by Helen Castor
Now, though, she was tired. Her eyesight and her memory were beginning to fail. She was troubled by arthritis in her arm and pain in her side, and her bouts of depression grew more sustained and more debilitating. The previous year, before her sixty-ninth birthday, John Harington had observed that ‘thanks to God she is in good disposition of body and sound health, but that age itself is a sickness’.33 As the months passed, sickness too began at last to loosen the queen’s hold on life. By the beginning of March 1603 she barely slept or ate, spending her days and nights lying silently on cushions on the floor of her chamber, staring at nothing. By the time she could be persuaded into bed, the end was close. Elizabeth died in the darkness of the early morning on 24 March 1603.
When light came, her Privy Council proclaimed the accession of James VI of Scotland, now James I of England, the heir she had never acknowledged. And yet, one Londoner noted in his diary, there was ‘no tumult, no contradiction, no disorder in the city; every man went about his business, as readily, as peaceably, as securely, as though there had been no change, nor any news ever heard of competitors’.34 Elizabeth’s final victory was complete.
Illustrations
1. Portrait of Elizabeth, probably painted by the Dutch artist William Scrots for Henry VIII c.1546. The picture shows thirteen-year-old Elizabeth’s striking likeness to her father, as well as her mother’s dark eyes, and already gives a sense of the enigmatic self-possession that was to be the defining feature of her public image.
2. Mother-of-pearl locket ring owned by Elizabeth as queen, c.1575. When closed, the ring shows the monogram ER, for Elizabeth Regina, in table-cut diamonds. Hidden inside are portraits of Elizabeth herself and Anne Boleyn, as a private commemoration of the mother whose name she never spoke.
3. Thomas Seymour, maternal uncle of the boy-king Edward VI, who became Elizabeth’s stepfather when he married Henry VIII’s widow Katherine Parr in 1547. His flirtation with Elizabeth, and hopes of marrying her after Katherine’s death, left her in grave political danger when he was arrested and executed for treason in 1549.
4. Letter written by Elizabeth on 17 March 1554 begging for an audience with her sister, Queen Mary, who had ordered that she be imprisoned in the Tower after Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion. Elizabeth scored through the remaining space to prevent any forged additions, before adding her distinctive signature with the words, ‘Your Highness’s most faithful subject that hath been from the beginning, and will be to my end.’
5. William Cecil, 1560s. For forty years, from the first day of Elizabeth’s reign until he died at the age of seventy-seven, Cecil was her most trusted, hardworking and meticulous minister. ‘Serve God by serving of the queen’, he told his son just before his death.
6. Late-sixteenth-century copy of Elizabeth’s coronation portrait. She wears the same cloth-of-gold robes as Mary five years earlier, remodelled for her use. As it had for Mary, her coronation posed two challenges: what it meant to crown the new phenomenon of a queen regnant, rather than a queen consort; and what form the ceremony should take, given the new regime’s religious differences from the one that preceded it.
7. Mary, Queen of Scots, during her long imprisonment in England. Mary’s life seemed a reverse image of Elizabeth’s: Catholic rather than Protestant, undisputed Queen of Scotland since she was an infant, Mary’s rash marriages and lack of judgement led to her deposition – leaving Elizabeth with the intractable dilemma of what to do with her cousin and rival.
8. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, c.1575, the year he made his final attempt to persuade Elizabeth to marry him, with a lavish nineteen-day entertainment at Kenilworth Castle. Much though Elizabeth adored him, and despite all the scandalous rumours about their relationship, it was never a serious possibility that the queen would compromise her authority by becoming a wife bound in marital obedience to one of her own subjects.
9. Francis Walsingham, who succeeded William Cecil as the queen’s principal secretary in 1573. Elizabeth was not personally fond of Walsingham, but she recognized his talents, and the value of the network of spies he developed (and paid for) to protect her.
10. The ‘Rainbow Portrait’, painted when Elizabeth was in her late sixties. She appears here as ageless Gloriana, an icon armoured with symbols: a serpent for wisdom, a rainbow for peace and prosperity, eyes and ears to show that she sees and hears all, and knotted pearls to emphasize the chaste power of the Virgin Queen.
Notes
Introduction: The Lady Elizabeth
1. For the details of Anne Boleyn’s death, see Italian, French and Imperial accounts printed in A. Hamy, Entrevue de François Premier avec Henry VIII à Boulogne-sur-Mer en 1532: intervention de la France dans l’affaire du divorce, d’après un grand nombre de documents inédits (Paris: L. Gougy, 1898), pp. ccccxxxi–viii; W. Thomas, ed. J. A. Froude, The Pilgrim: A Dialogue on the Life and Actions of King Henry the Eighth (London: Parker, Son and Bourn, 1861), pp. 116–17.
2. J. Gairdner (ed.), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vol. 6 (1533) (London: HMSO, 1882), p. 470.
3. H. Ellis (ed.), Original Letters, Illustrative of English History, 2nd series, vol. 2 (London: Harding and Lepard, 1827), p. 79.
4. 1 Corinthians 11:3.
5. L. S. Marcus, J. Mueller and M. B. Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 9.
6. M. A. S. Hume (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), vol. 1 (1558–67) (London: HMSO, 1892), p. 514.
1. MUCH SUSPECTED
1. Letter from Thomas Wriothesley, 17 December 1539, in T. Hearne (ed.), Sylloge Epistolarum (Oxford: E Theatro Sheldoniano, 1716), pp. 150–51.
2. S. Haynes (ed.), A Collection of State Papers … left by William Cecil, Lord Burghley (London: W. Bowyer, 1740), p. 99.
3. Haynes, Collection of State Papers, pp. 100-01.
4. Ibid., p. 70.
5. Ibid., pp. 70–71, 89.
6. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 24.
7. Ibid., p. 32.
8. E. Dent, Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley (London: John Murray, 1877), p. 193.
9. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 16.
10. W. Camden, Annales or, the History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth, Late Queen of England (London: B. Fisher, 1635), Introduction.
11. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 41–2.
12. Letter from Simon Renard to the Emperor Charles V, 28 November 1553, in R. Tyler (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain, vol. 11 (1553) (London: HMSO, 1916), p. 393.
13. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 32.
14. R. Tyler (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain, vol. 12 (1554) (London: HMSO, 1949), p. 218.
15. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 46.
2. ‘TIME HATH BROUGHT ME HITHER’
1. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 54–5.
2. G. Warkentin (ed.), The Queen’s Majesty’s Passage and Related Documents (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004), p. 85.
3. D. Starkey, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000), p. 258.
4. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 51.
5. Report of Giovanni Michieli, 13 May 1557, in R. Brown (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Venice, vol. 6, part 2 (1555–8) (London: HMSO, 1877), p. 1056.
6. P. H. Hughes and J. L. Larkin (eds), Tudor Royal Proclamations, vol. 2 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969), p. 99.
7. Starkey, Elizabeth, p. 278.
8. D. Laing (ed.), The Works of John Knox, 6 vols (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1846–64), vol. 4, p. 373.
9. Starkey, Elizabeth, p. 286.
10. Ibid., p. 285.
11. Ibid., p. 289.
12. J. Bruce and T. T. Perowne (eds), Correspondence of Matthew
Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853), p. 173.
13. Starkey, Elizabeth, p. 289.
14. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 139.
15. Ibid., p. 142.
16. P. Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke (ed.), Miscellaneous State Papers from 1501 to 1726, vol. 1 (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1778), p. 167.
17. J. Aylmer, An Harborowe for Faithful and True Subjects against the late blown Blast, concerning the Government of Women (London: John Day, 1559), B2v.
18. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 57–8.
19. Hume (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), vol. 1, p. 8.
20. J. Nichols (ed.), The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I, 3 vols (London: J. Nichols and Son, 1823), vol. 1, p. 104.
21. Hume (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), vol. 1, p. 8.
22. Ibid., p. 28.
23. Abstract of letter from Elizabeth to Charles’s father, the Emperor Ferdinand, 5 June 1559, in J. Stevenson (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Foreign: Elizabeth, vol. 1 (1558–9) (London: HMSO, 1863), p. 299.
24. Hume (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), vol. 1, p. 74.
25. A. Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen’s Court (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 31.
26. Hume (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), vol. 1, p. 57.
27. Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, p. 37.
28. Hume (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), vol. 1, p. 531.
29. Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, p. 88.
30. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 117.
31. Ibid., p. 134.
32. G. R. Elton (ed.), The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 426.
3. CONTINUE HER DELAYS
1. Reported by the Scots ambassador, Sir James Melville, in 1564, in J. Melville, ed. T. Thomson, Memoirs of His Own Life (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1827), p. 124; and see F. Chamberlin, The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth (New York: John Lane, 1922), pp. 41–76, for contemporary references to Elizabeth’s physical and psychological health.
2. Katherine Knollys may have been Elizabeth’s half-sister as well as her maternal cousin. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary, who had been the mistress of Henry VIII for several years in the early 1520s. It is therefore possible that Katherine was the daughter of the king rather than Mary’s husband William Carey. See S. Varlow, ‘Knollys, Katherine, Lady Knollys (c.1523–1569)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006; online edn Jan. 2009).
3. S. Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 134, 148.
4. H. Nicolas, The Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton, K.G. (London: Richard Bentley, 1847), p. 26.
5. N. Williams, Elizabeth I, Queen of England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), p. 184.
6. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 121.
7. J. Guy, ‘My Heart Is My Own’: The Life of Mary, Queen of Scots (London: Fourth Estate, 2004), p. 469.
8. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 71–2.
9. Guy, Mary, Queen of Scots, p. 462.
10. Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle, p. 240.
11. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 131.
12. Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle, p. 250.
13. The Statutes of the Realm (London: Record Commission, 1819), vol. 4, part 1, p. 526.
14. Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, p. 146.
15. Letter with accompanying memo on ‘The safety of our queen and realm, if God will’, sent by the Bishop of London to Cecil, 5 September 1572, in T. Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and Her Times: A Series of Original Letters, 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1838), vol. 1, p. 439.
16. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 96.
17. Ibid., p. 170.
18. Nichols (ed.), Progresses and Public Processions, vol. 1, p. 514.
19. For these nicknames see Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 239, 244.
20. Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. The Marquis of Salisbury, vol. 2 (London: HMSO, 1888), p. 265.
21. L. E. Berry (ed.), John Stubbs’s ‘Gaping Gulf’ with Letters and Other Relevant Documents (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968), pp. 3–4.
22. Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, p. 174.
23. W. Allen, An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland (Antwerp: A. Coninncx, 1588), p. xix.
24. J. Childs, God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England (London: The Bodley Head, 2014), pp. 62–3.
25. J. Spedding, The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861), p. 178.
26. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 179.
27. Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle, pp. 230, 258.
28. Ibid., p. 261.
29. Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and Her Times, vol. 2, pp. 108–9.
30. M. A. S. Hume (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), vol. 3 (1580–6) (London: HMSO, 1896), p. 226.
31. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 302–3.
32. Hume (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), vol. 3 (1580–6), p. 99.
33. C. Haigh, Elizabeth I (London: Pearson Education, 3rd edn, 2001), p. 160.
34. Guy, Mary, Queen of Scots, pp. 474–6.
35. Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle, p. 241.
36. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 199–200.
37. M. A. S. Hume (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas), vol. 4 (1587–1603) (London: HMSO, 1899), p. 27.
38. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 196–7.
4. SEMPER EADEM
1. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 269.
2. Ibid., p. 277.
3. Ibid., pp. 282–3.
4. S. Alford, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p. 248.
5. F. Bacon, Considerations touching a Warre with Spaine (London: 1629), p. 40.
6. S. C. Lomas and A. B. Hinds (eds), Calendar of State Papers, Foreign: Elizabeth, vol. 21 part 3, April–Dec. 1587 (London: HMSO, 1929), p. 186.
7. Williams, Elizabeth I, p. 290.
8. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 326.
9. Ibid., p. 326.
10. ‘Flavit Jehovah et Dissipati Sunt’: J. Guy, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (London: Viking, 2016), p. 117.
11. Aylmer, An Harborowe for Faithful and True Subjects, B2v, B3.
12. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 424.
13. The phrase, from Adam Blackwood’s Martyre de la royne d’Escosse of 1587, is ‘haquenée d’Angleterre’, literally a horse kept for hire, hence prostitute: A. S. Wilkinson, Mary, Queen of Scots and French Public Opinion, 1542–1600 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 144.
14. J. E. Phillips, Images of a Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth-Century Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), pp. 162, 164.
15. Guy, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years, p. 21.
16. E. Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 250.
17. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 283.
18. Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, p. 252.
19. ‘Journey through England and Scotland made by Lupold von Wedel in the years 1584 and 1585’, in G. von Bülow (ed.), Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, new series vol. 9 (London: 1895), p. 265.
20. Williams, Elizab
eth I, p. 316.
21. ‘Journey through England and Scotland’, p. 257.
22. P. Wentworth, A Pithie Exhortation to her Maiestie for Establishing her Successor to the Crowne (Edinburgh: R. Waldegrave, 1598), p. 100.
23. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, p. 296.
24. Guy, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years, p. 303.
25. Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle, p. 185.
26. Guy, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years, p. 17.
27. Ibid., p. 338.
28. J. Clapham, ed. E. P. Read and C. Read, Elizabeth of England: Certain Observations Concerning the Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth by John Clapham (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951), p. 88.
29. N. E. McClure (ed.), The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1930), pp. 90–91.
30. Marcus, Mueller and Rose (eds), Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 339–40.
31. Ibid., p. 339.
32. Ibid., p. 348.
33. J. Harington, ed. C. R. Markham, A Tract on the Succession to the Crown (London: J. B. Nichols and Sons, 1880), p. 51.
34. J. Bruce (ed.), Diary of John Manningham (London: J. B. Nichols and Sons, 1868), p. 147.
Further Reading
The literature on Elizabeth and her reign is vast. What follows can only be a personal selection, as a starting point for further exploration. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (http:www.oxforddnb.com) is a goldmine for this period. Its entry on Elizabeth by Patrick Collinson is longer than this book, and combines thematic assessment with a narrative full of pithy insight. Biographies of every other English and Scottish person mentioned in these pages can also be found there, and networks of kin and influence traced between them.