Drake Waterhouse

Overview

Daniel Waterhouse’s father. Pamphleteer, smuggler, tax protester, Dissenter preacher, and the driving force behind the Barker movement. Had his ears and nose cut off by order of the Star Chamber under Archbishop Laud’s influence — a punishment reserved for the most provocative pamphleteers. A man who named his son Daniel because he calculated the Apocalypse would arrive in 1666.

In the Novel

• Book 1 — Drake looms over Daniel’s childhood. His mutilated face is the physical mark of Puritan conviction taken to extremes. He raised Daniel among fanatics and regicides, in a household where Oliver Cromwell was a personal acquaintance.
• His apocalyptic calculations — the world would end in 1666 — gave Daniel his name (from the Book of Daniel, full of apocalyptic prophecy). When 1666 brought the Great Fire and plague instead of the Second Coming, Daniel had to reckon with the gap between his father’s certainty and reality.
• Drake’s explosive end mirrors the violence of his convictions. Charles II had personal reasons to want the Barkers destroyed — Drake’s associates had killed his father, Charles I.

What’s real

Fictional, but his punishment is drawn directly from history. William Prynne, a real Puritan pamphleteer, had his ears cropped in 1633 and the stumps removed in 1637, and was branded with the letters “S.L.” (seditious libeller) — which he claimed stood for Stigmata Laudis (“the marks of Laud”). Drake’s character borrows from Prynne and from the broader world of radical Dissenter preachers who saw Cromwell’s republic as God’s work and the Restoration as catastrophe.

Key relationships

• Daniel Waterhouse — His youngest son. Daniel’s entire arc — from Puritan household to Royal Society rationalist — is a reaction to Drake’s world.
• Knott Bolstrood — Fellow Barker and close friend who helped raise Daniel.
• Oliver Cromwell — Drake was an influence behind Cromwell, a true believer in the republican cause.