The Earl of Doncaster

(bass guitar)

 

Ephraim Gatesby (the Earl of Doncaster) was born in London in 1598 to Little Richard and Posey Gatesby.  Gatesby senior worked as a nightsoil man at Westminster Palace, and young Ephraim realised at a very early age that a life spent thigh deep in faeces was not one he wished to live, and so he vowed to gentle his condition.

 

Thanks to a fortuitous mix of good luck, flattery, bribery, blackmail and garrotting, he soon found himself rubbing shoulders with the highest in the land.  Adopting the motto 'Why Stop at the Shoulders', his star began a newer, even more rapid ascent.

 

He became an expert swordsman and discovered a gift for poetry, composing several dozen sonnets said to have been "of a heart-breaking beauty".

 

After suffering a catastrophic rectal prolapse whilst putting the Duchess of Castleton through her paces, he retired to his estates in the North of England, where he was to write the play which would make him notorious.  On its publication The Rape of Bartholomew caused instant and universal outrage.

 

"Never was there such an outcrye. Whene'ere the Earl's carriage would approach, the people would hurl their droppin's theretoward so that by the time the Earl reached his destination, his conveyance resembled not so much a carriage as a big pile of shit on wheels."

 

Indeed, the Earl was heard to lament "from shit to shit I am come".

 

It was then that the Earl's fortunes were plunged into an even deeper abysm.  The King first stripped him of his title then ordered his arrest, and sent out agents of the Crown "unto each shire" to seek out and destroy every copy of The Rape of Bartholomew and "all of the writings of this vile man....Let them be consigned to the flames and the ashes of them be trodden into the midden from whence they came."

 

So thorough were the King's men, none of Gatesby's works is thought to survive.