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

by Anna Whitelock

  17 LPL, MS 660, fol. 149r–v.

  18 LPL, MS 660, fol. 281r, fol. 151r.

  19 CP 55/45, printed in HMC Salisbury, VII, p. 391.

  20 CP 55/45.

  21 BL Add. MS 22925; TNA E 351/542, M59, fol. 42r.

  Chapter 50: Privy Matters

  1 Gossip from a muniment-room: being passages in the lives of Anne and Mary Fytton, 1574–1618 (London, 1897), ed. Lady Newdigate-Newdegate, pp. 9–11.

  2 Ibid., pp. 34–5.

  3 Ibid., pp. 12–13.

  4 Ibid., pp. 13–15.

  5 Harington, Nugae Antiquae, II, p. 154.

  6 Harington, Letters and Epigrams, p. 176.

  7 L. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, trans. G. Waldman (Oxford, 1974); Simon Cauchi, ‘The “Setting Forth” of Harington’s Ariosto’, Studies in Bibliography 36 (1983), pp. 137–68; Miranda Johnson-Haddad, ‘Englishing Ariosto: Orlando Furioso at the Court of Elizabeth I’, Comparative Literature Studies, 31 (1994), pp. 323–50.

  8 Harrison, Elizabethan Journal, I, pp. 14–15; Richard Townsend, Harington and Ariosto: A Study in Elizabethan Verse Translation (New Haven, 1940).

  9 John Harington, Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse (London, 1591). The anecdote is recorded in Nugae Antiquae, p. x.

  10 John Harington, A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, Called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), ed. Elizabeth Story Donno (London, 1962); Jonathan Kinghorn, ‘A Privvie in Perfection: Sir John Harington’s Water-Closet’, Bath History, 1 (1986), pp. 173–88. See also Alan Stewart, ‘The Early Modern Closet Discovered’, Representations, 50 (1995), pp. 76–100.

  11 The Metamorphosis of Ajax, ed. Donno, p. 183.

  12 Ibid., p. 186.

  13 John Harington, The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington Together with The Prayse of Private Life, ed. Norman Egbert McClure (Philadelphia, 1930), p. 165.

  14 Harington, The Metamorphosis of Ajax, p. 171.

  15 Harington, Nugae Antiquae, I, pp. 239–41.

  16 Ibid., II, p. 287.

  Chapter 51: Foolish and Old

  1 Anthony Rudd, A sermon preached at Richmond before Queene Elizabeth of Famous memorie, vpon the 28 of March, 1596 (London, 1603), pp. 49–54.

  2 Nichols (ed.), Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, III, p. 8.

  3 Rudd, Sermon preached at Richmond, pp. 54, 56.

  4 The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert McClure, 2 vols (Philadelphia, 1939), II, p. 470.

  5 John Harington, A Briefe Viewe of the State of the Church of England (London, 1653), p. 162.

  6 Ellis (ed.), Original Letters, vol. II, p. 53.

  7 Clapham, Elizabeth of England, p. 90.

  8 Edmund Bohun, The Character of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1693), pp. 301–2.

  9 A journal of all that was accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse, pp. 25–6.

  10 Ibid., pp. 25–6, 36–7.

  11 Ibid., pp. 36–7.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Ibid., pp. 25–6.

  14 These were all recorded in an inventory of July 1600. BL Stowe MS 555/7; Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardobe Unlock’d, pp. 251–334.

  15 Harington, Nugae Antiquae, II, p. 215.

  16 Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardobe Unlock’d, pp. 4–5.

  17 Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, II, p. 155.

  18 A journal of all that was accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse, p. 12.

  19 Ibid., p. 82.

  Chapter 52: Mask of Youth

  1 TRP, II, pp. 240–1.

  2 APC 1596–7, p. 69. See Roy Strong, Gloriana, p. 20.

  3 APC 1596–7, p. 69.

  4 Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London, 1977), p. 12.

  5 Nanette Salomon, ‘Positioning women in visual convention’, pp. 64–95; David Howarth, Images of Rule: Art and Politics in the English Renaissance, 1485–1649 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 101.

  6 Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, pp. 82, 85.

  Chapter 53: The Poisoned Pommel

  1 Richard Walpole’s younger brother Henry Walpole was the celebrated Jesuit martyr who was executed at Tyburn for illegally entering England and accused of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth.

  2 Francis Bacon, A Letter Written out of England … containing a True Report of a Strange Conspiracy (London, 1599); M[artin] A[rray], The Discovery and Confutation of a Tragical Fiction (Rome, 1599).

  3 See Francis Edwards, ‘Sir Robert Cecil, Edward Squier and the Poisoned Pommel’ in Recusant History, 25.3 (2001), pp. 377–414.

  4 The Letters of John Chamberlain, I, p. 34.

  5 TNA SP 52/62/39; TNA SP 52/62/43; TNA SP 52/62/46.

  6 APC, 1598–9, p. 506. See also Francis Edwards (ed. and trans.), The Elizabethan Jesuits: Historia missionis Anglicanae Societatis Jesu (1660) of Henry More (London, 1981), p. 279.

  7 TNA SP 12/83, 86, 89, 91; TNA KB/8/55; Francis Bacon, A Letter Written out of England which may confidently be ascribed to Francis Bacon and which is based on Squires’ own statements; Walpole’s testimony is echoed by Martin Array in a pamphlet giving the Jesuit side of the case, The Discovery and Confutation of a Tragical Fiction, but it seems Array based his narrative only on Walpole’s own statement.

  8 TNA MS KB 8/55.

  9 Liturgies and Occasional Forms of Prayer, pp. 679–82.

  10 TNA SP 12/224/112; TNA SP 12/247/61; TNA SP 12/268/144–5. See also Edwards, ‘Sir Robert Cecil, Edward Squier’, pp. 377–414.

  Chapter 54: Crooked Carcass

  1 See James Shapiro, 1599. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London, 2005), p. 57.

  2 Harrison, Elizabethan Journal, p. 287.

  3 Camden, Annales, pp. 771–2.

  4 Harrison, Elizabethan Journal, p. 132.

  5 TNA SP 12/268/45; Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, II, p. 387.

  6 TNA SP 12/268/18.

  7 Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, II, pp. 166–7.

  8 The Letters of Philip Gawdy of West Harling, Norfolk and London: 1579–1616, ed. Isaac Herbert Jeayes (London, 1906), p. 137.

  9 HMC, De L’Isle, II, pp. 265, 322.

  10 Letters of Philip Gawdy, p. 137.

  11 Paul Hentzner’s Travels in England, pp. 33–4. See Louis Montrose, ‘“Shaping Fantasies”: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan culture’, Representations I, no. 2 (1983), pp. 61–94.

  Chapter 55: Lèse Majesté

  1 Harrison (ed.), Letters of Queen Elizabeth, p. x.

  2 Devereux, Lives and Letters, II, pp. 40–1.

  3 John Stow and Edmund Howes, The Annales, or Generall Chronicle of England (London, 1615), p. 788.

  4 Chamberlin, Private Character of Queen Elizabeth, p. 110.

  5 Thomas Platter’s Travels in England, p. 192.

  6 Ibid., p. x.

  7 Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, II, p. 127.

  8 Ibid., p. 196.

  9 Ibid., p. 129.

  10 Ibid., p. 132.

  11 Ibid., p. 151.

  12 Ibid., pp. 158–9.

  13 HMC Salisbury, VII, pp. 167–8.

  14 Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, II, p. 164.

  15 Ibid., p. 172.

  16 Ibid., p. 174.

  17 Birch (ed.), Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, II, p. 218.

  18 TNA SP 12/50.

  19 CP 81/88 in HMC Salisbury, X, p. 330.

  20 Harington, Nugae Antiquae, I, p. 179.

  21 G. B. Harrison, A Last Elizabethan Journal: Being a Record of Those Things Most Talked of During the Years 1599–1603 (London, 1933), p. 132; Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, II, p. 463.

  Chapter 56: Dangerous and Malicious Ends

  1 BL Cotton MS Julius F VI, fols 450r, 445r–452r; TNA SP 12/278/73 fol. 124r; M. James, ‘At a Crossroads of the Political Culture: The Essex Revolt, 1601’ in M. James, Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 416–65.

  2 TNA SP 12/278/72, fol.
122r.

  3 CSP Dom, 1598–1601, pp. 351, 550; APC, 1600–1, pp. 147–8.

  4 TNA SP 12/278/97, fols 155r–158v. A. Wall, ‘An Account of the Essex Revolt, February 1601’, BIHR 54 (1981), pp. 131–3; P. E. J. Hammer, ‘The Smiling Crocodile: the Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan Popularity’, in Peter Lake, Stephen Pincus, eds, The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007), pp. 95–115; TNA SP 12/278/72; CSP Dom, p. 550.

  5 TNA SP 12/278/51.

  6 Clapham, Elizabeth of England, p. 88.

  7 CP 83/64 in HMC Salisbury, XI, p. 59.

  8 TRP, III, pp. 230–2.

  9 LPL MS 604, fol. 70v. Howell, State Trials, I, pp. 1405–6.

  10 TNA SP 12/278, no. 61, fol. 102; Howell, State Trials, I, pp. 1403, 1407; LPL MS 604 fol. 70v.

  11 TNA SP 12/278/61, fols 104r–106v; Howell, State Trials, I, pp. 1403–15; LPL MS 604, fol. 70v.

  12 TNA SP 12/278/101, fol. 168r–v.

  13 CSP Dom, 1598–1601, p. 577. See Paul E. J. Hammer, ‘The Earl of Essex’s Apprehension, Arraignment and Execution, February 1601’, from Jayne Archer, Elizabeth Clarke, Elizabeth Goldring (eds), Court and Culture in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Critical Edition of John Nichols’s ‘The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth I’, 4 vols (London, 2008); Howell, State Trials, I, p. 1346.

  14 Francis Bacon, A Declaration of the Practises & Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert Late Earle of Essex and his Complices, against Her Majestie and Her Kingdoms and of The Proceedings as Well at the Arraignments & Convictions of the Said Late Earle, and His Adherents, as After: Together with the Very Confessions and Other Parts of the Evidences Themselves, Word for Word Taken out of the Originals (London, 1601).

  15 A. Hunt, ‘Tuning the Pulpits: The Religious Context of the Essex Revolt’, in L. A. Ferrell and P. McCullough (eds), The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History, 1500–1700 (Manchester, 2000), pp. 86–114; Peter McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, 1997); M. James, ‘At a Crossroads of the Political Culture: The Essex Revolt 1601’ in James, Society, Politics and Culture, pp. 416–65.

  16 TNA SP 12/278/104, fol. 207r, ‘An abstract out of the Erle of Essex confession’.

  17 BLO Tanner MS 114, fol. 139, printed in Goodman, Court of King James I, pp. 18–19.

  18 TNA SP 12/278/104, fol. 207r. The earl’s ‘confession’ was published in Bacon’s ‘A declaration of the practices and treasons … of the late Earle of Essex’, the official printed account of the rising.

  19 W. Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse,on the First Sunday in Lent … 1600 with a Short Discourse of the Late Earle of Essex His Confession and Penitence, Before and At the Time of His Death (1601), sig. B5v. For Cecil’s orchestration of the sermon following Essex’s rebellion see CSP Dom, 1598–1601, pp. 598–9.

  20 Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, sig. E1.

  21 TNA SP 12 278/63; Barlow, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse; Francis Bacon, A Declaration of the Practises & Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert Late Earle of Essex.

  22 TRP, III, pp. 233–4.

  23 Von Raumer, Contributions, pp. 451–2.

  Chapter 57: No Season to Fool

  1 Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, II, pp. 84, 87; I, p. 206.

  2 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley Papers, p. 472; Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, II, pp, 84, 87; I, p. 236.

  3 CP 58/108 in HMC Salisbury, IX, p. 21.

  4 McClure (ed.), Letters and Epigrams, p. 90.

  5 Harington, Nugae Antiquae, p. 315.

  6 TNA SP 12/278 fol. 151; TNA SP 12/278 fol. 246; see Harington, Letters and Epigrams, p. 389.

  7 J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1584–1601 (London, 1957), p. 375; Chamberlain, Private Character of Queen Elizabeth, p. 73; David Dalrymple (ed.), The Secret Correspondence of Sir Robert Cecil with James VI, King of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1766), p. 26.

  8 The Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham for the years 1593–1616, ed. Harold Spencer Scott (London, 1902), vol. 10, p. 45.

  9 CP 88/89 in HMC Salisbury, XI, p. 405; Helen Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London, 1995), pp. 211–13.

  10 CP 88/89.

  11 The Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham, p. 45; BL Cotton MS Titus C VI, fols 410–11.

  12 CSP Dom, 1580–1625 Addenda, p. 407.

  13 Godfrey Goodman, The Court of King James the First, I, p. 97.

  14 Collins (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, II, p. 362.

  15 John Bruce, Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland (London, 1861), p. 13.

  16 The Secret correspondence of Sir Robert Cecil with James VI, p. 62; Joel Hurstfield, ‘The Succession Struggle in late Elizabethan England’ in S. T. Bindoff, Joel Hurtsfield and C. H. Williams, Elizabethan Government and Society (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 369–96.

  17 CP 169/102; CSP Dom, 1601–2, p. 37.

  18 See David Durant, Arbella Stuart: a rival to the Queen (London, 1978).

  19 Thomas Wilson, The State of England Anno Dom.1600, ed. E. J. Fisher (London, 1936), p. 5.

  Chapter 58: Age Itself Is a Sickness

  1 John Manningham, The Diary of John Manningham of the Middle Temple 1602–1603 (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1976), p. 194.

  2 H. Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 vols (London, 1875–83), vol. I, p. 24.

  3 H. Foley, Records of the English Province, I, pp. 21–2.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Ibid., p. 21.

  6 Ibid., p. 24.

  7 Raumer, Contributions, p. 451.

  8 See Nichols (ed.), Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, II, p. 578.

  9 CSP Dom, 1601–2, p. 232.

  10 H. Foley, Records of the English Province, I, pp. 47, 50. It has been suggested that the spy ‘Rivers’ was William Sterrell, Secretary to the Earl of Worcester, which would have placed him at the heart of Elizabeth’s court.

  11 Nichols (ed.), Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, III, p. 577. The Letters of John Chamberlain, I, pp. 115, 139. Raumer, Contributions, p. 450. See TNA Baschet MS, Bundle 33, p. 260.

  12 De Maisse, A Journal of All that was Accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse, p. 95.

  13 Cited in Strickland, Elizabeth, IV, p. 762.

  14 ‘Diary of the Journey of the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania’, pp. 1–67.

  15 Lodge (ed.), Illustrations of British History, II, p. 577.

  16 Manningham’s diary, p. 150. H. Foley, Records of the English Province, I, p. 52.

  17 H. Foley, Records of the English Province, I, p. 52.

  18 Harington, A Tract on the Succession to the Crown.

  19 Harington, Nugae Antiquae, II, p. 76.

  20 Ibid., pp. 77–9.

  21 Ibid., I, pp. 322–3.

  22 Ibid., I, p. 321.

  23 Ibid., I, pp. 320–4.

  24 Harington, A Tract on the Succession to the Crown, p. 51.

  25 Ibid.

  26 See The Letters of John Chamberlain, pp. 179–80.

  27 Ibid., p. 188.

  Chapter 59: All Are in a Dump at Court

  1 The Letters of John Chamberlain, p. 182.

  2 HMC Salisbury, XII, p. 670.

  3 Raumer, Contributions, p. 454.

  4 The Diary of Lady Anne Clifford, ed. Vita Sackville West (London, 1923), p. 3; CSP Ven, 1592–1603, pp. 529, 531–2.

  5 CSP Ven, 1592–1603, pp. 531–2.

  6 Ibid., p. 532.

  7 Ibid., p. 533; Katherine Duncan-Jones, ‘“Almost Always Smiling”: Elizabeth’s last two years’ in Resurrecting Elizabeth I in Seventeenth Century England, ed. Elizabeth H. Hageman and Katherine Conway (Madison and Teaneck, 2007), pp. 31–47.

  8 CSP Ven, 1592–1603, p. 533.

  9 Ibid., p. 529.

  10 CP 92/80.

  11 William Camden, Annales, p. 26.

  12 The Letters of Philip Gawdy, p. 126.

  13 Raumer, Contributions, p
. 455.

  14 CP 92/18 printed in HMC Salisbury, XII, p. 667.

  15 CP 183/148 printed in HMC Salisbury, XII, p. 668.

  16 CSP Dom, 1601–3, p. 301.

  17 Ibid., p. 298.

  18 Raumer, Contributions, p. 456.

  19 CSP Dom, 1601–3, p. 298.

  20 John Clapham, Elizabeth of England, p. 96.

  21 The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, ed. Sara Jayne Steen (Oxford, 1994), pp. 158–75.

  22 CSP Ven, 1592–1603, p. 554.

  23 CSP Foreign, 1601–3, p. 302.

  24 HMC Rutland, p. 387.

  25 Wright, Queen Elizabeth and her Times, II, p. 494.

  26 CSP Ven, 1592–1603, p. 563.

  27 Raumer, Contributions, pp. 456–7.

  28 CSP Dom, 1601–3, p. 302.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. II, p. 507.

  31 ‘The Death of Queene Elizabeth’, in BL Cotton MS Titus C vii 57, fol. 1.

  32 Raumer, Contributions, p. 457.

  33 John Stow, A Summarie of the Chronicles of England (London, 1604), p. 439.

  34 CP 92/22.

  35 HMC Rutland, p. 388.

  36 Ibid.

  37 Bruce, Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland (London, 1861), p. 73; Clapham, Elizabeth of England, p. 104.

  38 CSP Ven, 1592–1603, p. 558.

  39 CSP Ven, 1601–3, p. 7.

  40 The Memoirs of Robert Carey, ed. F. H. Mares (Oxford, 1972), p. 58.

  41 Ibid.

  42 Ibid.

  43 Clapham, Elizabeth of England, pp. 99–100.

  44 CSP Dom, 1601–3, p. 303.

  45 William Weston, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, ed. and trans. Philip Caraman (London, 1955), p. 222.

  46 Clapham, Elizabeth of England, p. 99.

  47 The Diary of John Manningham, p. 205.

  48 The Letters of John Chamberlain, p. 189; Raumer, Contributions, p. 458.

  Chapter 60: Deathbed

  1 The Memoirs of Robert Carey, p. 59.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Raumer, Contributions, pp. 457–8.

  4 Elizabeth Southwell, ‘A True Relation…’ Stonyhurst Manuscript Ang, iii, Archivum Britannicum Societatis Iesu (London, 1607) printed in Catherine Loomis, ‘Elizabeth Southwell’s Manuscript Account of the death of Queen Elizabeth’, English Literary Renaissance 26.3 (1996), p. 485.

  5 Ibid., pp. 482–509.

  6 Clapham, Elizabeth of England, p. 96.

  7 The Diary of John Manningham, p. 207.

  8 Ibid.; The Memoirs of Robert Carey, pp. 59–60.