‘At this my extreme age’

Abstract Heywood’s last years in exile in the Netherlands are the subject of this penultimate chapter. It looks at his encounter in Mechelen with the English agent (and fellow author) Thomas Wilson, and the plaintive letters that he wrote to Lord Burghley in its aftermath. It traces Heywood’s struggles for financial security after the confiscation of his lands and revenues following his flight into exile, and charts his harrowing experiences during the religious upheavals in Antwerp where he had sought safe haven with his son Ellis in the house of the Jesuits. His final escape to Louvain and the deaths of Ellis and Heywood himself within months of each other in 1578 bring the story of the playwright’s life to an end. ‘Merry’ to the last, Heywood reputedly jested on his deathbed, once more evoking the example of More, who had gone to the scaffold jesting with his captors.