Kirsten Bowen introduces John Vanbrugh

Above: Sir John Vanbrugh, attributed to Thomas Murray, 1719. Below: Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire.

In 1718 when the Duchess of Marlborough sued her architect, Sir John Vanbrugh for back wages owed to laborers on Blenheim Palace (the castle that he had built to honor her husband) he worried that she would, "throw me into an English Bastille to finish my days as I began them, in a French one."

Some people go to university for an education; John Vanbrugh went to prison. From the age of twenty-four to twenty-eight, between September 1688 and November 1692, Vanbrugh was incarcerated in no less than three prisons: Calais, Vincennes, and finally, the Bastille. His native country used him as a pawn; he denied his own political and religious beliefs in an effort to free himself; and, worst, he had to pay his own transportation to Vincennes. Yet, these four years shaped a man who shortly would become one of the Restoration's most successful playwrights, architects, and wits.

At the time of his arrest, the Protestant English were in a panic over the possibility that James II, Catholic in all but name alone, would leave a male heir, thus securing a Catholic Great Britain. The Whigs, the Protestant political party who supported a Parliament-led government, anxiously tried to convince James's son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, to invade England and overthrow James. These efforts resulted in The Glorious Revolution. John Vanbrugh, a Protestant Whig, had recently lost his government post because James had dismissed Vanbrugh's employer, the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire. Young Vanbrugh traveled to the Hague with Lord Robert Willoughby, another discharged Parliamentarian. According to French records, Vanbrugh was arrested in 1689 for trying to leave the continent via France without a passport during wartime. More likely, however, the Royalists of England knew that Vanbrugh had been at the Hague, delivering a letter to William of Orange, and did not want this Whig spy to return.

The French, mistaking Vanbrugh for a nobleman, planned to use him as a bargaining chip with the English to release one of their own spies, Martin de Forval. To the English, however, Vanbrugh, a mere sugar refiner's son from Chester, was not worth the trade. It was common practice for countries to play Red Rover with foreign prisoners, so Vanbrugh languished in France until the next appropriate deal could be brokered.

Vanbrugh did not take his imprisonment lying down. He worked steadily throughout the four years to win his freedom, writing letters to his mother and William Blathwayt, Secretary of War in England; employing liaisons between the French and English governments to broker on his behalf; even applying to the by then deposed James II, who was holding court in Saint-Germain. The wily Vanbrugh, banking on the hope that James would not remember him and his political affiliations, posed as a Jacobite, wrongly imprisoned for supporting King William. James magnanimously helped him gain access to the courtyard of the prison at Vincennes.

In 1692 Vanbrugh was transferred from Vincennes to the Bastille, which, as prisons go, was luxurious. Vanbrugh occupied the fourth chamber of the ironically named Tower of Liberty, where the rooms were, "large and fairly comfortable though dark. Unless they could afford a private servant, the turnkey took care of them, lit the fire, and brought them food three times a day. And often the food was extraordinarily good. Dinner might consist of soup, fish, entrée, a sweet, and dessert, with a couple of bottles of burgundy to wash it down, and another to drink during the day" (Whistler, Sir John Vanbrugh Architect and Dramatist). Vanbrugh was also allowed to roam the grounds, visit other prisoners, receive guests, smoke, play cards and chess, borrow books from the library, maintain a dog, cat, or tame bird. He met a gallery of international characters - including spies, agents, smugglers, and innocents of both Williamites and Jacobites leanings, who, like Vanbrugh, could not be sorted out between the English and French as to who was worthy of exchange. The prisoners themselves formed alliances when negotiating their freedom, hoping that France and England would be interested in two for the price of one. Vanbrugh was finally released in 1692, when help came in the form of the Jacobites (followers of James II) who brokered a deal for an exchange of Vanbrugh, a Turkish merchant named Montagu North, and Goddard, a student from Angers, for two Jacobite generals who had been imprisoned in the Tower of London since 1691.

Above: Drawing by Colen Campbell of Castle Howard, Yorkshire, 1725. Below: The Temple at Castle Howard..

The effect these four years had on Vanbrugh's later life cannot be underestimated. Other than making new friends and practicing his French, prison opened up new career possibilities for Vanbrugh beyond a life in government and military service. At one point he requested pen and paper on which he drafted a play to idle away the time. Maybe this play was The Provok'd Wife? Judging by his circumstances, it may have been more logical for Vanbrugh to write a political thriller or a tragedy rather than a social comedy about marriage. But Vanbrugh may have felt an affinity with Lady Brute, as both were seemingly comfortable prisoners in seemingly hopeless situations. Military allusions pepper all his dramatic writing. In noting Lady Brute's desperate state in Act 1, Bellinda observes, "'Tis well Constant don't know the weakness of the fortifications, for o' my conscience he'd soon come to the assault." Later, Lady Brute's suitor, Constant, does manage to storm her fortress, resulting in her cry of, "Poor coward virtue, how it shuns the battle." The influence of the medieval citadels of Vincennes and the Bastille can also be seen in his designs for Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace. Vanbrugh even built for himself a castle in Greenwich which he called The Bastille.

Vanbrugh continued to court trouble after leaving France. Possibly, because he had lost four years of his life, his desire to take risks only increased. In 1694 Vanbrugh went to sea with Lord Carmarthen to attack the French naval stronghold at Brest. The battle was a fatal disaster and when the English sailors tried to retreat to their ship Carmarthen fired on his own men.

After seeing a performance of Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift he was inspired to write its sequel, The Relapse, which he polished off in a mere six weeks. The success of The Relapse led to the introduction of The Provok'd Wife with the finest actor of the time, Thomas Betterton as Sir John Brute at the prestigious Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre. Vanbrugh shortly found himself in the line of fire again when moralist Jeremy Collier targeted him in Collier's landmark Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. Although Vanbrugh fired back with his own A Short Vindication, the experience may have been enough to steer him from writing for a while and into architecture, where with no formal training but many Whig connections, he still became a successful designer of castles in England (although Jonathan Swift did call his Whitehall a goose pie) until he was commissioned to build Blenheim Palace by the Duke of Marlborough. This project led him into an epic battle of reputation and finance with the Duchess that nearly ruined him.

That, however, is another story.

Kirsten Bowen is a second-year dramaturgy student in the A.R.T./MXAT School Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.