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School of Night - 2








{...quoted from the internet...}


Fact 1 : Stephen Fox the family's founder (father of the 1st Baron Holland, Henry Fox) had been an important 'agent' of a secret Royalist 'society' or 'network' (probably proto-Masonic) initially based in Paris, which restored Charles II to power. He was introduced to this network by one of its key figures Lord Henry Percy, the brother and right hand man of the 10th Earl of Northumberland. The 10th Earl's mother was Dorothy Devereux, sister of Robert Devereux and Penelope Devereux, the mother of the 1st Earl of Holland, Henry Rich. All were thus linked to the same group of families mentioned earlier centred on the influencial House of Warwick.


Fact 2 : The 10th Earl of Northumberland had been educated by his father Henry Percy, the 'Wizard Earl' of Northumberland, and his secretive cabal known as the School of Night, in the Tower of London, where the family had been imprisoned as the suspected organisers of the Gunpowder Plot (the Northumberlands had strong Catholic sympathies and had initially backed James I only on the grounds he supported Catholic emancipation from Puritan repression, which he had failed to do. Thomas Percy a junior member of the family, well known for it rebelliousness, had been one of the ringleaders of the plot, and had met the other known plotters in Essex House, once home of the aforementioned Robert Devereux). It is likely that the young heir was also initiated into the School of Night, initially based in Syon House, and said to have been both an early 'Invisible College', including at its height the writer Christopher Marlowe, the scientist Thomas Hariot and the explorer, and little known Hermeticist, Sir Walter Raleigh, as well as an occult / alchemical society, with connections to John Dee, which specialised in the Negredo, or dark / chaotic, phase of alchemy, and what was sometimes called Saturnine 'mysticism'. Its ritual colours were thus deep black. Shakespeare (himself allied to a rival 'proto-Rosicrucian' group around Leicester's alleged 'illegitimate son', Sir Francis Bacon, according to recent speculative theories) is believed by some to have mocked this group in his verse from Love's Labours Lost '...Black is the badge of hell/ The hue of dungeons and the School of Night", linking this to devotion to a 'dark skinned female' figure. The School of Night appears to have represented a 'Left Hand' tradition in a broader esoteric network


http://www.themysticarts.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=561&mpage=1&key=%C8%BC













Henry Percy...did he write Shakespeare?





The Percy family





A list of the pages relating to the Percy family








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