The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court

by Anna Whitelock

  6 BL Lansdowne MS 102, fols 107r–109r.

  7 See Brennan, The Sidneys of Penshurst and the Monarchy, p. 43.

  8 See Leslie Gerard Matthews, The Royal Apothecaries (London, 1967), p. 71.

  9 TNA LC 5/33 fols 15, 50, 51, 71, 91 and 118.

  10 Ibid., fols 71, 91.

  11 Ibid., fols 15, 71, 108.

  12 Ibid., fol. 50.

  13 Ibid., fol. 51.

  14 BL Egerton MS 2806, fol. 74 v.

  15 John Harington, Epigrams, I, p. 44.

  16 TNA E351/451 fol.38; TNA LC 5/33 fol. 128.

  17 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 401.

  18 Stowe, Three fifteenth-century chronicles, pp. 131–2.

  19 Memoirs of Melville, p. 42.

  20 Ibid., p. 45.

  21 CSP Foreign, 1564–5, p. 331.

  22 NLS Advocates MS 1.2.2.

  23 BL Add. MS 19401 fol. 101.

  24 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 432.

  25 TNA SP 56/1 fols 95r–101r.

  26 TNA SP 52/10 fol. 128r.

  Chapter 15: Untouched and Unimpaired

  1 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 404; see Susan Doran, ‘Juno versus Diana: The Treatment of Elizabeth I’s marriage in plays and entertainments’, The Historical Journal, 28 (1995), pp. 257–74.

  2 CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 409–10.

  3 Ibid., p. 514.

  4 Lettenhove, Relations Politiques, ii, p. 55.

  5 Haynes, Burghley State Papers, p. 430; AGS E 653 fol. 23; Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth, pp. 203–4.

  6 Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth, pp. 206–7.

  7 ‘Report of the French envoy in England to Catherine de Medici’, December 1564, HMC Third Report, pp. 262–3; Catherine also proposed that Mary marry Charles’s brother and heir, Henry, Duke of Anjou.

  8 TNA SP 70/77/915 fols 128v–129.

  9 TNA SP 31/3/26 fol. 32.

  10 Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth, p. 233.

  11 CSP Foreign, 1564–5, p. 321; TNA 31/3/26 fol. 1; Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth, p. 224.

  12 Bertrand de Salignac, Seigneur de La Mothe Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, ed. A. Teulet, 7 vols (Paris, 1838–40), vol. II, pp. 117–19.

  13 ‘Summary of the advice given by the Privy Council’, 4 June 1565, TNA SP 52/10 fols 148–51.

  14 Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth, pp. 208–9.

  15 Ibid., pp. 208–10, 225.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Ibid., p. 217.

  18 Ibid., p. 229.

  19 CSP Scot, 1563–9, p. 140; TNA SP 52/10 fol. 68r.

  20 Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique II, p. 120.

  21 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 518.

  Chapter 16: Greatly Grieved

  1 TNA SP 31/3/25 fols 200–1.

  2 CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 386–7.

  3 Ibid., p. 446; Adams (ed.), Dudley Household Accounts, p. 478.

  4 Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth, p. 247

  5 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 455.

  6 CSP Foreign, 1566–8, p. 130.

  7 TNA 70/39/110; BL Add. MS 48,023, fols 352, 353v, 366.

  8 Rowland Vaughan, His Booke – Most Approved and Long experienced water workes containing the manner of winter and summer drowning of Meadow and Pasture … (London, 1610).

  9 TNA LC/4/4/3 fol. 53v; BL Lansdowne MS 4, no. 88, fol. 191.

  10 She was first to go to Dover to greet Princess Cecilia of Sweden, TNA SP 12/37, no. 28, fols 58–59v.

  11 Folger Library, Talbot MS X.d. 428 (16).

  12 Ibid.

  13 G. C. Williamson, Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery, 1590–1676: Her Life, Letters and Work (Wakefield, 1967), p. 37.

  14 Tighe and Davis, Annals of Windsor, p. 639. In 1577 the wall was heightened ‘to prevent persons in the dean’s orchard seeing into the Queen’s walk’, Annals of Windsor, I, p. 641.

  15 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 466.

  16 Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth, pp. 218, 255; J. H. Pollen, ‘Papal Negotiations with Mary Queen of Scots during her reign in Scotland 1561–1567’, Scottish Historical Society, 37 (1901), p. 469. See Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, I, p. 207.

  17 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 465.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British history, biography and manners, in the reign of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth and James I, 3 vols (London 1838), II, p. 98.

  20 TNA SP 52/19 fol. 180r.

  21 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 492; Mortimer Levine, The Elizabethan Succession Question, p. 165.

  22 TNA SP 52/1 no. 26.

  23 ‘Carte’s History of England, books xviii–xx, 1558–1612’, BLO Carte MS 188, 385.

  24 TNA SP 52/10 fol. 150v.

  25 Frank A. Mumby, Elizabeth and Mary Stuart (London, 1914), p. 264, n2; Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, I, p. 126.

  26 CSP Foreign, 1563, pp. 384–7; BL Cotton MS Caligula B X, fols 299–308.

  Chapter 17: Suspicious Mind

  1 Ellis (ed.), Original Letters, vol. II, p. 299.

  2 Ibid.

  3 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 468.

  4 CSP Dom 1547–80, p. 277.

  5 Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, I, pp. 206–7.

  6 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 454.

  7 Ibid., p. 505.

  8 Ibid., p. 470.

  9 CP 140/1; printed in Murdin, Burghley’s State Papers (London, 1759), p. 760.

  10 Printed in Elizabeth: Collected Works, p. 132; CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 472.

  11 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 492.

  12 Ibid., pp. 436–7.

  13 TNA SP 31/3/26 fol. 102.

  14 CSP Ven, 1558–80, pp. 374–5.

  15 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 530.

  16 Quoted in Milton Waldman, Elizabeth and Leicester (London, 1944), p. 130.

  17 Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, I, p. 225.

  18 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 529.

  19 CSP Dom Addenda, 1566–79, XIII, p.8.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Ibid., p. 3.

  Chapter 18: The Elixir of Life

  1 TNA SP 12/36 fol. 24r. He had written to Cecil offering to make alchemical gold in December 1564, TNA SP 70/78 fols 188r–189r. CSP Dom, 1547–80, pp. 249, 256, 273, 275–7, 289, 292; CSP Dom Addenda, 1566–79, p. 10; CSP Foreign, 1564–5, p. 267.

  2 CSP Foreign, 1564–5, p. 267; TNA SP 12/36/13.

  3 Margaret Morison, ‘A Narrative of the Journey of Cecilia, Princess of Sweden, to the Court of Queen Elizabeth’, TRHS, n.s., 12 (1898), pp. 181–224, at pp. 213–14; CP 154/136 printed in HMC Salisbury, I, p. 331; CP154/146 printed in HMC Salisbury, I, p. 332.

  4 TNA SP 15/20/89; Peter Razell, ed., The Journals of Two Travellers in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England, Thomas Platter and Horatio Busino (London, 1995), p. 25.

  5 Jane A. Lawson, ‘This Remembrance of the New Year: Books Given to Queen Elizabeth as New Year’s Gifts’, in Peter Beal and Grace Ippolo, eds, Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing (London, 2007), pp. 133–72, pp. 151–2.

  6 TNA C66/973; TNA C66/970; TNA C54/1763; BLO Ashmole MS 1447, pt VII, p. 30; BLO Ashmole 1402, pt II, fols 1–18.

  7 Jayne Archer, ‘“Rudenesse itselfe she doth refine”: Queen Elizabeth as Lady Alchymia’, in A. Connolly and L. Hopkins, eds, Goddesses and Queens: The Iconography of Queen Elizabeth I (Manchester, 2008), pp. 45–66, 51.

  8 See Deborah E. Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven, Conn.,2007); Frank Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists (St Albans, 1976).

  9 TNA SP 12/36 fols 24r–24v.

  10 TNA SP 12/37 fol. 6r.

  11 BL Lansdowne MS 703, fols 48r–49v. Alan Pritchard, ‘Thomas Charnock’s Book Dedicated to Queen Elizabeth’, Ambix, 26 (1979), pp. 56–73.

  12 BL Lansdowne MS 703, fols 6v–11v. See Jonathan Hughes, ‘The Humanity of Thomas Carnock, an Elizabethan Alchemist’ in Stanton J. Linden (ed.), Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture (New York, 2007), pp. 3–34.

&nb
sp; 13 BL Lansdowne MS 703, fols 8r, 9v, 39r.

  14 TNA SP 70/80/123 fols 11, 52.

  15 TNA SP 12/37 fols 6r–6v.

  16 ‘A Narrative of the Journey of Cecilia, Princess of Sweden, to the Court of Queen Elizabeth’, pp. 181–214; CP 154/105; CP 154/129; J. Bell, Queen Elizabeth and a Swedish Princess Being an Account of the Visit of Princess Cecilia of Sweden to England in 1565 (London, 1926), pp. 15–23.

  17 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 475.

  18 Nathan Martin, ‘Princess Cecilia’s Visitation to England, 1565–1566’ in Charles Beem (ed.), The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 27–44.

  19 CP 154/146 printed in HMC Salisbury, I, pp. 332–3.

  20 CP 154/112 printed in HMC Salisbury, I, p. 327.

  21 TNA SP 12/39/39.

  22 CSP Span, 1558–67, I, p. 546.

  23 TNA SP 12/39/88.

  24 TNA SP 12/37/3A; TNA SP 12/39/39. Lannoy’s treatises and copies of letters to Elizabeth appear in contemporary alchemical collections, such as BL Sloane 3654, fols 4r–6v; 1744, fols 4r–8v;

  25 TNA SP 12/40/32.

  26 TNA SP 15/13, fols 36r–37v; TNA SP 12/40/321. BL Lansdowne MS 9, fols 191r–192v, TNA SP 12/42/30.

  27 TNA SP 12/40/53.

  28 TNA SP 12/42/30.

  29 Murdin, Burghley’s State Papers, p. 763. De Lannoy was kept in the Tower at least until 1571. Longleat House MS DU/I, fol. 209r, Petition of Barbara de Lannoy after February 1571. Last reference to Lannoy in state papers relates to a command to report to court, TNA SP 12/42/70 (28 May 1567).

  30 Cabala, Sive Scrinia Sacra (London, 1691), p. 139.

  Chapter 19: Barren Stock

  1 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 512.

  2 Ibid., pp. 516, 518–20.

  3 Ibid., p. 526.

  4 Patrick Fraser Tytler, History of Scotland, 9 vols (Edinburgh, 1828–43), VII, p. 23.

  5 See John Guy, ‘My Heart is my Own’: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (London, 2004), p. 11.

  6 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 534.

  7 Ibid., p. 540.

  8 Ibid., p. 621.

  9 Memoir of Melville, p. 54.

  10 TNA SP 15/13/73; CSP Dom Addenda, 1566–79, pp. 28–9.

  11 Milton Waldman, Elizabeth and Leicester (London, 1947), p. 123.

  12 CP 148/12 printed in HMC Salisbury, II, p. 240.

  13 TNA SP 63/18 fol. 62 r–v.

  14 Memoir of Melville, p. 56.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, vol. I, pp. 129–64.

  17 TNA SP 12/40 fol. 195.

  18 See William Camden, Annales, p. 129.

  19 Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, vol. I, p. 136.

  20 Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 95; Simonds D’Ewes, The journals of all the parliaments during the reign of Queen Elizabeth both of the House of Lords and House of Commons (London, 1682), p. 12.

  21 CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 591–2.

  22 Ibid., p. 592.

  23 Ibid., p. 599.

  24 TNA SP 12/41/5 fragment of queen’s draft printed in Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments, p. 147.

  25 TNA SP 70/95 fol. 161.

  26 Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 116.

  27 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 623.

  28 CSP Foreign, 1566–8, p. 232.

  29 TNA SP 52/14.

  Chapter 20: Wicked Intentions

  1 BL Cotton MS Titus, no. 107, fols 124, 131.

  2 TNA SP 12/46 fols 1, 28.

  3 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 4; W. M. Schutte, ‘Thomas Churchyard’s “Doleful Discourse” and the Death of Lady Katherine Grey’, Sixteenth-Century Journal 15 (1984), pp. 471–87.

  4 CSP Scot, 1563–9, pp. 416–17.

  5 CSP Span, 1568–79, p. 36.

  6 See P. J. Holmes, ‘Mary Stewart in England’, pp. 195–218.

  7 TNA SP 70/133 fol. 185.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Frederich von Raumer, Contributions to Modern History from the British Museum and the State Paper Office (London, 1836), p. 178.

  10 ‘Papers relating to Mary Queen of Scots, mostly addressed to or written by Sir Francis Knollys’, Philobiblon Society Miscellanies, 14 (1872), pp. 14–69.

  11 Ibid.

  12 CSP Scot, 1563–9, pp. 606, 612. Sally Varlow, ‘Sir Francis Knollys’s Latin dictionary: new evidence for Catherine Carey’, BIHR 80, 209 (2007), p. 322.

  13 ‘Papers relating to Mary Queen of Scots’, p. 65; her memorial plaque credits her with sixteen children, eight male and eight female, and this may be because of two stillbirths or cot deaths that are otherwise not recorded.

  14 Haynes, Burghley State Papers, p. 509.

  15 Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, vol. I, p. 124.

  16 Ibid., and Wright, ed., Queen Elizabeth and her Times, I, p. 308.

  17 CP 198/124.

  18 Thomas Newton, ‘An epitaph upon the worthy and honourable lady, the Lady Knowles’ (1569); Haynes, Burghley State Papers, pp. 509–10.

  19 CP 4/9 printed in HMC Salisbury, I, p. 402.

  20 TNA C/115/L2/6697 in Janet Arnold, ‘Lost from Her Majesties Back’, pp. 40, 41, 58, 104.

  21 The House of Commons, 1558–1603, ed. P. Hasler, 3 vols (London, 1981), vol. II, pp. 416, 417.

  22 CSP Dom Addenda, 1566–79, XVII, 198.

  Chapter 21: Secret Enemies

  1 TNA SP 70/102 fol. 30v.

  2 TNA SP 12/8/61 fol. 165r.

  3 Strype, Annals of the Reformation, I, pp. 580–1.

  4 CSP Span, 1568–79, pp. 96–7.

  5 Ibid., p. 97.

  6 Ibid., p. 180.

  7 Murdin, Burghley’s State Papers, p. 180.

  8 TNA SP 12/81/57.

  9 CP 159/46 in HMC Salisbury, II, p. 25.

  10 TNA SP 15/15 no. 29 (i). See K. J. Kesselring, The Northern Rebellion of 1569: Faith, Politics and Protest in Elizabethan England (Basingstoke, 2007); R. Pollitt, ‘The Defeat of the Northern Rebellion and the Shaping of Anglo–Scottish Relations’, Scottish Historical Review, 64 (1985), pp. 1–21.

  11 TNA SP 15/15, no. 29(i).

  12 TNA SP 12/59, no. 65.

  13 Printed in The Tudor Constitution, ed. G. R. Elton (Cambridge, 1982); see P. McGrath, Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I (London, 1967), p. 68.

  Chapter 22: Want of Posterity

  1 Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, III, p. 454.

  2 The Egerton Papers, ed. J. Payne Collier (London, 1840), p. 52.

  3 Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, III, p. 418.

  4 See Katherine B. Crawford, ‘Love, Sodomy and Scandal: Controlling the Sexual Reputation of Henry III’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 12 (2003), pp. 513–42.

  5 Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, eds Hector de la Ferrière-Percy and Comte Baugyenault de Puchesse, 10 vols (Paris, 1880–1909), IV, pp. 26–7.

  6 Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, II, pp. 178, 179.

  7 Sir Dudley Digges, The Compleat Ambassador (London, 1655), p. 195.

  8 Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, VII, p. 180.

  9 Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, IV, pp. 64, 85.

  10 Ibid., p. 21.

  11 Digges, Compleat Ambassador, pp. 43, 70–1.

  12 Ibid., p. 96.

  13 Secret memorial of M. de Vassal in Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, III, pp. 462–9.

  14 Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, IV, pp. 186, 187.

  15 Ibid.

  16 CSP Foreign, 1572–4, pp. 3, 8–9.

  Chapter 23: Compass Her Death

  1 The Zurich Letters, ed. Robinson, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1847), I, pp. 245–54.

  2 M. A. R. Graves, ‘Thomas Norton, the Parliament Man’, Historical Journal 23, 1 (1980), pp. 17–35.

  3 13 Eliz c.1, Statutes IV, pp. 526–21.

  4 13 Eliz c.1 and 2, Statutes IV, pp. 526–31; Patrick McGrath, Papists and Puritans, pp. 174–5; Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, I, pp. 218–34.

  5 23 Eliz c.2, Statutes IV, pp. 659–60.

&nb
sp; 6 See Geoffrey Parker, ‘The Place of Tudor England in the Messianic Vision of Philip II of Spain’, TRHS, sixth series 12 (2002), pp. 167–221.

  7 TNA SP 12/84 fols 35v–36r.

  8 TNA SP 12/84 fol. 35r.

  9 Robyn Adams, ‘The Service I am Here For: William Herle in the Marshalsea Prison, 1571’, Huntington Library Quarterly 72 (2009), 217–38. On Spanish involvement in the Ridolfi plot see Francis Edwards, Plots and Plotters in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Dublin, 2002), pp. 29–73 and Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (London, 2000), pp. 160–4.

  10 See Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (London, 1960), p. 40.

  11 TNA SP 12/80/117; Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth, pp. 38–41.

  12 T. B. Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason, 21 vols (London, 1816–26), I, p. 968.

  13 TNA SP 70/122 fol. 153r.

  14 CP 7/7 in Murdin, Burghley’s State Papers, II, p. 185.

  15 Digges, Compleat Ambassador, pp. 165–6.

  16 BL Cotton MS Caligula C 2, fols 86r–v.

  17 TNA SP 15/20 fol. 155v.

  18 Lettenhove, Relations Politiques, vol. VI, p. 189.

  19 Paget Papers, X, art. 10. Some rumours lingered. In 1575 Lady Cobham was accused by Thomas Cockyn, a stationer, implicated in the Ridolfi plot, as a ‘favourer’ of the Scottish queen. TNA SP 53/10/11, 45, 61. The extent of any involvement with Mary is unclear. There seems to have been an examination of the accusation made by Cockyn against Lady Cobham, but nothing more seems to have been revealed, and Elizabeth continued to trust her and give her lavish New Year gifts. See David McKeen, A Memory of Honour: The Life of William Brooke, Lord Cobham, 2 vols (1986), I, pp. 318–22.

  Chapter 24: Beside Her Bed

  1 Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, IV, pp. 410–11.

  2 Digges, Compleat Ambassador, p. 198; Fénélon, Correspondance Diplomatique, IV, pp. 411, 412.

  3 John Strype, The Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith, p. 114.

  4 TNA SP 15/21 fol. 58.

  5 Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, I, p. 244.

  6 Ibid., pp. 262–90.

  7 Ibid., pp. 310–11.

  8 Digges, Compleat Ambassador, p. 219.

  9 See Neville Williams, A Tudor Tragedy: Thomas Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk (London, 1964).

  10 Digges, Compleat Ambassador, p. 167.

  11 CSP Foreign, 1572–4, p. 12; TNA SP 70/122 fols 37–41, 50, 211. See Digges, Compleat Ambassador, p. 195.

  12 Digges, Compleat Ambassador, pp. 226–8.

  13 BL Cotton Vespasian F 6, fol. 7r.