth Century" The History of Parliament [online]. Available: https://thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/archbishop-lauds-secret-misfortunes-decoding-sexual-identity-in-the-seventeenth-century/ [accessed:24/02/2020].
Langdon, H. Caravaggio: A Life. London: Pimlico (1999).
Long, C. E. (ed.) Richard Symonds’s Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army. Cambridge: University Press (1997)
Roy, I. “Symonds, Richard (bap. 1617, d. 1660)”, in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: University Press (2004).
Warwick, G. “Allegories of Eros”, in: Warwick, G. (ed.) Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion and Reception. Delaware: University Press (2006).
Grey, D. S. Samuel Pepys [online] Cambridge (2005-15). Available: http://www.pepys.info/ [Accessed 13/02/2016]
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