The Unfortunate Traveller

Set during the reign of King Henry VIII, this picaresque novel follows Jack Wilton, a witty, roguish page attached to the English court, as he travels across Europe seeking adventure, profit, and amusement. Jack narrates his own story in a boastful, irreverent voice, recounting the tricks, misfortunes, and horrors he encounters from the English military campaigns in France through a violent odyssey across the Continent.

Jack begins at the English army's siege of the French towns of Tournai and Thérouanne, where he lives by his wits among the soldiers. His first major prank targets a nobleman running a cider-and-cheese stall. Jack fabricates a story that the king's council suspects the lord of treason, terrifying him into surrendering his ring and purse and distributing his provisions to soldiers. The king eventually uncovers the scheme and has Jack whipped, though the court finds the prank amusing.

Jack next targets a dim-witted captain who has been draining his gambling earnings, flattering him about the glory of being a political intelligencer, or covert spy. The captain agrees to a secret mission, but Jack immediately reports him as a deserter. In the French camp, the captain has no intelligence to offer; under torture, he confesses he was tricked by Jack. The French whip him and send him back, and he is hanged for treachery. Jack also swindles a Swiss captain by disguising as a woman and panics army clerks into fleeing and abandoning their money.

After the campaign, the sweating sickness, a deadly epidemic, drives Jack across the sea to the Continent. He witnesses a bloody battle between the French and Swiss armies, then travels to Münster in Germany, where John Leiden, a leader of the Anabaptists, a radical religious sect that rejected established church authority, holds the city against the Emperor with a ragtag army armed with dung forks and chamber-pot helmets. The Anabaptists see a rainbow matching their battle ensign, interpret it as divine confirmation, and charge. They are slaughtered, and Leiden is hanged.

Traveling back toward England, Jack encounters his former master, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, a nobleman and celebrated poet consumed with love for Geraldine, an Italian-born beauty who serves as a lady-in-waiting to the widowed Queen Katherine at Hampton Court. Geraldine has granted Surrey permission to travel to Italy on the condition that he defend her beauty in a public tournament at Florence, her birthplace. Jack agrees to accompany him.

In Rotterdam, they visit the scholar Erasmus and the English statesman Sir Thomas More. Erasmus resolves to write his satirical work praising folly; More plans to write Utopia. At Wittenberg, they witness comically botched ceremonies and fierce disputations between the religious reformer Martin Luther and the theologian Andreas Karlstadt, and encounter Cornelius Agrippa, a famed conjurer who summons the spirit of Cicero. Traveling with Agrippa to the Emperor's court, Jack and Surrey swap identities: Jack poses as the Earl while Surrey acts as his servant. When Agrippa shows Geraldine in a magic glass, they see her lying sick in bed, praying for Surrey's return.

In Venice, a panderer named Petro de Campo Frego leads them to the house of Tabitha the Temptress, a courtesan who conspires with Surrey to murder Jack and seize his wealth. Surrey warns Jack, who preempts the attack by describing a "dream" that mirrors the conspiracy. Surrey feigns remorse and implicates Tabitha and Petro. Jack extorts a bribe for his silence, but the gold is counterfeit, and both men are arrested. Visiting Englishmen recognize Surrey as the true Earl, exposing the swap, while Petro secretly mistranslates their statements to make them appear guilty.

In prison, they are joined by Diamante, the young wife of a Venetian gentleman named Castaldo, imprisoned on false charges of infidelity. Surrey treats Diamante as a surrogate for Geraldine but remains too virtuous to act on his feelings; Jack seduces her by plain persuasion. After months of confinement, John Russell, King Henry VIII's representative in Venice, enlists the satirist Pietro Aretino to investigate. Tabitha and Petro confess and are executed, and Jack and Surrey are freed.

Diamante's husband dies during a Venetian famine. She inherits his goods, and at her urging, Jack leaves Surrey's service, resumes the false identity of the Earl, and travels through Italy on her wealth. Surrey discovers Jack in Florence feasting with Diamante but laughs and accepts his justification. Jack relinquishes the borrowed identity. Surrey visits the house where Geraldine was born, then stages a tournament at the Duke of Florence's court, defeating all eight challengers. Letters from King Henry summon Surrey home, and Jack continues to Rome with Diamante.

In Rome, Jack explores the city's monuments, including a banqueting house featuring a mechanical garden recreating the Garden of Eden before the Fall. A devastating plague kills 100,000 people. A Spanish bandit named Esdras of Granado and his confederate Bartol invade plague-stricken houses to assault women and rob them. They attack Jack's lodging: Bartol drags Diamante away while Esdras assaults Heraclide, the noble matron of the house. Heraclide stabs herself after a prolonged lament. Her husband, not dead but in a death-like state, revives and concludes Jack is the murderer. Jack is brought to the gallows but saved when a banished English earl testifies that Bartol confessed to the crimes. The earl warns Jack about the dangers of foreign travel, but Jack dismisses the advice.

Searching for Diamante, Jack falls into the house of Zadoch, a Jew who seizes him and sells him to Doctor Zacharie, the pope's physician, who needs a body for anatomical dissection. Juliana, the Marquis of Mantua's wife and one of the pope's concubines, becomes enamored of Jack and orchestrates a scheme resulting in the banishment of all Jews from Rome, claiming Jack among the confiscated goods. Diamante, held as Zadoch's bondwoman, is sent to infiltrate Juliana's household and poison her but betrays the plot, handing the poison to Juliana. Zadoch is caught preparing to set Rome ablaze and is executed. Juliana reunites Jack and Diamante but keeps Jack as her sexual captive.

On Saint Peter's Day, Jack and Diamante steal Juliana's jewels and flee down the Tiber to Bologna. Juliana returns, collapses in a rage, and falls into a swoon. A maid, sent to fetch a restorative tonic, accidentally grabs the poison Diamante had earlier given Juliana and pours it into her mistress's mouth. Juliana dies.

In Bologna, Jack and Diamante witness the execution of Cutwolfe, a cobbler from Verona and brother of Bartol. From the torture wheel, Cutwolfe recounts how he pursued Esdras across Italy for 20 months to avenge his brother's death. Upon cornering Esdras, Cutwolfe demanded that he renounce God, curse Him, and sign away his soul to the devil in his own blood. Esdras complied, and Cutwolfe shot him through the throat, ensuring he could never repent. The executioner tortures Cutwolfe with methodical brutality, breaking his bones and leaving him alive on the wheel for birds to consume.

Deeply shaken by this spectacle, Jack reforms his life. He marries Diamante, performs charitable deeds, and hastens out of Italy. He arrives at the English camp between Ardres and Guînes in France, where Henry VIII meets the Emperor and the French king. Jack closes by noting his story began with the king at Tournai and Thérouanne and ends at Ardres and Guînes, promising more if his audience is pleased.