Elizabeth and Leicester

by Sarah Gristwood

  The reports home of the Spanish ambassadors are an invaluable source on this relationship - especially the letters of Feria and de Quadra on Elizabeth’s early relationship with Robert and the Amy Dudley affair. See the Calendar of Letters and State Papers relating to English Affairs, preserved principally in the Archives of Simancas, ed. M. A. S. Hume et al., 1892-99 (CPS Spanish). The all-important letter about Amy’s death is on pp. 174-6 of vol. I (but see the proviso under Chapter 6 below); that on Elizabeth’s near-fatal smallpox attack on pp. 262-4 of the same volume. The scene in which Elizabeth promised to marry the Duke of Alençon is pp. 226-8 of vol. III; Englefield’s correspondence on the Arthur Dudley affair is in vol. IV, pp. 101-12.

  The other ambassadorial calendar of especial relevance is perhaps that of the Venetians (Calendar of Letters and State Papers relating to English Affairs, preserved in the Archives of Venice and in the other Libraries of Northern Italy, ed. Rawdon Brown et al., 1864-98) - though Venice did not keep an envoy at Elizabeth’s court for much of her reign. Other vital ambassadorial sources are the Correspondance Diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (London and Paris, 1838); particularly the first volume, pp. 233-7, for his account of the famous scene where Leicester and Norfolk challenged Cecil; also vol. II, p. 112, on the aftermath of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

  The important letters of the envoy of the Holy Roman Emperor in the first years of Elizabeth’s reign are reproduced in Queen Elizabeth and Some Foreigners, ed. Victor von Klarwill, trans. Prof. T. H. Nash (John Lane, 1927).

  Private papers

  The following are some of the most relevant for Elizabeth and Leicester of the ‘calendars’ of private collections of papers commissioned by the Historic Manuscripts Commission.

  Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Bath Preserved at Longleat, Wiltshire, vol. V, Talbot, Dudley and Devereux Papers 1533-1659, ed. G. Dyfnallt Owen, HMSO, 1990. The Talbot Papers contain some relevant material (running in tandem, you might say, with that which appears in Lodge; see notes for Chapter 13 below); as do the Devereux Papers. But the real point, here, is some ninety pages of transcripts of Robert Dudley’s own papers: inventories of the contents of his properties; letters of business addressed to him about everything from the manipulation of the patronage networks to the mulcting of estates; from the total of his debts at his death to the excellence of his dogs. Tyndall’s statement as to Leicester’s marriage with Lettice is on pp. 205-6; Hatton’s letters about the Queen’s dream of a marriage on p. 197.

  Calendar of Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury, Preserved at Hatfield House (published in the 1880s). This huge collection of the papers in William Cecil’s possession - the cogs that made the wheels that ran the Elizabethan state - includes, for example: in vol. I, a good deal about the Norfolk affair; in vol. II, letters written by Simier and Anjou/Alençon to Elizabeth; in vol. III, materials on the execution of Mary and on Netherlands affairs. However, perhaps its real point, in this particular context, is that it serves to show just how large a part Robert Dudley played in greasing those wheels - just how many, and how varied, bits of business involved him.

  For some particularly interesting documents, readers of this Calendar will sometimes find themselves referred back to ‘Murdin’, i.e. to A collection of State Papers relating to affairs from the years 1542-1570 left by William Cecil Lord Burghley, ed. William Murdin, 1759. Other sources refer one back to ‘Haynes’, i.e. to the collection under the same title edited by Samuel Haynes in 1740, which includes, for example, on pp. 361-2 Robert’s letter to Cecil after Amy’s death, on p. 444 one version of Cecil’s memo about Robert’s unsuitability as a husband as compared to the archduke, and (pp. 52ff.) a great deal of self-exculpatory correspondence from the accused Norfolk.

  Report on the Manuscripts of Lord de L’Isle and Dudley preserved at Penshurst Place, ed. C. L. Kingsford and William A. Shaw, 1925-36. Vol. II includes the inventory of the contents of Kenilworth. These Sidney papers, however, are chiefly notable for what light they can throw on Lettice, her later relations with Robert Sidney, and (vol. III, pp. 142-7) her efforts to overthrow the claims of the younger Robert Dudley.

  Report on the Pepys Manuscripts preserved at Magdalene College, Cambridge (1911). The first 175 pages of the volume are very largely concerned with Leicester and his affairs: letters to Leicester from Throckmorton and from Mary, Queen of Scots; a letter (pp. 178-9) concerning that plan to use cats and dogs in the Kenilworth fireworks; and (p. 180) one to Christopher Blount (‘Mr Kytt’). Only a note (p. 3) is made of the Blount letters of 1560, since these are reproduced elsewhere (see notes for Chapter 6, below); however, Blount’s evidence in the Appleyard inquiry is given on pp. 111-13.

  Some contemporary chroniclers

  Camden, William (1551-1623): antiquary and headmaster of Westminster School, whose Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha, the first part of which was published in 1615, provides one of the chief sources for contemporary opinion on Elizabeth’s reign (albeit always in the knowledge that, since Camden wrote in Latin, the English quotes with which we are familiar were penned by other hands).

  Clapham, John (1566-1619): author of Elizabeth of England; a historian and poet who (like Camden and Naunton - like so many of those who formed our image of the age!) was at one time a protégé of the Cecil family.

  Foxe, John (1516-87): Protestant martyrologist whose Actes and Monuments, more popularly known as the Book of Martyrs, was first printed in English in 1563. Appended to it was a tract from which come many of the old tales about Elizabeth’s time in the Tower: The Miraculous Preservation of the Lady Elizabeth, now Queen of England.

  Harington, Sir John (1560-1612): Elizabeth’s ‘witty godson’, whose letters and personal writings (as distinct from his satires and treatises) were collected together as Nugae Antiquae in the late eighteenth century.

  Hayward, Sir John (?1564-1627): author of Annals of the First Four Years of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth; also The Life and Raign of King Edward VI. Hayward was later imprisoned by Elizabeth for his support for Essex’s rebellion.

  Holinshed, Raphael (d. 1580?): historian famous for his Chronicles, a collection of pieces - some by other hands - which in some editions include, for example, Richard Mulcaster’s description of Elizabeth’s passage through the City on the day before her coronation, and which continued to be revised by others after his death.

  Naunton, Sir Robert (1553-1635): staunchly Protestant professional courtier who eventually rose to high office under James. Fragmenta Regalia, or Observations on Queen Elizabeth her Times and Favorites, published posthumously in 1641, was probably intended to provide an example to the Stuart monarchy.

  Speed, John (1552?-1629): most widely remembered now as a cartographer, Speed was also a member of the Society of Antiquaries and author (with help from Camden et al.) of The History of Great Britain ... with the Successions, Lives, Acts and Issues of the English Monarchs from Julius Caesar to . . . King James, published in 1611.

  Stow, John (1525-1605): London chronicler and antiquary patronized by Leicester. His Chronicles [in later editions, Annales] of England were published in 1580.

  Other Works particularly relevant for individual chapters

  Chapter 1

  The comparison of Tudors and Dudley to a tree and the ivy that twines around it comes from David Starkey’s Elizabeth: Apprenticeship (Chatto & Windus, 2000). Of course, anyone writing today on Elizabeth’s youth - a subject he revitalized - is indebted to Starkey for a great deal more than that. Apart from anything else, it was he who pricked the balloon of myth concerning the different sources on Elizabeth’s accession day. To the classic popular studies on the reign of Henry VIII (Alison Weir’s and Antonia Fraser’s; and of course Starkey’s own Six Wives, Chatto & Windus, 2003) one should add two biographies of Anne Boleyn: Eric Ives’s The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Blackwell, 2004) and Retha M. Warnicke’s revisionist work
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

  Besides the works of Derek Wilson, noted above, further information on the background of Robert’s family can be found in the recent The Sidneys of Penshurst and the Monarchy, 1500-1700 by Michael G. Brennan (Ashgate, 2006). I am grateful to Robin Harcourt Williams of Hatfield House for his help on ‘the oak story’.

  Chapter 2

  For the theory that Henry had Cushing’s Syndrome, see The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracies, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant by Robert Hutchinson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005).

  For the Dudley connection with Prince Edward, see the ‘biographical memoirs’ in the Literary Remains of Edward VI, vol. I, ed. J. G. Nichols, Roxburghe Club, 1823.

  The Queen’s Conjuror: The Life and Magic of Dr Dee is by Benjamin Woolley (HarperCollins, 2001).

  Chapter 3

  For the new trends in thinking about Edward’s reign I found particularly helpful Stephen Alford’s Kingship and Polity in the Reign of Edward VI (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and Intrigue and Treason: The Tudor Court, 1547-1558 by David Loades (Longman, 2004). For John Dudley’s role in particular, see Loades, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, 1504-1553 (Oxford University Press, 1996), especially pp. vii-viii for the growth of the ‘bad duke’ bogey; also B. L. Beer, Northumberland: The Political Career of John Dudley (Kent State University Press, 1973).

  Starkey’s interpretation of the Seymour affair quoted is found on pp. 76-7 of Elizabeth; see also Sheila Cavanagh’s article in Walker’s Dissing Elizabeth.

  Chapter 4

  Robert’s poem (from the Arundel Harington MS) is reprinted as an appendix in Haynes’s The White Bear.

  Simon Adams’s work on Robert’s early adulthood has corrected some important errors, notably the assumption that he was living wholly retired in the country - and thus presumably out of touch with affairs - for the last years of Mary’s reign: see Leicester and the Court, p. 160. By the same token David Starkey has done much to redraw the picture of an Elizabeth living simply retired. An analysis of Dee’s role under the Marian regime is to be found in Benjamin Woolley’s The Queen’s Conjuror.

  Chapter 5

  The Collected Works (pp. 53-5 and notes) not only gives accounts of but discusses the sources for different accounts of Elizabeth’s coronation. Susan Frye’s The Competition for Representation (Oxford University Press, 1993) is particularly interesting on the coding of the festivities. On the likelihood of dissolving a marriage, see Lawrence Stone’s The Road to Divorce (Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 301-5.

  Chapter 6

  The most recent analyses of Amy’s own letters, and her whereabouts, are to be found in Adams, Leicester and the Court, p. 150n, and Appendix I to the Disbursement Books.

  I am indebted to Faith Marshall-Harris for her opinion, as a coroner, on the evidence as to Amy’s death. On the theory that breast cancer could have caused it, see I. Aird, ‘The Death of Amy Robsart’, English Historical Review, lxxi (1956), pp. 69-79.

  The Victorian period was the great age of writing on Amy Dudley. George Adlard, whose Amye Robsart and the Earl of Leicester was printed in London in 1870, gives the Blount correspondence in full; the originals are in the Pepys Library in Magdalene College, Cambridge. Walter Rye’s The Murder of Amy Robsart: A Brief for the Prosecution (Norfolk, 1885) reprints, by way of appendices, the documents on Appleyard’s accusation. Among the substantial body of other writings, I found particularly helpful the article by Canon J. E. Jackson, ‘Amye Robsart’, Wilts. Archeological Magazine, xvii, 1898.

  I do have, however, in sourcing this chapter to add a big ‘NB’. The conventional - the invaluable! - source for the quotations from foreign ambassadors is the relevant Calendar. The version of the all-important letter from de Quadra I have used comes not from the CSP Spanish, however, but from the twelve-volume History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada published by James Anthony Froude between 1856 and 1870.

  No-one with the faintest sympathy or respect for Robert Dudley can take very much from Froude’s commentary. However, Froude did his own research in the archives at Simancas (writing evocatively of how he often found grains of sand still glittering on the pages - sand scattered when the letters were written, and untouched until that day), and his translation sometimes varies significantly from Hume’s in the Calendar. One phrase in particular (‘se ha hecho senor de los negocias y de la persona de la Reyna’ - ‘had made himself master of the business of the state, and of the person of the Queen’) is hardly recognizable in the Calendar version.

  To replace all quotations from the Calendar with the equivalents from Froude is not an option: he himself quotes only as and when he chooses. I am aware, moreover, that errors have been detected in his work: he made his own transcriptions, and worked at great speed. (Mind you, no less a person than J. E. Neale, in the article on Stafford cited under Chapter 14 below, pointed out that Hume in the Calendar could also be challenged; at least that his footnotes frequently make identifications ‘with a certainty that others cannot share’.) None the less, in this and the following two chapters (Chapters 6-8, after which the Spanish reports become less crucial for a time), the quotations I use are taken from his book: see esp. pp. 277-81. I prefer Froude’s version on aesthetic grounds if no other: they read far more naturally, to me.

  Wherever possible I have also referred back to the Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la historia de España, better known as Codoín, vols 87 and 89; however, these too are often frustrating, with some of the most relevant letters absent. De Quadra’s letter of 11 September 1560, for example, appears not in Codoín, but in Relations Politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre sous la règne de Philippe II, ed. M. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1883), vol. 2, pp. 529-33. I am indebted to Daniel Hahn for his help in reading it.

  Chapter 7

  On favourites in general, see Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, eds, Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: the Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age c.1450-1600 (Oxford University Press, 1991); Simon Adams, ‘Favourites and Factions’, in John Guy, ed., The Tudor Monarchy (Arnold, 1997); also J. H. Elliott and Laurence Brockliss, eds, The World of the Favourite, c.1550-1675 (Yale University Press, 1999). My picture of the relationship between other rulers and their favourites is drawn particularly from Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000); also Virginia Rounding’s Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power (Hutchinson, 2006); Ophelia Field’s The Favourite: Sarah Duchess of Marlborough (Hodder & Stoughton, 2002); and Maureen Waller’s Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole their Father’s Crown (Hodder & Stoughton, 2002). See also Stella Tillyard, A Royal Affair: George III and his Troublesome Siblings (Chatto & Windus, 2006), for Caroline Mathilde’s relationship with Johann Struensee.

  On ideas of monarchy, see John Guy’s essay on Tudor monarchy and its critiques in the anthology he edited, cited above. See also several other essays in the same volume: David Starkey, ‘Representation through Intimacy’; Patrick Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I’; Stephen Alford, ‘Reassessing William Cecil in the 1560s’.

  On Elizabeth’s relationships, see Susan Doran’s article, ‘Why Did Elizabeth Not Marry?’, in Walker, ed., Dissing Elizabeth; her own Monarchy and Matrimony is a fuller exploration of the practical difficulties that beset any choice of husband Elizabeth might make, and of Doran’s belief that, had her advisers all united to promote any one suitor, Elizabeth might have ceased to resist. See also Alan Haynes, Sex in Elizabethan England (Sutton, 1997), and Anne Laurence, Women in England 1500-1760 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994). For contemporary opinions as to the nature of Elizabeth’s sexual relationships with Robert and others, see Chamberlin, Private Character, pp. 276-81.

  For courtly love, see C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1936) and Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World (We
idenfeld & Nicolson, 1962); also the more recent works by Roger Boase, The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love (Manchester University Press, 1977), and Bernard O’Donoughue, The Courtly Love Tradition (Manchester University Press, 1982).

  For references on the Arthur Dudley story, see the section below on Chapter 19, Afterword and Appendices.

  Chapter 8

  There has obviously accrued an enormous literature on Mary Queen of Scots. Notable recent additions, however, are: Jane Dunn’s Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens (HarperCollins, 2003); John Guy’s My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (Fourth Estate, 2004); Alison Weir’s Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley (Jonathan Cape, 2003).

  The Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Halhill were reprinted by the Folio Society in 1969.

  Chapter 9

  For sources for this chapter, see the Calendars noted under ‘General’ above, especially CSP Scottish. For Norfolk himself, see Neville Williams’s Thomas Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk (Barrie & Rockliff, 1964); also the sections on the Howards in David Starkey, ed., Rivals in Power: Lives and Letters of the Great Tudor Dynasties (Macmillan, 1990).