by John Guy
46 Stow, 1592 edn, p. 1280; SP 12/252, no. 94 (II–III); HMC, Hatfield MSS, V, pp. 248–50; BL, Lansdowne MS 78, fos. 159–61; Harrison, II, pp. 27–9, 30–31; Archer, Pursuit of Stability, p. 1.
47 Spencer’s note can be seen scribbled as a postscript to BL, Lansdowne MS 78, fo. 159.
48 Stow, 1592 edn, p. 1280; R. B. Manning, ‘The Prosecution of Sir Michael Blount, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, 1595’, BIHR, 57 (1984), pp. 216–19, 222–3; Archer, Pursuit of Stability, p. 2.
49 BL, Lansdowne MS 66, fos. 241–2; SP 12/261, no. 70; The Queenes Maiesties Proclamation for staying of all unlawfull assemblies in and about the Citie of London, and for Orders to punish the same (London, 1595); TRP, III, nos. 735 (wrongly dated 1591), 769.
50 BL, Lansdowne MS 66, fos. 243–8; Orders prescribed by her Maiesties commandement by advise of her Counsell, published in London, and other places neere to the same, for the observation of her Maiesties present Proclamation (London, 1595).
51 BL, Lansdowne MS 78, fos. 126–33; Stow, 1592 edn, p. 1280.
52 BL, Lansdowne MS 66, fo. 243.
53 BL, Lansdowne MS 66, fos. 243–8; Orders prescribed by her Maiesties commandement; Stow, 1592 edn, p. 1280.
54 BL, Lansdowne MS 78, fo. 159.
55 SP 12/261, no. 69.
56 Foedera, XVI, pp. 279–80; L. Boynton, ‘The Tudor Provost-Marshal’, EHR, 77 (1962), pp. 437–55.
57 Chambers, IV, p. 318; G. Salgado, The Elizabethan Underworld (London, 1977), pp. 117–93.
58 APC, XXV, pp. 324, 330, 437–9; APC, XXVI, pp. 23–4, 118, 352; APC, XXVII, pp. 290–92.
59 APC, XXVII, pp. 283–4, 290–92; Archer, Pursuit of Stability, pp. 210–11, 254.
60 P. E. H. Hair and R. Law, ‘The English in Western Africa to 1700’, in The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, ed. N. Canny (Oxford, 1998), pp. 241–9.
61 APC, XXVI, pp. 20–21; M. Kaufmann, ‘Caspar van Senden, Sir Thomas Sherley and the “Blackamoor” Project’, HR, 81 (2008), pp. 366–71.
Chapter 12: The Quest for Gold
1 The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Knight, 8 vols. (Oxford, 1829), VIII, p. 246.
2 J. Guy, The Children of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2013), pp. 98–100, 109, 111, 117–22, 137–8, 155, 166, 169–71, 178, 189; C. Merton, ODNB, s.v. ‘Katherine Astley [née Champernowne]’, ‘John Astley’.
3 J. Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Cursed Kings (London, 2015), pp. 89–91.
4 N. A. M. Rodger, ‘Queen Elizabeth and the Myth of Sea-Power in English History’, TRHS, 6th Series, 14 (2004), pp. 153–7.
5 Rodger, ‘Queen Elizabeth and the Myth of Sea-Power’, p. 156.
6 K. R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering (Cambridge, 1964), p. 5; K. R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 102–15.
7 Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 3–31; G. Parker and C. Martin, The Spanish Armada (London, 1992), p. 223.
8 Hakluyt, II, ii, pp. 194–5; W. R. Drake, ‘Notes upon the Capture of the “Great Carrack” in 1592’, Archaeologia, 33 (1849), pp. 209–240; M. Nicholls and P. Williams, Sir Walter Ralegh in Life and Legend (London, 2011), pp. 76–7; R. B. Wernham, After the Armada: Elizabethan England and the Struggle for Western Europe, 1588–1595 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 445–6.
9 The Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. A. Latham and J. Youings (Exeter, 1999), no. 41; Hakluyt, II, ii, pp. 194–5.
10 Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 43.
11 Hakluyt, II, ii, pp. 194–5.
12 SP 12/242, no. 48; Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 44; HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, p. 200; Hakluyt, I, ii, p. 195.
13 Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 44.
14 R. Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh (London, 1973), p. 147; A. L. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), pp. 129–88. See the portrait of Ralegh, attributed to the monogramist ‘H’ (Hubbard?), in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
15 Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, pp. 160–61; Nicholls and Williams, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 76–8.
16 HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, pp. 153–4; P. E. J. Hammer, ‘Sex and the Virgin Queen: Aristocratic Concupiscence and the Court of Elizabeth I’, SCJ, 31 (2000), pp. 77–97; P. E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 95–6.
17 HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, pp. 153–4, 154–5; Hammer, ‘Sex and the Virgin Queen’, pp. 80–90.
18 Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 41.
19 Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, nos. 46–7; Bodleian, Ashmole MS 1729, fo. 177, printed in H. E. Sandison, ‘Arthur Gorges, Spenser’s Alcyon and Ralegh’s Friend’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 43 (1928), pp. 657–8.
20 Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 161; Nicholls and Williams, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 77–9.
21 Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, p. 116; Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, pp. 160–61.
22 HMC, Rutland MSS, I, p. 107; W. J. Tighe, ‘Country into Court, Court into Country: John Scudamore of Holme Lacy and His Circles’, in Tudor Political Culture, ed. D. Hoak (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 163–4; S. Adams, ODNB, s.v. ‘Mary Scudamore [née Shelton]’.
23 SP 78/16, fo. 100; Hammer, ‘Sex and the Virgin Queen’, p. 81.
24 SP 12/260, nos. 25–6.
25 As far as Bess’s finances were concerned, it was highly relevant that she was both an orphan and impoverished after she lost most of the £500 bequeathed to her by her father as a future dowry in a property transaction that went wrong. This made her even more socially dependent upon the queen, her kinswoman.
26 Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 162.
27 Quoted from Lambeth, MS 648 in J. P. Collier, ‘Continuation of New Materials for a Life of Sir Walter Ralegh’, Archaeologia, 34 (1852), p. 160; Birch, Memoirs, I, p. 79.
28 The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. A. Latham (London, 1951), pp. 77–95.
29 HMC, Finch MSS, I, p. 34; Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, pp. 163–4; K. Robertson, ‘Negotiating Favour: The Letters of Lady Ralegh’, in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, ed. J. Daybell (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 102–3. Bess wrote to the husband of her good friend, Elizabeth Finch, daughter of Sir Thomas Heneage, the queen’s Vice-Chamberlain. It was perhaps unfortunate that father and daughter were estranged.
30 HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, p. 232; BL, Lansdowne MS 70, fos. 102–104.
31 SP 12/243, nos. 16–17; Drake, ‘Notes upon the Capture of the “Great Carrack” in 1592’, p. 220.
32 Hakluyt, II, ii, pp. 194–5; Camden, p. 465.
33 BL, Lansdowne MS 70, fos. 227–8; HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, p. 233; Drake, ‘Notes upon the Capture of the “Great Carrack” in 1592’, p. 219.
34 Hakluyt, II, ii, pp. 194–5; SP 12/243, no. 16; Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 50; HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, pp. 228, 230–31, 234–5, 254–5; Drake, ‘Notes upon the Capture of the “Great Carrack” in 1592’, pp. 222–3, 227–37; C. L. Kingsford, ‘The Taking of the Madre de Dios, anno 1592’, in The Naval Miscellany, II, ed. J. K. Laughton, Navy Records Society, 40 (1912), pp. 85–121; Wernham, After the Armada, pp. 447–9; Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 43, 73.
35 BL, Lansdowne MS 70, fo. 88; Drake, ‘Notes upon the Capture of the “Great Carrack” in 1592’, pp. 225–7; Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 52.
36 SP 12/243, no. 17.
37 Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 51. Ralegh’s books of account were kept by William Sanderson. See R. A. McIntyre, ‘William Sanderson, Elizabethan Financier of Discovery’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 13 (1956), pp. 184–201.
38 BL, Lansdowne MS 70, fos. 100, 117–18; HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, pp. 233–4; Drake, ‘Notes upon the Capture of the “Great Carrack” in 1592’, pp. 231–2.
39 BL, Lansdowne MS 70, fo. 210; SP 12/244, no. 18; Drake, ‘Notes upon the Capture of the “Great Carrack” in 1592’, pp. 237–8.
40 BL, Lansdowne MS 70, fo. 210.
41 Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 51.
42 The figures differ slightly in different documents. In an attempt to reconcile them, I have collated BL, Lansdowne MS 70, fos. 38–9, 40 with Ralegh’s figures at fo. 217. See also Drake, ‘Notes upon the Capture of the “Great Carrack” in 1592’, pp. 238–40.
43 BL, Lansdowne MS 73, fos. 38–9; Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 56; E. Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, 2 vols. (London, 1868), I, pp. 157–8.
44 Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, pp. 164, 168.
45 BL, Lansdowne MS 70, fos. 38–40. Ralegh said it was £40,000, but this must have been an exaggeration, as the official reckoning does not bear it out.
46 BL, Lansdowne MS 70, fo. 217; Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 51.
47 Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 179.
48 Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘Discoverie of Guiana’, ed. J. Lorimer, Hakluyt Society, 3rd Series, 15 (2006), pp. xl–lx; Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 196–7; E. G. R. Taylor, ‘Harriot’s Instructions for Ralegh’s Voyage to Guiana, 1595’, Journal of the Institute of Navigation, 6 (1952), pp. 345–51; J. J. Roche, ODNB, s.v. ‘Thomas Harriot’.
49 Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘Discoverie of Guiana’, ed. Lorimer, pp. xl–lx, 47–66; Nicholls and Williams, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 99–110; Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 202–9.
50 HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, p. 485; Robertson, ‘Negotiating Favour: The Letters of Lady Ralegh’, in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, ed. Daybell, pp. 104–5.
51 Sanderson’s wife, Margaret Snedall, was Ralegh’s niece.
52 The complicated story of Ralegh’s relationship with Sanderson and his finances for the Guiana expedition can be pieced together from McIntyre, ‘William Sanderson, Elizabethan Financier of Discovery’, pp. 197–201; J. W. Shirley, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Guinea Finances’, HLQ, 13 (1949), pp. 55–69.
53 Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘Discoverie of Guiana’, ed. Lorimer, pp. 28–9, 65–87.
54 Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘Discoverie of Guiana’, ed. Lorimer, pp. l–lxi, 12–13; Nicholls and Williams, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 102–8.
55 Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘Discoverie of Guiana’, ed. Lorimer, pp. 26–30, 80–145.
56 HMC, Hatfield MSS, V, p. 396; Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 86; Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘Discoverie of Guiana’, ed. Lorimer, pp. 5–6.
57 Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, nos. 86–7.
58 Sir Walter Ralegh’s ‘Discoverie of Guiana’, ed. Lorimer, pp. xlvii–lxi; Nicholls and Williams, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 111.
59 Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Latham and Youings, no. 87.
Chapter 13: Conspiring against the Queen
1 SP 12/247, nos. 100, 102; BL, Additional MS 48029, fo. 162v; KB 8/52, Pts. 1–2; A. Dimock, ‘The Conspiracy of Dr Lopez’, EHR, 9 (1894), pp. 440–72. I first set forth the gist of my argument in this chapter in a television documentary, ‘Conspiring against the Queen’, Episode 3 of Renaissance Secrets, Series 2, screened on BBC 2, 12 November 2001.
2 KB 8/52, Pt. 1.
3 Lopez’s secret Judaism is from SP 12/248, no. 16.
4 E. Samuel, ODNB, s.v. ‘Roderigo Lopez’; Leicester’s Commonwealth, ed. D. C. Peck (Athens, Ohio, 1985), p. 116; A. Stewart, ‘Portingale Women and Politics in Late-Elizabethan London’, in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, ed. J. Daybell (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 84–5; A. Stewart, ‘“Every Soil to Me is Natural”: Figuring Denization in William Haughton’s Englishmen for My Money’, Renaissance Drama, New Series, 35 (2006), pp. 62–5.
5 SO 3/1, fo. 516v; Dimock, ‘Conspiracy of Dr Lopez’, pp. 440–41; Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1558–61, 1584–86, ed. S. Adams, Camden Society, 5th Series, 6 (1995), p. 332.
6 SP 12/238, fo. 98v.
7 CSPSp, 2nd Series, 1587–1603, pp. l–li, 74, and nos. 550, 556. My thanks to Professor Alan Stewart for advice on this point.
8 BL, Harleian MS 1641, fo. 15v; Household Accounts . . . of Robert Dudley, ed. Adams, p. 332.
9 SP 12/225, no. 21; SP 12/247, no. 102.
10 SP 12/238, nos. 68, 194; CSPSp, 2nd Series, 1587–1603, nos. 516, 519, 579.
11 CSPSp, 2nd Series, 1587–1603, pp. l–lii; SP 12/236, no. 159; SP 12/238, no. 68 (especially fos. 98v–9); SP 12/239, no. 152.
12 SP 12/238, no. 68; SP 12/248, no. 18; CSPSp, 2nd Series, 1587–1603, nos. 579, 588, 591. The truth has to be unpicked from the boasts and overblown claims made by Andrada to Lopez and Burghley.
13 SP 12/239, nos. 135–6, 150–51.
14 SP 12/239, nos. 136, 151 (translations into Italian and French for Burghley of the original Portuguese); BL, Additional MS 48029, fos. 162v; A True Report of Sundry Horrible Conspiracies of Late Time Detected (London, 1594), p. 8; Dimock, ‘Conspiracy of Dr Lopez’, pp. 446–7; D. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 74–5.
15 SP 78/25, fo. 8; SP 94/4, fos. 23–6, 33, 41–2. See also SP 12/239, nos. 72, 82–3.
16 SP 12/239, nos. 121–2.
17 SP 12/239, no. 123.
18 SP 12/240, no. 22.
19 SP 12/240, no. 22.
20 SP 12/239, no. 135 (shown to the queen); SP 12/239, nos. 142, 142 (I–II), 143, 149, 150–52.
21 HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, p. 248; SP 12/248, no. 18.
22 SP 84/48, fo. 78; Dimock, ‘Conspiracy of Dr Lopez’, p. 448.
23 P. E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 111–51.
24 Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, pp. 71, 130–31; C. L. Kingsford, ‘Essex House, Formerly Leicester House and Exeter Inn’, Archaeologia, 73 (1923), pp. 1–54.
25 Memoirs of Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth (Edinburgh, 1808), pp. 61–2.
26 LASPF, 1593–4, p. 486; Birch, Memoirs, I, p. 146.
27 Birch, Memoirs, I, p. 146.
28 See, for instance, A. Whitelock, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen’s Court (London, 2013), p. 278.
29 L. Strachey, Elizabeth and Essex (London, 1928; repr. 1971), pp. 22–4, 41–3.
30 R. Lacey, Robert, Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus (London, 1971), p. 201.
31 The Letters of Lady Anne Bacon, ed. G. Allen, Camden Society, 5th Series, 44 (2014), pp. 133, 140; Dimock, ‘Conspiracy of Dr Lopez’, p. 498.
32 Letters of Lady Anne Bacon, ed. Allen, p. 161; BL, Additional MS 48029, fo. 148.
33 Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, pp. 159–60; BL, Additional MS 48029, fos. 155v, 162v.
34 Birch, Memoirs, I, pp. 149–50; Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, pp. 138, 160–63.
35 CUL, MS Ee.3.56, no. 15. Although some words are scored out, Dom António’s name is clearly visible beneath the penstrokes.
36 Birch, Memoirs, I, pp. 66–9, 98–140; Letters of Lady Anne Bacon, ed. Allen, p. 16; S. Alford, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I (London, 2012), pp. 285–97; P. Hammer, ‘The Uses of Scholarship: the Secretariat of Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex’, EHR, 109 (1994), pp. 26–51; Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, pp. 173–87.
37 SP 12/239, no. 120; SP 12/240, no. 12; SP 12/241, nos. 44–5; SP 12/242, no. 3; Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, pp. 153–62.
38 SP 12/248, no. 18.
39 SP 12/246, nos. 39, 39 (I–III), 45; Dimock, ‘Conspiracy of Dr Lopez’, pp. 448–55.
40 SP 12/247, no. 13.
41 SP 12/246, no. 25 (translations of both letters on the same folio).
42 BL, Additional MS 48029, fos. 155v–84v (another copy of this dossier is BL, Harleian MS 871, fos. 7–64); ‘A True Report of the Detestable Treason, Intended by Dr Roderigo Lopez’, in Spedding, I, p. 283; SP 12/248, no. 7 (I); Murdin, pp. 669–75.
43 SP 12/247, no. 102; ‘A True Report’, in Spedding, I, pp. 285–6. Spanish documents confirm the substance of this claim. See Documentos inéditos para la historia de España: Publicados por los Señores Duque de Alba [and others], 12 vols. (Madrid, 1936–57), I, p. 197; Dimock, ‘Conspiracy of Dr Lopez’, pp. 457–8.
44 Birch, Memoirs, I, p. 152.
45 ‘A True Report’, in Spedding, I, p. 284; True Report of Sundry Horrible Conspiracies, pp. 8–16, 28–31; BL, Additional MS 48029, fos. 158v–84v; SP 12/247, nos. 19, 51, 58, 82–4; Dimock, ‘Conspiracy of Dr Lopez’, pp. 457–65.
46 BL, Additional MS 48029, fos. 158v–84v; ‘A True Report’, in Spedding, I, pp. 274–87.
47 Lopez’s wife may not have sold the ring. It was later excepted from a partial restoration of goods that Sara Lopez, the doctor’s widow, and her children received from the queen after Lopez’s chattels were seized by the Crown. See CP 28/8–11; HMC, Hatfield MSS, IV, p. 601; Dimock, ‘Conspiracy of Dr Lopez’, pp. 469–70.
48 BL, Additional MS 48029, fos. 161, 162v; Letters of Lady Anne Bacon, ed. Allen, p. 164.
49 Birch, Memoirs, I, p. 152; Letters of Lady Anne Bacon, ed. Allen, pp. 163–4; Hammer, Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, p. 348.
50 Letters of Lady Anne Bacon, ed. Allen, p. 164.
51 SP 12/247, nos. 70, 82–4.
52 CUL, MS Ee.3.56, no. 17; Birch, Memoirs, I, p. 155. Burghley’s few lines on the plot can be found at HMC, Hatfield MSS, V, pp. 54–5.
53 SP 12/247, no. 70; True Report of Sundry Horrible Conspiracies, pp. 27–8.