by John Guy
9 E 351/542–3. See also BL, Harleian MSS 1641–2. There is much more in the enrolled accounts than is apparent from Chambers, IV, pp. 77–116, which is concerned almost exclusively with performances of plays and entertainments. The itinerary and related data in M. H. Cole, The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony (Amherst, MA, 1999), pp. 180–235, are chiefly derived from Chambers and flawed in several respects. See my review in Albion, 33 (2001), pp. 641–2.
Introduction: A Virgin Queen
1 Letters of the Kings of England, ed. J. O. Halliwell, 2 vols. (London, 1848), I, pp. 297–320; J. Guy, A Daughter’s Love: Thomas and Margaret More (London, 2008), pp. 219–64.
2 J. Guy, The Children of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2013), p. 76.
3 G. R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 176–7.
4 Records of the Reformation: The Divorce, 1527–1533, ed. N. Pocock, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1870), II, p. 386.
5 M. Levine, Tudor Dynastic Problems, 1460–1571 (London, 1973), p. 74.
6 Foedera, XV, pp. 112–14.
7 Foedera, XV, pp. 110–17; ‘The State of England AD 1600 by Thomas Wilson’, ed. F. J. Fisher, Camden Society, 3rd Series, 52 (1936), pp. 8–9.
8 E. W. Ives, Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery (Oxford, 2009), pp. 137–68.
9 Inner Temple, London, Petyt MS 538, vol. 47, fo. 317.
10 G. Redworth, ‘“Matters Impertinent to Women”: Male and Female Monarchy under Philip and Mary’, EHR, 112 (1997), pp. 597–613.
11 J. M. Richards, ‘Mary Tudor as “Sole Queen”? Gendering Tudor Monarchy’, HJ, 40 (1997), pp. 895–924.
12 ‘The Count of Feria’s Despatch to Philip II of 14 November 1558’, ed. M. J. Rodríguez-Salgado and S. Adams, Camden Society, 4th Series, 29 (1984), p. 331.
13 C. Jordan, ‘Women’s Rule in Sixteenth-Century British Political Thought’, RQ, 40 (1987), pp. 421–51; P. Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library of Manchester, 69 (1987), pp. 394–424.
14 ‘It is not in England so dangerous a matter to have a woman ruler as men take it to be. For, first, it is not she that ruleth, but the laws, the executors whereof be her judges, appointed by her, her justices of the peace and such other officers . . . She maketh no statutes or laws but [in] the honourable court of Parliament . . . What may she do alone wherein is peril?’: J. Aylmer, An harborowe for faithfull and trewe subiectes (London, 1559), sigs. B2v, G3, H3v.
15 P. E. J. Hammer, ‘“Absolute and Sovereign Mistress of Her Grace”? Queen Elizabeth I and Her Favourites, 1581–92’, in The World of the Favourite, ed. J. H. Elliott and L. W. B. Brockliss (London, 1999), p. 40.
16 BL, Additional MS 35830, fos. 158–9; Hardwicke State Papers, I, p. 174.
17 Northamptonshire RO, Fitzwilliam of Milton MSS, Political MS 102 (unfoliated).
18 BL, Cotton MS, Julius F.VI, fos. 167–9v; BL, Additional MS 48035, fos. 141–6v; S. Alford, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (London, 2008), pp. 90–94; Guy, Children of Henry VIII, pp. 179–83. That the committee both existed and met has been proved by Simon Adams, ‘Elizabeth I’s Former Tutor Reports on the Parliament of 1559’, EHR, 128 (2013), pp. 43–7. Although not intrinsically Calvinist, since Elizabeth insisted on retaining bishops, traditional dress for the clergy and a number of the rites and ceremonies that her father had still cherished after he broke with Rome, the 1559 Settlement – theologically, at least – had Calvinist leanings unwelcome to the queen.
19 BL, Lansdowne MS 102, fo. 1; BL, Lansdowne MS 103, fo. 3; Alford, Burghley, pp. 110–11.
20 Hardwicke State Papers, I, p. 167.
21 S. Doran, ‘Elizabeth I’s Religion’, JEH, 51 (2000), pp. 711–12; R. Bowers, ‘The Chapel Royal, the First Edwardian Prayer Book and Elizabeth’s Settlement of Religion, 1559’, HJ, 43 (2000), pp. 320–21; P. Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (London, 1994), pp. 87–118; Guy, Children of Henry VIII, pp. 134, 137–8, 152, 161, 167, 174, 179–85.
22 S. Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 97–119, 142–57, 225–32; M. Taviner, ‘Robert Beale and the Elizabethan Polity’, University of St Andrews Ph.D. (2000), pp. 56–60; Alford, Burghley, pp. 124–38.
23 BL, Cotton MS, Cotton Charter IV.38 (2); CP 138/163; HMC, Hatfield MSS, XIII, pp. 214–15.
24 For a description of the Privy Chamber at Hampton Court, see The Diary of Baron Waldstein, ed. G. W. Groos (London, 1981), p. 151; Paul Henztner’s Travels in England during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. H. Walpole (London, 1797), pp. 56–8; G. von Bülow and W. Powell, ‘Diary of the Journey of Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, through England in the Year 1602’, TRHS, New Series, 6 (1982), p. 55.
25 S. Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (London, 1993), pp. 135–43; S. Thurley, Whitehall Palace (London, 1999), pp. 37–64.
26 A. Johnson, ‘William Paget and the Late-Henrician Polity, 1543–1547’, University of St Andrews Ph.D. (2003), pp. 36–41.
27 The English Court: From the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War, ed. D. Starkey (London, 1987), pp. 71–118.
28 J. H. Astington, English Court Theatre, 1558–1642 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 96–110, 161–9.
29 LC 2/4/3, fos. 53v–63; LC 2/4/4, fos. 45–7; BL, Lansdowne MS 3, fo. 191; BL, Lansdowne MS 29, fo. 161; BL, Lansdowne MS 34, fo. 76; BL, Lansdowne MS 59, fo. 43; The English Court, ed. Starkey, pp. 147–72; C. Merton, ‘The Women Who Served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth: Ladies, Gentlewomen and Maids of the Privy Chamber, 1553–1603’, University of Cambridge Ph.D. (1992); J. Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d (Leeds, 1988), pp. 99–104; A. Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen’s Court (London, 2013), pp. 17–29.
30 Relations Politiques de la France et de l’Espagne avec l’Écosse au XVIe siècle, ed. A. Teulet, 5 vols. (Paris, 1862), II, p. 203.
31 For lists of names and fees of the queen’s musicians as well as special one-off payments to visitors, see E 351/541–3, passim. For Elizabeth’s own account of her credentials as a dancer and love of the Italian style of dancing, see de Maisse, p. 95. For Lucretia de Tedeschi, alias di Conti, who was paid from Michaelmas 1568 onwards, see SP 12/287, no. 64.
32 Nichols, I, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii, 118–19.
33 ‘Journey through England and Scotland made by Lupold von Wedel in the Years 1584 and 1585’, ed. G. von Bülow, TRHS, 2nd Series, 9 (1895), pp. 223–70; Diary of Baron Waldstein, pp. 59, 147, 159–63; Thomas Platter’s Travels in England, 1599, ed. C. Williams (London, 1937), pp. 192–7, 200–202; Report on the Pepys Manuscripts Preserved at Magdalene College, Cambridge, ed. E. K. Purnell (London, 1911), p. 190; E 351/541 (entries from Mich. 1571–2); E 351/542 (entries from Mich. 1591–2, 1592–3, 1593–4, 1595–6); E 351/543 (entries from Mich. 1596–7, 1597–8); SP 12/287, no. 64; W. Nagel, Annalen der englischen Hofmusik: von der Zeit Heinrichs VIII, bis zum Tode Karls I (Leipzig, 1894), p. 29; Elizabeth I, ed. G. Ziegler (Washington DC, 2003), p. 88.
34 BL, Egerton MS, 2806, fo. 70; Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, pp. 104–108; C. C. Stopes, ‘Elizabeth’s Fools and Dwarfs’, The Athenaeum, no. 4477 (16 Aug., 1913), p. 160; Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, pp. 84–7; I. H. Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 72–3. I remain to be convinced that ‘Thomasina’ was a black African female, as some scholars assert. I am grateful to Dr Miranda Kaufmann for drawing my attention to the growing numbers of black servants in Tudor England.
35 Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, pp. 139–41; Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, pp. 24–7.
36 HMC, Bath MSS, IV, p. 186.
37 Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, p. 110.
38 Tha
t privacy came at a cost would be discovered by King Henry III of France. In 1584, tired of being constantly badgered by a steady stream of petitioners and competing religious factions, he modelled his Court on Elizabeth’s and withdrew to his inner cabinet, or study, where he isolated himself from reality until he was finally assassinated. See CSPF, 1584–5, pp. 184–5; M. Chatenet, La Cour de France au XVIe siècle (Paris, 2002), pp. 139–40, 147–54.
39 N. Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 40–66; N. Mears, ‘Politics in the Elizabethan Privy Chamber: Lady Mary Sidney and Kat Ashley’, in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, ed. J. Daybell (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 67–82.
40 Haynes, p. 602.
41 For example, SP 52/10, nos. 62–3.
42 For example, SP 12/17, no. 1; Hardwicke State Papers, I, pp. 180–86.
43 Harington, II, pp. 316–17.
44 For example, SP 52/8, nos. 70 (Burghley’s draft); BL, Cotton MS, Caligula B.X, fos. 261–2v (final version as sent). SP 52/12, no. 20 (Burghley’s draft); SP 52/12, no. 19 (final version as sent).
45 CSPSp, 2nd Series, 1558–67, p. 669.
46 Correspondence of Matthew Parker, DD, ed. J. Bruce and T. Thomason Perowne (Cambridge, 1853), p. 223. My thanks to Stephen Alford for this reference.
47 Collins, I, pp. 7–8; HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley MSS, II, p. 2.
48 My tally includes letters now preserved only as drafts or office copies but which are annotated on the back as ‘written with her own hand’ or ‘of her own hand’ (see, for example, SP 78/36, fos. 8–9v; SP 52/51, no. 75). R. Allinson has a higher total of 3,000 letters written by the queen, but this includes letters merely signed ‘E.R.’, not all of which may have been personally dictated. See R. Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I (New York, 2012), p. xii.
49 For example, SP 52/8, nos. 53–5 (drafts with amendments); BL, Cotton MS, Caligula B.X, fos. 218–19 (final version as sent). On one notorious occasion, Elizabeth and Burghley issued rival instructions to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. See SP 52/13, nos. 81, 83 (Elizabeth’s as dictated to Burghley); SP 52/14, no. 1 (Burghley’s own memo to Throckmorton).
50 Sotheby’s sale of 15 July 2014, lot 403.
51 CSPSp, 1st Series, 1554, pp. 166–7.
52 Guy, Children of Henry VIII, pp. 154–61; ‘The Count of Feria’s Despatch’, ed. Rodríguez-Salgado and Adams, p. 342, n. 31.
53 M. T. Crane, ‘Video et Taceo: Elizabeth I and the Rhetoric of Counsel’, Studies in English Literature, 28 (1988), pp. 1–15; F. Teague, ‘Elizabeth I: Queen of England’, in Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. K. M. Wilson (Athens, GA, 1987), p. 522.
54 Key recent writings include The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. J. Guy (Cambridge, 1995); P. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars (London, 2003); Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late-Elizabethan England, ed. S. Doran and P. Kewes (Manchester, 2014); A. Gajda, ‘Political Culture in the 1590s: The “Second Reign” of Elizabeth I’, History Compass, 8 (2010), pp. 88–100.
55 S. Doran, ‘Juno versus Diana: The Treatment of Elizabeth’s Marriage in Plays and Entertainments, 1561–1581’, HJ, 38 (1995), pp. 257–74.
56 H. Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen (London, 1995), pp. 96–8, 119–23, 177–8, 186–91.
Chapter 1: A City in Fear
1 The Order of My Lord Mayor, the Aldermen and the Sheriffes (London, 1629), pp. 7–8.
2 I. W. Archer, ODNB, s.v. ‘Sir John Spencer’.
3 S. Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 54–60.
4 Camden, pp. 134–5; T. Norton, To the Quenes Maiesties Poore Deceived Subjectes of the North Countrey (London, 1569), sig. A5v–6; A Treatise of Treasons against Q. Elizabeth and the Croune of England (London, [1571–2]), passim; C. Sharp, The Rising in the North: The 1569 Rebellion (Shotton, 1975; new edn), passim; K. Kesselring, ‘Rebellion and Disorder’ in The Elizabethan World, ed. S. Doran and N. Jones (London, 2011), pp. 381–3.
5 ECW, pp. 125–6; S. Doran, ‘The Political Career of Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, 1526?–1583’, University of London Ph.D. (1977), pp. 243–309.
6 SP 12/48, no. 61.
7 G. Parker, ‘The Place of Tudor England in the Messianic Vision of Philip II of Spain’, TRHS, 6th Series, 12 (2000), pp. 167–221.
8 D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (London, 1996), Appendix 2, pp. 637–8.
9 J. Guy, ‘My Heart is My Own’: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (London, 2004), pp. 134–352.
10 Guy, ‘My Heart is My Own’, pp. 437–97.
11 SP 11/6, fos. 25–31; SP 11/14, fos. 47–55; CSPD Mary, nos. 229–35. See also BL, Cotton MS, Titus B.II, fos. 114–16; Parker, ‘Messianic Vision of Philip II’, pp. 192–5.
12 SR, IV, i, pp. 526–8; Parker, ‘Messianic Vision of Philip II’, pp. 187–220.
13 Guy, ‘My Heart is My Own’, pp. 467–9.
14 BL, Cotton MS, Vespasian F.VI, fo. 64.
15 Guy, ‘My Heart is My Own’, pp. 149–69.
16 ‘Lethington’s Account of Negotiations with Elizabeth in September and October 1561’, in A Letter from Mary Queen of Scots to the Duke of Guise, January 1562, ed. J. H. Pollen (Edinburgh, 1904), Appendix 1, p. 39.
17 SP 52/10, no 62; BL, Cotton MS, Caligula B.X, fos. 301–5.
18 Guy, Children of Henry VIII, pp. 161, 167; R. Harkins, ‘Elizabethan Puritanism and the Politics of Memory in Post-Marian England’, HJ, 57 (2014), pp. 899–919.
19 G. D. Ramsay, The End of the Antwerp Mart: The Queen’s Merchants and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 2 vols. (London, 1975–86), II, pp. 51–3.
20 Guy, Children of Henry VIII, pp. 155–75.
21 S. Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London, 1966), pp. 22–5; H. Kamen, Philip of Spain (London, 1997), p. 72.
22 SP 77/1, no. 37; Lettenhove, VIII, pp. 157–62; Lodge, II, pp. 135–7; S. Adams, ‘Elizabeth I and the Sovereignty of the Netherlands, 1576–1585’, TRHS, 14 (2004), pp. 309–17.
23 Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, pp. 130–94.
24 The old idea, derived chiefly from Camden’s Annales, that Burghley and Walsingham pursued dramatically different policies on the Netherlands is not borne out by the evidence.
25 Lettenhove, X, pp. 518–22, 533, 558–64, 567–80.
26 Philip claimed the Portuguese throne on the death of the gravely ill Cardinal Henry, who in 1578 had succeeded his nephew, the young Sebastian I, after he was killed fighting the Ottoman Turks at the battle of Alcazar-el-Kebir in Morocco.
27 Ellis, 1st Series, III, p. 52; Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, pp. 154–94.
28 CSPSp, 2nd Series, 1580–86, pp. 226–7.
29 Les Mémoires de M. le Duc de Nevers, ed. Le Sieur de Gomberville, 2 vols. (Paris, 1665), I, pp. 552–3.
30 Camden, p. 268; CSPV, 1581–91, pp. 23–4; Mémoires de M. le Duc de Nevers, I, p. 552.
31 G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 239–41.
32 Foedera, XV, p. 792.
33 CSPF, 1583 and Addenda, pp. 20–22; HMC, Hatfield MSS, III, no. 29; W. T. MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572–1588 (Princeton, 1981), pp. 283–5, 300–301.
34 SP 12/163, nos. 4, 21–3, 28, 47, 48, 53, 55; KB 8/45; Stow, 1592 edn, pp. 1189–90; S. Alford, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I (London, 2012), pp. 134–5.
35 S. Carroll, Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (Oxford, 2009), pp. 242–55; Alford, The Watchers, pp. 45–92, 152–66.
36 C. Read, Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1925), II, pp. 381–6.
37 SP
12/163, no. 65; SP 12/171, no. 86; Harleian Miscellany, III, pp. 190–200; J. Bossy, Under the Molehill: An Elizabethan Spy Story (London, 2001), pp. 65–124.
38 CSPSp, 2nd Series, 1580–6, pp. 513–14.
39 CSPF, 1583–4, nos. 647–8.
40 SP 78/12, no. 1; Marie Stuart et Catherine de Médicis, ed. A. Chéruel (Geneva, 1975), p. 328; ‘Journey through England and Scotland made by Lupold von Wedel in the Years 1584 and 1585’, ed. G. von Bülow, TRHS, 2nd Series, 9 (1895), p. 262.
41 E. Saulnier, Le Rôle Politique du Cardinal de Bourbon, 1523–1590 (Paris, 1912), pp. 103–25; M. P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 (Cambridge, 2005; 2nd edn), pp. 123–6.
42 Harleian Miscellany, III, p. 200–201.
43 SP 12/168, no. 1; SP 12/190, no. 44; Stow, 1592 edn, pp. 1190–91.
44 Expelled from England by Edward I in 1290 when their houses were sold and goods and debts confiscated by the Crown, Jews had been allowed back by Henry VIII in the 1530s, when he broke with Rome.
45 SP 12/173, nos. 25, 47, 47 (I); Chamber Accounts of the Sixteenth Century, ed. B. Masters (London: London Record Society, 1984), nos. 77, 83, 227; D. Lasocki and R. Prior, The Bassanos: Venetian Musicians and Instrument Makers in England, 1531–1665 (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 78, 243–4.
46 Chamberlain, pp. 50, 109.
47 SP 12/173, nos. 25, 47, 47 (I).
48 Walsingham’s letter is lost, but its contents can be worked out from Spencer’s reply, SP 12/173, no. 47.
49 The location of the Court can be tracked in E 351/542 (entries from Mich. 1584–5); Lodge, II, pp. 246–7.
50 E 351/541 (entries for 1572).
51 SP 12/173, no. 47.
52 SP 12/173, no. 47.
53 STAC 5/H6/1, STAC 5/H10/21, STAC 5/H33/23, STAC 5/H38/10, STAC 5/H41/6.
54 E 351/542 (entries for 1584).