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

by Anna Whitelock

  28 BL Add. MS 48023, fol. 353v; ‘A Journal of Matters of State’.

  29 TNA SP 63/2 fol. 82r.

  30 See William Vaughan, Naturall and Artificial Directions for Health (London 1626), p. 64.

  31 See T. Laquer, ‘Orgasm, Generation and the Politics of Reproductive Biology’, Representations, 14 (1986), pp. 1–41. See P. Crawford, ‘Sexual Knowledge in England, 1500–1750’ in Roy Porter and M. Teich (eds), Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: The History of Attitudes to Sexuality (Cambridge, 1994), p. 91. On general medical beliefs about the female body in the early modern period, see Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge, 1980). See also Peter Stallybrass, ‘Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed’, in Margaret Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan and Nancy Vickers, eds, Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 1986), pp. 123–42.

  32 See Cogan, The Haven of Health, pp. 247–8.

  33 F. Chamberlin, Elizabeth and Leycester (New York, 1939), p. 93.

  34 Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke (ed.), Miscellaneous State Papers, from 1501 to 1726, 2 vols (London, 1778), vol. I, pp. 121–3.

  35 See David Gaimster, ‘London’s Tudor Palaces Revisited’, London Archaeologist, 8, no. 5 (1997), pp. 122–6.

  36 BL Add. MS 35830, fol. 66 in P. Forbes, Public Transactions, pp. 482–8.

  37 Hardwicke (ed.), Miscellaneous State Papers, vol. I, p. 167; BL Add. MS 35830, fol. 66.

  38 TNA SP 70/21 fol. 137v; CSP Foreign, 1560–1, p. 475.

  39 BL Cotton MS Nero B III, fol. 155r; CSP Foreign, 1560–1, p. 450.

  40 CSP Foreign, 1560–1, pp. 509–10.

  41 CSP Foreign, 1561–2, pp. 244, 303–4, 309, 311, 329, 344, 356, 361.

  Chapter 8: Carnal Copulation

  1 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 313.

  2 CP 154/85 printed in Haynes, Burghley State Papers, I, p. 420.

  3 CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 178–80, and Colección de Documentos, vol. 87, pp. 312–16.

  4 See Kenneth Bartlett, ‘Papal Policy and the English Crown 1563–1565: The Bertano Correspondence’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992), pp. 643–59.

  5 CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 178–9.

  6 Ibid., p. 194.

  7 An anonymous mid-Tudor chronicle; BL Add. MS 48023, fol. 353.

  8 TNA SP 12/16 fols. 49–50, 59–68.

  9 Lettenhove, Relations Politiques, II, p. 557. Norman L. Jones, ‘Defining Superstitions: Treasonous Catholics and the Act against Witchcraft of 1563’, in Charles Carlton et al., eds, State, Sovereigns and Society in Early Modern England: Essays in Honour of A. J. Slavin (New York, 1998), pp. 187–203.

  10 CSP Dom Addenda, 1547–65, pp. 509–10.

  11 TNA SP 70/26 fols 61–3.

  12 CSP Foreign, 1561–2, pp. 93–5, 103–5.

  13 AGS E 815 fol. 86 trans. in CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 208–9.

  14 CSP Foreign, 1561–2, pp. 418–19.

  15 CSP Foreign, 1560–1, p. 10.

  16 W. L. Rutton, ‘Lady Katherine Grey and Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford’, English Historical Review, vol. 13 (April 1898), pp. 302–7. See also Leanda de Lisle, The Sisters who would be Queen: The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey (London, 2008).

  17 BL Add. MS 37749, fols 50–9; BL Add. MS 14291, fol. 157.

  18 BL Harleian MS 6286, pp. 35, 53, 70, 77, 81, 89; BL Add. MS 37749, fols 40, 57, 73, 76.

  19 BL Add. MS 37749, fol. 59.

  20 BL Harleian MS 6286, fol. 37.

  21 Lettenhove, Relations Politiques, vol. II, p. 608; Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, I, pp. 68–9.

  22 Haynes, Burghley State Papers, I, pp. 369–70.

  23 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 214.

  24 François had been succeeded by his brother Charles and his mother Catherine de Medici, the dominating personality in government, now had no interest in the promotion of her widowed daughter-in-law’s claims. S. Adams, ‘The Lauderdale Papers 1561–70: the Maitland of Lethington State Papers and the Leicester Correspondence’, Scottish Historical Review 67 (1988), pp. 28–55.

  25 CSP Scot, 1547–63, p. 559.

  26 Ibid., p. 566.

  27 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 214.

  28 See S. Adams, ‘The Lauderdale Papers 1561–1570’, pp. 28–55.

  29 J. H. Pollen, (ed.) ‘Lethington’s Account of Negotiations with Elizabeth in September and October 1565’, Scottish History Society, vol. 43 (1904), pp. 38–45.

  30 Pollen (ed.), ‘Lethington’s Account of Negotiations with Elizabeth’, p. 39.

  31 CSP Scot, 1547–63, p. 559.

  32 Diary of Henry Machyn, pp. 267–8.

  33 Elizabeth drafted letters patent calling for an investigation into the marriage, see TNA SP 12/21/76–7.

  34 CSP Foreign, 1561–2, p. 330.

  35 Ibid., pp. 360–1.

  36 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 220.

  37 Ibid.

  Chapter 9: Arcana Imperii

  1 Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (New York, 1998), p. 203.

  2 See Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, Gorboduc or The Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex (Menston, 1968); Nichols (ed.), The Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 275; see N. Jones and P. W. White, ‘Gorboduc and Royal Marriages’, in English Literary Renaissance, vol. 26 (1971), pp. 3–16. See Henry James and Greg Walker, ‘The Politics of Gorboduc’, The English Historical Review 110 (February, 1995), pp. 109–21.

  3 Haynes, Burghley State Papers, p. 368.

  4 CSP Foreign, 1561–2, pp. 122, 129.

  5 Anglia Legaten N. Gyldenstenstiernas Bref. Till Kongl. Maj. 1561–2, p. 18, cited in Chamberlin, Private Character of Queen Elizabeth, p. 264.

  6 BL Add. MS 48018, fol. 284v; BL Add. MS 35830, fol. 14v; Haynes, Burghley State Papers, pp. 3, 70–2; CSP Foreign, 1561–2, pp. 159, 293, 300, 327, and CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 211–215.

  7 TNA SP 70/32 fol. 62; TNA SP 70/33 fol. 7v; BL Add. MS 48023, fols 357v–8. BL Add. MS 48018, fol. 284v; BL Add. MS 35830, fol. 14v; CSP Foreign, 1561–2, pp. 158–91, 292–3; and CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 211–12, 212–15.

  8 BL Add. MS 48023, fol. 258.

  9 Ibid., fol. 359v.

  10 A. Teulet, Relations Politiques de la France et de l’Espagne avec l’Ecosse au XVIie Siècle, 3 vols (Paris, 1862), ii, pp. 175–6; AGS 815, fol. 132, partially trans. in CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 233.

  11 TNA SP 70/27 fol. 66; CSP Foreign, 1561–2, p. 424.

  12 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 225.

  13 AGS E 815, fols 160, 222, translated in CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 241.

  14 CSP Foreign, 1562, pp. 68, 83 and CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 244.

  15 CSP Foreign, 1562, pp. 68–9.

  16 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 244.

  17 AGS E 815, fols 183, 218, 224, trans. in CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 234, 241–2, 244–5, 247–9.

  18 CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 111–15.

  19 CSP Rome, 1558–71, p. 105.

  20 TNA SP 70/39 fol. 119; CSP Foreign, 1562, p. 173; CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 217–24.

  21 TNA SP 70/39 fols 118r–119, 175–6; BL Add MS 48023, fol. 366r; CSP Foreign, 1562, pp. 216–17.

  22 CSP Foreign, 1562, pp. 214–17.

  23 APC, 1558–70, p. 123; Lettenhove, Relations Politiques, III, p. 108. The men involved were interrogated, TNA SP 70/40 fols 62–88, fol. 124.

  24 CSP Rome, 1558–71, p. 105.

  Chapter 10: Smallpox

  1 See Simon Thurley, Hampton Court, A Social and Architectural History (London, 2003).

  2 ‘Diary of the Journey of the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania’, pp. 1–67; Paul Hentzner’s Travels in England, pp. 56–7.

  3 The Diary of Baron Waldstein, p. 152.

  4 CSP Scot, 1547–63, pp. 659–60.

  5 F. E. Halliday, ‘Queen Elizabeth I and Doctor Burcot’, History Today, 5 (1955), pp. 542–5.

  6 The regiment of life: wherunto is added a treatise of the pestilence, with the boke of children / newly corrected and enlarged by T. Phayre, ed.
and trans. by Jehan Goeurot (London, 1550).

  7 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 262.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Ibid., p. 263.

  10 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 263.

  11 Ibid., p. 262.

  12 The physician John of Gaddesden, author of the earliest English treatise on medicine, the Rosa Anglica, had described this treatment in the early fourteenth century. This was to ‘let a red cloth be taken, and the patient be wrapped in it completely, as I did with the son of the most noble King of England [Edward II] when he suffered those diseases. I made everything about his bed red, and it is a good cure, and I cured him in the end without marks of smallpox.’ John of Gaddesden, Rosa Anglica, ed. and trans. Winifred Wulff (London, 1929).

  13 Chamberlin, The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth, p. 52.

  14 TNA SP 12/159 fol. 1, printed in ‘Sir Henry Sidney’s “Memoir” to Sir Francis Walsingham, 1 March 1583’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3 (1855), pp. 33–52.

  15 See M. Brennan, The Sidneys of Penshurst and the Monarchy, 1500–1700 (Aldershot, 2006).

  16 Quoted in Simon Adams, ‘Queen Elizabeth’s eyes at Court: the Earl of Leicester’, in Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics (Manchester, 2002), p. 137.

  17 See Halliday, ‘Queen Elizabeth I and Doctor Burcot’, p. 545.

  18 BL Harleian MS 787, fol. 16.

  19 Elizabeth I: Collected Works, pp. 139–41.

  20 See Edward Hawkins, Augustus W. Franks and Herbert A. Grueber, Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland to the death of George II, 2 vols (London, 1885), vol. I, p. 116, no. 48. Hawkins dates the medal to 1572. Starkey and Doran in the catalogue date it as 1562, after Elizabeth’s first and most significant bout of smallpox, which seems most likely. See Susan Doran (ed.), Elizabeth: The Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum (London, 2003), p. 85; W. K. Clay (ed.), Liturgies and Occasional Forms of Prayer set forth in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge, 1847), pp. 516–18.

  21 CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 262–3; F. Chamberlin, The Sayings of Elizabeth (New York, 1923), pp. 52, 54.

  22 TNA C 47/3/38.

  23 P. Croft and K. Hearn, ‘Only Matrimony maketh children to be certain … Two Elizabethan pregnancy portraits’, British Art Journal 3 (2002), pp. 18–24.

  24 TNA C 47/3/38.

  25 See E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford, 1923), vol. I, p. 19.

  26 Janet Arnold, Lost from Her Majesties Back, Costume Society Extra Series 7 (Wisbech, 1980), p. 36; John Stowe, Three fifteenth-century chronicles: with historical memoranda by John Stowe, the antiquary, and contemporary notes of occurrences written by him in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. James Gairdner, Camden Society, third series, (London, 1880), pp. 123–5.

  27 Stowe, Three fifteenth-century chronicles, p. 127.

  28 BL Add. MS 48023, fol. 369.

  29 Stowe, Three fifteenth-century chronicles, pp. 123–5.

  Chapter 11: Devouring Lions

  1 Pole had been in the Fleet in April 1561 for being connected to Sir Edward Waldegrave and Sir Thomas Wharton and Hastings. He had not remained in the Fleet for very long and soon began plotting again.

  2 Arthur Pole had a claim to the throne as a direct descendant of Edward IV’s brother the Duke of Guise. Fortescue was a distant relative of the Queen through her mother’s side. Whilst initially the men had plotted to promote Arthur’s claim to the throne, their plan changed to support Mary Stuart. TNA KB 8/40; CSP Span, 1558–62, p. 262.

  3 ‘Special oyer and terminal roll and file Principal Defendants and Charges: Arthur Pole and others, high treason, conspiring to depose the Queen and to proclaim Mary Queen of Scots,’ TNA KB 8/40, BL Hardwicke papers 35831, fol. 87.

  4 F. Chamberlin, The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth, p. 51; Kristen Post Walton, ‘The Plot of the Devouring Lions: The “Divelish Conspiracy” of Arthur Pole and the Parliament of 1563’ (unpublished essay); TNA KB 8/40; CSP Span, 1558–62, pp. 292–3.

  5 CSP Foreign, 1563, p. 32.

  6 F. Chamberlin, The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth, p. 51; TNA KB 8/40; CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 259–60.

  7 TNA KB 8/40.

  8 J. H. M. Salmon, Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1975); Nicola M. Sutherland, The Massacre of St Bartholomew and the European Conflict, 1559–1572 (London, 1973); Nicola M. Sutherland, The Huguenot Struggle for Recognition (New Haven, Conn., 1980).

  9 W. T. MacCaffrey, ‘The Newhaven expedition, 1562–1563’, Historical Journal, 40 (1997), pp. 1–2.

  10 Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, vol. I, p. 127.

  11 AGS E 816, fol. 43, trans. in CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 269.

  12 BL Cotton MS Titus F I, fol. 59.

  13 Ibid., fols 59–60v, 65–75v.

  14 Ibid., fols 61–4, printed in G. E. Corrie (ed.), A Catechism by Alexander Nowell, Parker Society (Cambridge, 1853), pp. 223–9.

  15 BL Harleian MS 5176, fols 89–92; Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments, vol. I, p. 84. See J. E. Neale, ‘Parliament and the Succession Question in 1562/3 and 1566’, English Historical Review, Jan–Oct (1921), pp. 497–519, and Mortimer Levine, ‘A “Letter” on the Elizabethan Succession Question, 1566’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, 19 (1995), pp. 13–38.

  16 Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, I, p. 121.

  17 TNA SP 12/28 fols 68r–69v. CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 316–17.

  18 Nugae Antiquae, III, pp. 186–7.

  19 TNA SP 12/27/35; Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments, I, pp. 90–3.

  20 TNA SP 12/27/36; Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments, I, pp. 94–5.

  21 TNA SP 12/27/85 for clerk’s copy with marginal notes by Cecil. See also BL Add. MS 32379.

  22 BL Add. MS 32379, fols 17–20.

  23 CSP Span, 1558–67, pp. 295–8.

  24 5 Eliz I c.1 Statutes IV, pp. 402–5.

  25 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 322; John Bruce and T. T. Perowne, eds, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury 1535–1575, Parker Society (Cambridge, 1853), pp. 173–5.

  26 See Kristen Post Walton, Catholic Queen, Protestant Patriarchy. Mary Queen of Scots and the Politics of Gender and Religion (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 51; ‘Sir William Cecil to Sir Thomas Smith, 27 February 1563’, in Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, vol. 1, p. 127; TNA KB8/40; Kristen Post Walton, ‘The Plot of the Devouring Lions’.

  27 5 Eliz I c.16 in Statutes IV, pp. 446–7.

  28 5 Eliz I c.15 in Statutes IV, pp. 445–6.

  29 Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 300.

  30 J. H. Baker (ed.), Reports from the Lost Notebooks of Sir James Dyer, 2 vols (London, 1994), vol. I, pp. 81–2; BLO Tanner MS 84, fols 191, 196v.

  31 CSP Rome, 1558–71, p. 51; BL Add. MS 35830, fol. 185; Levine, The Early Elizabethan Succession Question, p. 14; TNA SP 12/21 fols 76–7.

  32 CSP Scot, 1547–63, p. 684.

  33 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 314.

  34 CSP Foreign, 1563, p. 154. CSP Scot, 1547–63, pp. 684–6.

  35 BL Harleian MS 5176 fol. 97; Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, I, pp. 126–7.

  36 CSP Foreign, 1563, pp. 439, 443, 453, 473; BL Add. MS 35831, fols 145v–146; TNA SP 70/59/846 fol. 48v.

  37 Stowe, Three fifteenth-century chronicles, p. 122; Nichols (ed.), The Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 310.

  38 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 346.

  39 Stowe, Three fifteenth-century chronicles, p. 127.

  Chapter 12: Ménage à Trois

  1 CSP Scot, 1547–1563, p. 666.

  2 BL Lansdowne MS 102, fol. 18r; TNA SP 52/8 nos. 3, 6, 7, 9, 10.

  3 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 338.

  4 BL Cotton MS Julius F VI, fol. 125 and CSP Foreign, 1563, p. 510.

  5 CSP Scot, 1563–9, pp. 27, 31–3.

  6 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 313.

  7 CSP Scot, 1563–9, pp. 56–7; pp. 19–20.

  8 Ibid., pp. 43–4, 56–7.

&n
bsp; 9 Ibid., p. 44.

  10 BL Cotton Ms Julius F VI, fol. 126.

  11 See Kimberly Schutte, A Biography of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox (New York, 2002); Caroline Bingham, Darnley: a life of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Consort of Mary Queen of Scots (London, 1995).

  12 CSP Foreign, 1562, pp. 14, 23.

  13 CSP Span, 1558–67, p.176; CSP Foreign, 1562, pp. 12–15; see Simon Adams, ‘The Release of Lord Darnley and the Failure of the Amity’, in Mary Stewart: Queen in Three Kingdoms, ed. Michael Lynch (Oxford, 1988), pp. 123–53.

  14 CSP Foreign, 1563, pp. 463–4.

  15 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 339.

  16 G. Donaldson (ed.), The Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Halhill (London, 1969), p. 36.

  Chapter 13: Visitor to the Bedchamber

  1 Quoted in Roy C. Strong, Holbein and Henry VIII (London, 1967), p. 35.

  2 Memoirs of Melville, p. 36.

  3 ‘Diary of the Journey of the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania’, p. 25; Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth, p. 320.

  4 Memoirs of Melville, p. 37.

  5 Ibid.

  6 See Garrett, The Marian Exiles: A study in the origins of Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 295–6.

  7 André Hurault, Sieur de Maisse, A Journal of All that was Accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse, Ambassador in England from King Henri IV to Queen Elizabeth Anno Domini 1597, trans. and ed. G. B. Harrison and R. A. Jones (London, 1931), p. 95; Von Klarwill, Queen Elizabeth, pp. 228, 96.

  8 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 382.

  9 Memoirs of Melville, p. 36.

  10 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 313; Memoirs of Melville, p. 35.

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

  12 CSP Scot, 1563–9, p. 81.

  13 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 424.

  14 Memoirs of Melville, p. 40.

  15 Ibid., p. 42.

  16 TNA SP 52/9 no. 48.

  Chapter 14: Sour and Noisome

  1 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 401; Ian Dunlop, Palaces & Progresses of Elizabeth I (London, 1962).

  2 CSP Span, 1558–67, p. 398.

  3 BL Lansdowne MS 102, fol. 105r; Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and her Times, I, p. 181.

  4 CSP Scot, 1563–9, p. 110.

  5 Ibid., p. 111.