The School of Night by Muriel Clara Bradbrook

Known as the 'Wizard Earl' he was jailed by James I, at the same time as Raleigh, for alleged involvement in the Gunpowder plot and treason. Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland, was a driving force and financial backer within the group. Its membership included the Earls of Northumberland and Derby (both alchemists) Sir George Carey William Warner and Robert Hues (with Harriot known as the 3 Magi) and the poets Marlowe, Chapman, and Roydon. The name of the group is drawn from a satirical and slightly obscure allusion in a passage in Act IV, scene III of Shakespeare's play Love's Labours Lost, in which the King of Navarre says 'Black is the badge of hell / The hue of dungeons and the school of night.' There is even some doubt whether this is the correct reading (see Wikipedia who report alternatives such as 'Scowl of Night.') A scholarly site called has this on it:- 'An Elizabethan esoteric school founded by Walter Raleigh (a follower of John Dee) and Thomas Harriot, the renowned astronomer and astrologer.

It was reprinted in America in 1965 but even that edition has gone to ground. Muriel Bradbrook's book is curiously unfindable but it seems to have established modern research into this shadowy group. a study in the literary relationships of Sir Walter Ralegh. Muriel Clara Bradbrook ( M.C.) THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT.

The School of Night by Muriel Clara Bradbrook