Puritans of Power: 4 Possible Inspirations for Solomon Kane
The Arbo Files
Tall, gaunt, and with a “darkly pallid face and deep brooding eyes made more sombre by the drab Puritanical garb he affected,” Solomon Kane is a wandering avenger of wrongs. Created by legendary wordsmith Robert E. Howard, Kane, who first appeared in print in August 1928 with the publication of “Red Shadows” by Weird Tales, is one of the immortal characters of the pulp era. Kane is a swashbuckling hero who remains forever dour—a Puritan of the Elizabethan era who wanders the globe (primarily Africa) in search of evil to conquer. Of emotions, he has few. Of missions, he has many. Whether in the original pulps or in subsequent comic books, movies, and video games, Solomon Kane always remains the same.
Given that Howard was a lifelong lover of history, it seems possible that he took bits and pieces of real men of sword and fire and incorporated them into the figure of Kane. Indeed, in a poem entitle “The Return of Sir Richard Grenville,” Kane is explicitly linked with English adventurers Sir Francis Drake and Sir Richard Grenville—two privateers and proponents of England’s colonization of the Americas. Queen Elizabeth I loved Drake and Grenville, as both used their vast wealth and nautical experience to do battle against the Spanish Armada. Drake and Grenville were men of great daring and accomplishment. Grenville was a Member of Parliament and a sheriff in Ireland, while Drake was a mayor, one of the most successful English privateers of the 16th century, and possibly the first Englishman to ever set foot on what would become California. Both fit the Kane ideal with one glaring exception—neither man was a Puritan.
Where there Puritans or strict Anglican Christians who also lived lives of immense danger? Yes, and many have as much connection to the United States as the Mother Country. In fact, as this brief article will hope to show, many of the men who prefigured the coming of Kane can be counted among the founders of the United States.
John Smith (1580-1631)
If Americans at all know the name “John Smith” these days, it is likely because of the Disney film, Pocahontas (1995). The film characterizes Smith as the earnest and brave Englishman who spearheaded the settling of Virginia. More importantly, the film focuses on Smith’s love affair with the Pamunkey princess Pocahontas. It should surprise no one that Disney’s version of history is flawed. In actuality, Pocahontas was captured and ransomed by English settlers during one of the many wars between them and the tribes of the Chesapeake Bay. She converted to Christianity thanks to a Puritan minister named Alexander Whitaker, and then married a wealthy planter named John Rolfe. Pocahontas gave birth to a son before dying at either age twenty or twenty-one while living in England.
Smith and Pocahontas did know each other, and their most fateful encounter, wherein the favorite daughter of the powerful Chief Powhatan supposedly saved the Englishman from being executed, is a dramatization of a more likely story where Pocahontas warned Smith of a secret plot to kill him and his men. It is also possible that the near-execution of Smith was part of a Pamunkey ritual. Then again, Chief Powhatan had no qualms about killing English settlers. Captain John Ratcliffe, the commander of the ship Discovery and one of the first colonial leaders of Jamestown, was captured along the Pamunkey River in 1609, and there afterwards suffered a gruesome death whereby the women of the Pamunkey tribe peeled his skin off with sharpened mussel shells before discarding all of his flesh (including his face) into a fire.
As for Smith, he managed to survive the many battles and massacres of Jamestown before dying at the age of fifty-one back in London. Before coming to Virginia, Smith was a mercenary for the cause of Protestantism. Smith left his family’s home in Lincolnshire at age sixteen in order to travel to The Netherlands and join their national rebellion against Spain. In 1600 or so, Smith became a privateer in the Mediterranean before joining with the Habsburg military (whom he had fought against in Holland) during their “Long War” against the Ottoman Turks. As an officer, Smith engaged in several instances of single combat against his Ottoman contemporaries, whereby he reportedly won multiple bouts after decapitating his foes. This all came to an end in 1602, when, during a battle in Transylvania, Smith was wounded and taken prisoner by the Ottomans. He was sold into slavery in Crimea. Eventually, Smith was purchased by a Muslim Greek woman in Constantinople who fell in love with him. Seeking marriage, the woman sent Smith to her brother, where the plan was for Smith to convert to Islam in order to join the Ottoman civil service. Smith had other plans, for he killed the woman’s brother before escaping into Russia. Smith journeyed throughout North Africa and Europe and did not see England again until late 1604. Amazingly, despite all of his travails, Smith still signed on to be one of the leaders of the dangerous voyage to Virginia. He set sail for the New World in December 1606.
Like Kane, Smith was a man of action. He loved a good fight, and although not a Puritan, he clearly felt strongly about the defense of Christianity against Islam, and the defense of Protestant nationalism against Catholic imperialism. One can see echoes of the wandering mercenary Smith in the figure of Kane, especially given the former’s many connections to the Near East and Africa.
Myles Standish (1584-1656)
Although Puritans and their settlements existed in both Virginia and Maryland, the dour Anglicans are most closely associated with the first colonies in New England. The first permanent English colony in New England, Plymouth, was settled by Anglicans who sought to establish a brand new church in the New World that would be separate from the Church of England. These Separatists (or Pilgrims) spent many years in religious exile in The Netherlands, specifically the city of Leiden. However, in order to preserve their culture from the influence of Dutch customs, manners, and language, the Separatists (who called themselves the Saints) decided to leave Europe for Plymouth. One of their leaders was Myles Standish, a man the Saints called a “Stranger” because he did not belong to their congregation.
Standish was born into a moderately wealthy family in Lancashire. Following his disinheritance, Standish joined the English forces fighting in The Netherlands during Eighty Years War (the aforementioned war between Dutch Protestants and the Spanish crown). Standish rose up the ranks, eventually becoming a captain among one band of English mercenaries. Standish made such a name for himself in Holland that the Leiden congregation asked him to be their military leader for the planned relocation to North America. (The first man asked for this position was actually John Smith.) Standish agreed. A signer of the Mayflower Compact, which more or less granted the Plymouth colonists the legal right to self-rule, Standish would survive the first brutal winter and became the first commander of the Plymouth Colony Militia. He would hold this position for the rest of his life.
History tends to remember Standish for his bureaucratic successes in Plymouth, namely his establishment of roads and other instances of civil infrastructure. Similarly, Standish is sometimes upheld as a great peacemaker between the English and the New England tribes. This is mostly true, although Standish did engage in raids and oversaw the defense of settlements against Wampanoag incursion. And like his peer John Smith, Standish found it good and proper to fight for Protestant Christianity in Europe and beyond.
John Underhill (1597-1672)
Captain John Underhill of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is more often than not called a religious and genocidal maniac these days. In his own time, Underhill was certainly regarded with suspicion, but was nonetheless celebrated for his military victories in defense of English America.
Underhill came from an aristocratic family. Born the son of Sir Hugh Underhill in Warwickshire, young John grew up in a world where his father served as the Keeper of the Wardrobe for Queen Elizabeth I. All was not well, however, as Sir Hugh was later implicated in a plot to overthrow the Virgin Queen. Like so many other English families at the time, the Underhill clan found refuge in The Netherlands. While living in the fortified town of Bergen op Zoom, Underhill received military training courtesy of Prince Philip William of the House of Orange. Underhill married a Dutch woman named Helena and fathered a child before joining with his fellow Puritans as they journeyed to the New World.
At first, Underhill flourished in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He became an officer in the militia, and, in 1634, he was appointed to the General Court in Boston as a selectman. Three years later, the Pequot War broke out between the Massachusetts Bay and the Pequot people of New England. Underhill, as one of the leaders of the colonial militia, fought his way to Saybrook in Connecticut. There, Underhill’s army joined with the Connecticut Puritans lead by Captain John Mason and their Mohegan allies for an attack on a Pequot village near present-day Mystic, Connecticut. This attack is today called the Mystic Massacre, as Underhill and others killed hundreds of women and children before burning the entire village to the ground. Underhill myself wrote about the event, saying:
“When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man, and all confederates in the action, there [God] hath no respect to persons, but harrows them, and saws them, and puts them to the sword, and the most terrible death that may be. Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with the parents. Sometimes the case alters; but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.”
The government in Boston hailed Underhill as a victor, and the New England victory in the Pequot War effectively ended that tribe’s power in the region. Underhill’s fame did him no favors though, for in the same year as the Mystic Massacre, Underhill was removed from office and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony altogether. His primary crime was blasphemy. Underhill, like the more famous Anne Hutchinson, had joined with the Antinomians under Reverend John Wheelwright. Underhill would remain banished until 1641. During his time away from Boston, Underhill lived in England for a time and was one of the first settlers of Dover, New Hampshire. Eventually, Underhill’s banishment was overruled (and his other crime, adultery, expunged). However, Boston still disliked the militiaman, thus Underhill relocated to New Netherland, where he purchased a tobacco plantation in Lower Manhattan. During Kieft’s War (1643-1645), which saw Dutch colonists go to war against the Wappinger and Lenape tribes, Underhill attacked and destroyed Fort Neck near contemporary Massapequa, Long Island. For his service, Governor Peter Stuyvesant named him the Sheriff of Flushing. Underhill rewarded this gesture by turning against the Dutch and Governor Stuyvesant. Underhill labeled the governor a tyrant and demanded rule by Parliament. The Dutch promptly arrested Underhill, who nevertheless released the Englishman. Upon learning of a planned Dutch attack on English settlements, Underhill informed the leaders of Connecticut, who prepared their own attack. To head off any possible assault, Governor Stuyvesant built a fortification around Lower Manhattan that would later become known as Wall Street.
Following the English victory in First Anglo-Dutch War, which resulted in the absorption of many Dutch settlements in America by the English, Underhill settled at Oyster Bay in Long Island. His second and final wife, Elizabeth Feake, converted Underhill to Quakerism prior to his death. The bloodthirsty Puritan warrior went to his grave as a prolific father, having sired eight children in total. His descendants include Tom Selleck, Johnny Depp, and Amelia Earhart. Another descendant may very well be Solomon Kane, who sought battle in the name of God just as much as Underhill.
John Winthrop the Younger (1606-1676)
The most unlikely candidate on this list, John Winthrop the Younger, the son of the Puritan founding governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was nevertheless a warrior before he served several times as the governor of the Connecticut Colony. Sometime in either 1627 or 1628, Winthrop, Jr. fought under the Duke of Buckingham, the commander of the Royal Navy during the religious wars in France between the Catholics and Huguenot Protestants. The younger Winthrop was present at the failed Siege of La Rochelle, which ended when the Catholic Royalists completely repelled several Dutch and English-backed invasions of the French port city.
After a time spent traveling through the Near East and Levant, John Winthrop, Jr. settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony with his father. He helped to found several towns, including Ipswich, Massachusetts, New London, Connecticut, and Saybrook, Connecticut. A sort of Renaissance man, John Winthrop, Jr. was involved in a variety of endeavors, including the establishment of iron works in Massachusetts as well as a grist mill monopoly throughout Connecticut. Winthrop was a governor and patron, including a patron to Sachem Robin Cassacinamon, a Pequot leader installed by the New Englanders.
As governor of the Connecticut Colony, Winthrop, Jr. oversaw the incorporation of several towns and villages, plus he is often credited with uniting the multiple colonies of Connecticut into a singular entity. Winthrop was also a practicing alchemist who sought to turn Connecticut into a hotbed of alchemical research. Winthrop, Jr. wrote several treatises on natural magick and science, and in his time was a respected scholar. He was also an authority on supernatural matters.
During the 17th century, the majority of witchcraft trials in New England took place in Connecticut, not Massachusetts. Between 1647 and 1697, hundreds of trials took place in the colony. Although far fewer were executed in Connecticut than in the Massachusetts Bay (11 to 15 versus the 20 who were killed at Salem alone), the colony still faced several theological and legal issues over the problem of witches. Winthrop, Jr. sought to rectify this, and, relying on his own vast knowledge of alchemy, Governor Winthrop the Younger did much to suppress witch hunts in the 1660s by eliminating “spectral evidence” (personal testimony of seeing familiars, spirits, etc.) from legal procedure. Alongside a fellow alchemist, the Reverend Gershom Bulkeley, Winthrop, Jr. was accused of all manner of diabolism, and yet still managed to successfully alter the culture around witchcraft in Connecticut.
Winthrop the Younger, a soldier, politician, and alchemist, knew all about the potential of the forces of darkness. The same can be applied to Solomon Kane, whose enemies are more often demonic than human. While Winthrop the Younger wielded books and the law in his battles against both accused witches and their accusers, Kane wields the Staff of Solomon—a magical weapon used by King Solomon against the unclean spirits of the Holy Land—in his one-man crusade against evil. The mechanisms may be different, but the intent is the same.
In total, Solomon Kane is a composite of different men and archetypes taken from the age of English exploration and colonization. Kane is a man of many fathers, some of whom include John Smith, Myles Standish, John Underhill, and John Winthrop the Younger. These four men, besides playing outsized roles in the founding of the United States, planted ideas in the mind of Robert E. Howard, who took those ideas and crafted them into the slouch hat-wearing, sword and pistol-using, enemy of evil known forever as Solomon Kane.
fun read also love me some kane