Elizabeth
Page 65
Wanchese, an Algonquian 72
Wanstead estate and manor 50, 114, 226, 228, 282, 307
Wars of Religion 3, 35, 207, 403 see also Catholic League; Huguenots; St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
Warwick, Ambrose Dudley, Earl of see Dudley, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick
Watson, Anthony 390
Webb, Sir William 192, 193
Wedel, Lupold von 60, 72, 201
Wentworth, Peter 238–9, 252
Westminster Abbey 2, 389–90
Whitehall Palace 14–15, 28, 184, 254, 392
Whitgift, John: anti-puritan campaign 163–4, 169, 170; and Hatton 163; made archbishop of Canterbury 163; and Cartwright 165; advises Elizabeth 197; Elizabeth gives pet name of ‘Little Black Husband’ 272; interrogates Essex 327; and Hayward’s book 341; Elizabeth dines with 373; at Elizabeth’s death bed 380; and Elizabeth’s funeral 389
Wilford, Sir Thomas 205
William I, Prince of Orange 21, 37, 41
Williams, Sir Roger 130, 131, 141, 178, 183
Willoughby, Jane 171
Willoughby, Margaret 171
Willoughby, Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron 58, 138–9, 142
Wilson, Thomas 364
Windebank, Sir Thomas 233, 326
Windsor Castle 36, 140, 195
Wingfield Manor, Derbyshire 78
Wisbech Castle 38
Wolsey, Cardinal 8
Woolf, Virginia 5, 6
Worcester, Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of see Somerset, Edward, 4th Earl of Worcester
Woutneel, John 294
Wray, Sir Christopher 168, 169
Wriothesley, Henry see Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of
Wroth, Sir Robert 354
Wyatt, Sir Thomas 20–21
Yellow Ford, Battle of the 305
York, Richard, Duke of 282
York House 128, 140, 322–3
Zuccari, Federico 145
Zutphen 57, 58, 68
Acknowledgements
The vast proliferation of source materials, and from across northern Europe, for Elizabeth’s reign in comparison with what had gone before made writing this book something of a voyage of discovery. I am especially grateful to the staff of the Large Documents Room at the National Archives at Kew for their kind assistance and to the curators of the Richelieu branch of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in central Paris for providing me with digital copies of several key volumes of diplomatic dispatches. In Brussels, the archivists of the Archives Générales du Royaume, located so wonderfully close to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, went beyond the call of duty by producing entire bundles of documents, one standing over two feet high, for me to rummage through at very short notice when I discovered that the traditional sub-numbers of the files, as recorded in the nineteenth-century inventories, did not always match those in the recently computerized document-ordering system. As ever, the staff of the British Library, Cambridge University Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the superlative London Library provided exceptional help. The genealogical tables and maps of northern France and the Netherlands and of Ireland were drawn and digitized by Richard Guy of Orang-utan Productions from my rough drafts. For undertaking picture research and helping me to clear reproduction rights, I am most grateful to Emma Brown and Isabelle Yates.
The availability of new electronic searching aids has given me something of an advantage over earlier biographers, although the documents themselves still have to be tracked down and carefully studied. Some of the most exciting finds in the book, many of them from the Elizabethan State Papers, Foreign, at Kew, or from the Cotton or Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Library, were achieved by the more traditional technique of pure serendipity. I am eternally grateful to my students, past and present, at Clare College, Cambridge, for listening to and critiquing my views of what I’ve called Elizabeth’s forgotten years and for putting up, during their weekly essay supervisions, with the discussion forever turning round to comparisons with the queen and her ministers. I owe a particular debt to Dr Gabriel Heaton of Sotheby’s, the New Bond Street fine-art auctioneers in London, who allowed me to study in some detail the recently rediscovered, and quite remarkable, cache of letters connected with the final years of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, shortly before they were put up for sale.
I’ve nothing but thanks and admiration for Peter Robinson and Gráinne Fox, my agents in London and New York, for their constant encouragement and for giving advice on the manuscript. I owe an immense debt to Venetia Butterfield and Daniel Crewe, my editors in the London office of Viking Publishers, for the speed and sensitivity with which they made helpful suggestions when editing my first complete draft, while leaving my style and overall approach intact and never trying to make wholesale revisions. Sarah Day copy-edited the final text with skill and efficiency, while Keith Taylor was as always a tower of strength as the editorial manager for the book. I am most grateful to everyone.
Julia has lived through the last four years with Elizabeth, Burghley, Hatton, Ralegh, Essex, Robert Cecil and the rest of the gang as if their life stories were being played out in our house, reading innumerable rough drafts, discussing them over mugs of tea at two and three o’clock in the morning, and taking substantial chunks of time out of her own work to help with scouring works of reference and then organizing and structuring my research materials as my submission deadline drew ever closer. She came to tolerate, and perhaps also to admire Elizabeth (as I think I came to do), more than I expected either of us would when I began, not least given that I first approached this topic in a frame of mind shaped by my 2004 biography of Mary Stuart. For her help and constant support, I can never adequately thank Julia or repay her love. Those of my readers who continue to use the acknowledgements in my books to catch up on the news of our animals will be pleased to learn that Susie and Tippy continue in fine form, and have recently been joined by Misty, a black stray who arrived on our doorstep as a kitten, cold, hungry and anxiously mewing – with her suitcase ready to unpack – dumped by her previous owners.
London
10 November 2015
*Strictly, Mary was Elizabeth’s cousin once removed, but in their letters they addressed each other as ‘cousin’.
* The daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II and his wife, Maria of Spain.
* The name ‘Army of Flanders’ is something of a misnomer. These troops were recruited from Spain, Italy, Burgundy, Germany and the southern, Walloon-speaking areas of the Netherlands, then welded into an elite fighting force. Some Catholics from Scotland and Ireland even joined as volunteers. To reduce friction, these troops were kept as separate administrative units: only Spaniards could serve in or command Spanish contingents, and so on. See G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 25–35.
* Ordinarily, felons and traitors were allowed to lapse into unconsciousness before disembowelling began.
* See Chapter 4.
* Ralegh befriended the playwright Christopher Marlowe and would almost certainly have agreed with a remark Marlowe puts into the mouth of the character Machevill (or Machiavelli) at the beginning of The Jew of Malta: ‘I count religion but a childish toy/And hold there is no sin but ignorance.’ By ‘religion’, Marlowe almost certainly meant ‘forms of religion’, just as by the remark ‘there is nothing more dangerous than security,’ Walsingham meant ‘lack of security’. Such a remark did not in itself deny the existence of God, and neither Ralegh nor Marlowe was an atheist.
* Otherwise known as ‘Astley’.
* Ashley’s aunt, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn (née Wood), was also Anne Boleyn’s aunt.
* Leicester was allowed to ‘farm’ (i.e. rent out to investors) the right to collect the customs and excise duties payable on imported sweet wines. These investors paid him a fixed annual s
um and kept the profits made from collecting duties at the ports for themselves.
* Hence Kate was the queen’s first cousin once removed.
* £330 in modern values for around 70lbs of wheat.
* The younger brother of Anthony Bacon, who by now had become Essex’s chief intelligencer.
* The theatres reopened in April and May 1594 after the plague.
* Gaunt’s daughter Philippa by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, had married King John I of Portugal, one of Philip II’s ancestors. A daughter, Catherine, by Gaunt’s second wife, Constance of Castile, had gone on to marry King Henry III of Castile, an ancestor of Philip’s father, Charles V.
* The fact that words are missing at this point was not disclosed by the translator. See below.
* In the case of birds, especially birds of prey, la gorge could also refer to a meal, or ‘gorgeful’.
* From the famous evensong canticle ‘Now let thy servant depart in peace.’
* The precise words that provoked this outburst have never been traced.
* Elizabeth almost without exception placed her signature at the top of her official correspondence, above the first line of text.
* The year of her birth is not recorded, but was somewhere between 1545, when her parents married, and 1550.
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