Feigning Madness The Case of William Hawkyns, 1552 London

In mid-April 1552, William Hawkyns attempted to speak with the 14-year-old King Edward VI alone on the topic of a bill he wished to put forward. He was barred from this conversation with the ill king by John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Lord Protector. Dudley instituted the Act of Uniformity earlier that year in January (1552), which imposed the Second Book of Common Prayer to begin in March, the same month Hawkyns took the first of his ideas to the London council at “Fleet bridge”. When Hawkyns’s story began, he “kept a school about St. Bartholomew’s”. Within a few weeks of his desire to see the king, Hawkyns found himself “committed at Greenwich first to the Porter’s Lodge, thence to the Tower, and has been sundry times examined by [Sir Philip] Hoby and Mr [Arthur] Darcy …. He feigned himself to be furiosus but is now come to his right wits, as Darcy says”. This chapter intends to look at when and why individuals might fake mental health conditions, including malingering, and consider the case of William Hawkyns.