queer masculinities

Chris Mounsey: (Anglo) Ireland 9
one sense Jardine and Stewart’s argument about Bacon’s sexuality is
watertight. There is no physical evidence and no documentary evidence
of these relationships being more than accusations made against
people who were physically closetted together because of their work. In
another sense, it lacks openness to the possibility of homosexuality, or
that homosexuality might have been less rare than has previously been
thought. By failing to follow up on the possibility that Bacon was a
homosexual Jardine and Stewart might be accused of telling a partial
story. But the decision about how much of what type of evidence is
necessary for a certain ascription of homosexuality is a difficult one to
make. To return to the Touchet case, I will therefore offer a methodology
for reading ‘possibilities’ from context plus whatever shreds of evidence
present themselves, while remaining open about the fact that
the readings are no more than possibilities. In this sense, I hope that
the reading is both indebted to Norton’s essentialism and to Herrup’s
social constructionism.
From the evidence presented at the trial, we have witness statements
that he had sexual relations with his male servants, and that he assisted
in the rape of his wife. The problem with evidence from witnesses is that
it comes from their perspective, and it is framed by lawyers who are keen
to make a plausible case. If we take the Countess of Castlehaven’s evidence
at face value, we reach a similar conclusion to the court. Touchet
made his servants show her their private parts on their wedding might,
and later held her arms while one of the servants raped her. Taken on its
own, we might read this as evidence that Touchet was a bisexual voyeur
who had used his rights as the patriarch of the household to violate his
wife. However, the question remains why the Countess waited six
months before bringing the charge against her husband, and after she
had had a child by Skipwith, the Earl’s servant.
Read alongside other evidence from the trial, we might reach a different
conclusion. First we must remember that it was not the Countess
who brought the case against Touchet, but the son of his first marriage.
He was keen on protecting his entailed inheritance from being given
away to favorites or to the Countess’s bastard child. Next, Giles
Broadway, another servant, testified that the Earl had lain with him in
sexual dalliance but had not penetrated him, emitting rather, between
his thighs (Norton, 1992: 9). This might be taken as evidence that the
Earl was incapable of holding a firm enough erection for penetration. 27
Similarly we might accept Skipwith’s evidence that the Countess enjoyed
sex. By adding these to the Countess’s evidence, we might reconstruct
the sexual life of Fonthill Gifford in another and queerer way. On the