John Harington
was born in 1560 in London, to the
gentleman and poet John Harington
of Stepney and his second wife Isabella
Markham, a gentlewoman of Elizabeth I’s
Privy Chamber. He was baptised at Allhallows, London Wall, with the Earl of
Pembroke as his godfather and the Queen herself as his godmother. A tiny gold
font, now lost, was gifted to him from her at his baptism. Of all her many
godchildren, it was Harington whom she spoke of as ‘my
godson’. During his time studying at Eton she sent him a
letter, exhorting ‘boye Jacke’ to study a speech she’d included; and over the
following years her fondness for ‘that witty fellow’ and his drolleries,
although strained at times, never ceased.
In 1569 John’s parents moved
to Kelston, a few miles from the city of Bath.
Here Harington of Stepney held land which had been granted to his first wife Ethelreda
Malte, who may or may not have been the
illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII.
Harington of Stepney set about building Kelston Manor, an undertaking which John
took on after his father’s death in 1582. Nothing now remains of his elaborate
home but a few descriptions, some earthworks, a possible brewery building, and
an overgrown patch of walled garden beside the church
of St. Nicholas, which lay adjacent
to the house. We do know that the Queen, on her progress to Bristol
in 1592, was reputed to have visited the manor where she ‘dined right royally’
under a fountain bearing John’s witty device, a
hare, holding a ring, sat on a tun.
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| Church of St. Nicholas, Kelston; by Wikipedia user Rwendland |
John had as his neighbours
the Rogers
family of Cannington, and in 1583 he married Mary,
daughter of the widowed Lady Jane.
When questioned by the Queen on the success of their partnership, Mary
attributed it to ‘persuad[ing] her husbande of her own affectione, and in so
doinge…command[ing] his’. They had nine children, two of whom,
described by John as ‘two too fleeting’, died in
infancy. Also numbered among the family members was Bungey the spaniel, described
as a ‘rare Dogge’.
John’s collection of epigrams
from 1600 contains many poems featuring or addressed to members of his
immediate family. Those to his mother-in-law are often surprisingly frank,
whilst several to his ‘Sweet Mall’ border on the saucy. Occasionally, as the
epigrams show, both wife and mother-in-law conspired to criticise John’s
frequent visits to court, and despite his partiality for playing the courtier,
he did come around to their view. As for Bungey, he merited not only an epigram
but, in later years, a letter to James I’s son Prince Henry, describing his intelligence
and various ‘feats’, including carrying letters to and from Elizabeth’s
court.
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| Harington and Bungey on title page of Orlando Furioso; used under the NPG's CC licence |
John graduated as Bachelor of
Arts from Cambridge in 1578 and
took his Master of Arts there in 1581. Despite his education and his skill as a
poet, he often put himself forward as something of the harmless court fool.
The tactic of hiding art within art, as promoted by Castiglione
in his Book of the Courtier, was one which served John
well in the upheavals of both the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts. But being a
man with a certain degree of liberal-mindedness, and moreover the ‘purpose to
speak frankly and truly’, he didn’t always escape trouble.
The Haringtons had close connections with
several Catholic families and both father and son seem to have held the
martyred Jesuit priest Edmund Campion
in high regard. In 1583-4 Elizabeth was informed that John was involved with
‘nawghtie bookes’ – not quite what it sounds like, the phrase in fact refers to
some of Campion’s works, dangerous material in Protestant England, which John
was helping to import and distribute.
Another kind of naughty book – by Elizabethan standards, at
least – was what got John into trouble next
because, kind-hearted fellow that he was, he determined to give the no doubt
rather bored ladies-in-waiting to the Queen a bit of reading matter. So he
translated for them in a rather racy vein book 28 of the Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso. The Queen was not impressed. Harington was to
be banished from the court – until he’d translated the work in full.
Undeterred, Harington did just that, and published it in 1591
with a title page which not only featured his portrait but also a nonchalant
talking spaniel – representative of Bungey – a device he ‘fancie[d]’ a great
deal. Both can be seen in the picture above. The same year, John
became High Sheriff of Somerset.
Not long after the Orlando Furioso debacle, John
turned his inventive mind to the creation of something radically different: a
flushing toilet. This included two of the elements – the valve and the
wash-down system – present in the modern day lavatory, and John
had one installed in Kelston Manor. In true Harington fashion,
it was nicknamed ‘Ajax’, punning on
the Elizabethan term for the toilet, ‘a jakes’. The Queen is said to have had
one in Richmond Palace,
and perhaps another in Whitehall,
although ‘the sound of the waters were enough to upset her digestion for a
week’ and she suggested he sell the invention to the ‘Irish or Blackamoors…but
not in my kingdom.’ It’s inventing the loo for which John
is probably best known, which got him an ‘interview’ on the BBC’s Society of
Inventors programme, and a slightly more dubious few minutes of fame in an
episode of South Park.
Whatever he might think of this claim to fame, it probably wouldn’t have
surprised him. ‘[W]hen you have heard,’ he wrote, ‘there was one who had
written of A Jakes, straight you had a great mind to see what discourse it
would prove… You hoped for some knavery.’
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| Descendant of the Ajax; by Wikipedia user Jarlhelm |
He went on to write a book based around the idea, A new
Discourse on a Stale Subject called the Metamorphosis of Ajax, which was
printed in1596. A list of materials for the building of the invention was
included, as well as a picture of the finished article, complete with fish
swimming in the cistern. However, the main part of the book was actually
concerned with cleanliness of both body and mind – John
nicknamed himself Misacmos, ‘hater of filth’ – which included clearing the
names of some of John’s relatives, suspected of
being Catholic recusants. It also contained some very unflattering comments
about several courtiers, one of them the recently deceased Earl of Leicester.
Once again, John was dismissed from court, with
instructions to grow more ‘sober’ – although by 1598 the Queen was beginning to
thaw.
In 1599 John accompanied the
Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux,
to Ireland,
where his involvement in ‘action’ led to Essex
knighting him. True to form, John couldn’t
resist a joke, and the entry in the Calendar of State Papers was for Sir ‘Ajax’
Harington. But the Queen was displeased at Essex’s
handling of the Irish campaign, and John
narrowly avoided imprisonment in the Fleet prison as a result. Luck was on his side
– after some days of being rebuffed, Elizabeth
eventually granted him an audience. And the knighthood remained.
So did John’s capacity for
getting into trouble, which included a suit brought against him by his
brother-in-law for stealing goods and a spell of imprisonment for debt after
standing surety for his disgraced cousin Griffin Markham. Fortunately, the
outcomes of both crises were in his favour, and in 1603 King James
I created him a Knight of the Bath.
Although John made sure to be
attentive to his new monarch, it seems to have been James’
son, Prince Henry, who was
his main interest. John’s Epigrams of 1600,
witty, acerbic and touching in various measures, was dedicated to the Prince in
1605, and John wrote him letters and translated
and annotated texts for his edification, including several works relating to
religion. John had a deep interest in theology,
and supplemented it with practicality, such as drawing attention, in 1608, to
the need for more money to restore Bath Abbey.
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| Bath Abbey today; by Wikipedia user Bluedog423 |
Even while still in his early forties, John
had been troubled with lameness enough to call himself a ‘cripple’, and a
couple of years later he was ‘olde and infirme’. Whatever ailment he suffered
from, it was long-lasting: in May 1612 he was conveyed to the healing spa of Bath
‘sick of a dead palsy’. He eventually returned to Kelston, and managed to
compose more letters to Prince Henry,
who died on the 6th November that year. Two weeks later, on the 20th,
John himself died.
His funeral was held on December 1st – the feast
day of Edmund Campion.
He was buried in the parish church of
St. Nicholas, with a grave slab
which reads simply ‘In memory of Sir John
Harington, knight, 1612’. Originally his
grave was located within the communion rails, but during the Victorian
rebuilding of the church, the slab at least was relocated into the churchyard,
where it still stands.
Tomorrow, November the 20th, marks the 400th
anniversary of Sir John’s
death. But because you can’t keep a good legend down, I’m posting this today,
which just happens to be World Toilet Day – an event aiming to promote
accessible and clean toilet facilities for all. I like to think Sir
John would approve.
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| Sir John in the early 1590s; used under the NPG's CC licence |
Sources:
Collinson, J. (1791) The History and Antiquities of the County
of Somerset, Bath,
R. Cruttwell
Grimble, I. (1957) The Harington
Family, London, Jonathan
Cape
Jesse, G. (1866) Researches into the History of the British Dog, London,
Robert Hardwick
Kilroy, G. (2009) The Epigrams of Sir
John Harington,
Farnham, Ashgate
Pudney, J. (1955) The Smallest Room, London,
Michael Joseph
