The Identity of ‘Anthony Rivers’

Abstract

Since Henry Foley in 1877 published extensive extracts from a set of letters purporting to have been written from London to correspondents in Venice, between January 1601 and April 1603, ‘by Anthony Rivers S.J.’, a ‘socius of Fr. Henry Garnet S.J.’, historians have found these letters valuable evidence concerning Queen Elizabeth’s declining days, the government’s secret involvement in the Appellant controversy within the Catholic priesthood (1597–1602), the ‘inch thick’ paint reference in Hamlet, the possible originating circumstances of Twelfth Night, and other matters. But no Jesuit Anthony Rivers has ever been found, and Jesuit historians have speculated about the letter-writer’s identity: Philip Caraman at one time took him to be Fr. Anthony Hoskins S.J., and Francis Edwards recently argued for Fr. Henry Floyd S.J. But Hoskins was not sent to England until 1603, and Floyd was in prison for much of the time when the letters were retailing, in a weekly rhythm, many pages of first-hand observations of events in the Court and Council, sometimes if not always in three near-identical versions dispatched simultaneously to three separate addressees.