The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court (58 page)

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

Authors: Anna Whitelock

Tags: #History, #Non-Fiction, #Biography

BOOK: The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court
4.21Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

  
3
See, for example,
LP
, 1536, pp. 47–54. Elizabeth is here referred to by Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, as ‘the Little Bastard’, p. 51.

  
4
Elizabeth had been included in the third Succession Act (1544) and Henry VIII’s will two years later, but was declared illegitimate in 1536. The Act was never repealed. This opened the way for Mary Stuart’s claim, even though Henry VIII had always tried to block it. Henry believed that by his will he could determine the order of the succession and eliminate the Stuart claim. His settlement set aside the strict rules of hereditary descent. If his children died without heirs, then the throne was to pass to the offspring of the Duchess of Suffolk. For details of succession see Mortimer Levine,
Tudor Dynastic Problems, 1460–1571
(London, 1973) and his
The Early Elizabethan Succession Question, 1558–68
(Stamford, 1996).

  
5
A. N. McLaren, ‘The Quest for a King: Gender, Marriage and Succession in Elizabethan England’,
Journal of British Studies
, 41 (July, 2002), pp. 259–90.

  
6
Susan Dunn-Hensley, ‘Whore Queens: The Sexualised Female Body and the State’, in Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney and Debra Barrett-Graves, eds,
High and Mighty Queens of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations
(Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 101–16.

  
7
William Allen,
An
Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland …
(Antwerp, 1558), p. xviii.

  
8
Francis Osborne,
Historical Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James
(London, 1658), p. 61.

  
9
BL Cotton MS Galba C IX fol. 128.

10
Edmund Bohun,
The Character of Queen Elizabeth; or a full and clear account of her policies
(London, 1693), p. 73. These also included Edward Courtenay, Philip of Spain, Eric of Sweden, the two French dukes, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Arundel, Sir William Pickering, Robert Dudley.

Chapter 2: The Queen Is Dead, Long Live the Queen

  
1
Stevenson, ed.,
Life of Jane Dormer
, p. 69.

  
2
BL Harleian MS 6949 is a transcript of the will.

  
3
CSP Span
, 1554–8, p. 438.

  
4
Stevenson, ed.,
Life of Jane Dormer
, p. 72;
CSP Span
, 1554–8, p. 438.

  
5
J. G. Nichols, ed.,
The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen, and Merchant Taylor of London, 1550–63
, Camden Society, 43 (London, 1848), p. 178.

  
6
R. Naunton,
Fragmenta Regalia, or Observations on the Late Queen Elizabeth, her Times and Favourites
, 1641, ed. E. Arber (London, 1879), p. 15.

  
7
TNA SP 12/1/ fol. 12.

  
8
Marie Axton,
The
Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession
(London, 1977), p. 12; see also Ernst Kantorowicz,
The King’s Two Bodies
(Princeton, 1957) and Albert Rolls,
The Theory of the King’s Two Bodies in the Age of Shakespeare, Studies in Renaissance Literature
, 19 (Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter, 2000). For the purposes of law it was found necessary by 1561 to endow the Queen with two bodies: a body natural and a body politic. See Edmund Plowden, ‘The Treatise of the Two Bodies of the King’, BL Cotton MS Caligula B IV, fols 1–94. See also Marie Axton, ‘The Influence of Edmund Plowden’s Succession Treatise’,
Huntington Library Quarterly
37 (3) (1974), pp. 209–26.

  
9
TNA SP 12/1 fol. 3v.

10
CSP Span
, 1558–67, p. 7.

11
TNA SP 70/5 fol. 31r–v; William Murdin,
A Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth left by Lord Burghley, from the year 1571 to 1596
(London, 1759), pp. 748

9.

12
CSP Span
, 1558–67, p. 45.

13
Ibid.

14
Ibid., p. 122.

15
HMC Salisbury
, I, p. 158.

16
TNA PC 2/8 fol.198;
APC
, 1558–70, pp. 6–7; John Strype,
Annals of the Reformation …
4 vols (Oxford, 1820–40), I, p. 7.

17
APC
, 1558–70, p. 22; however, there was no legislation against conjuring, and so the culprits were sent for ‘severe punishment’ under ecclesiastical law to Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London.
APC
, 1558–70, p. 22;
CSP Span
, 1558–67, pp. 17–18.

18
Francis Coxe,
A Short Treatise Declaring the Detestable Wickednesse of Magicall Sciences as Necromancie, Coniurations of Spirites, Curiouse Astrologie and Such Lyke
(London, 1561), sigs. A4v–A5v.

19
The Diary of Henry Machyn
, p. 185. For English responses to Nostradamus see, for example, William Fulke,
Antiprognosticon, that is to saye, an invective against the vayne and unprofitable predictions of the astrologians as Nostradame etc
(London, December 1560), sig. A8r–v. See also V. Larkey, ‘Astrology and Politics in the First Years of Elizabeth’s Reign’,
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
, III (1935), pp. 171–86.

20
‘The Compendious Rehearsal of John Dee’, in T. Hearne, ed.,
Joannis, confratis & monachi Glastoniensis, chronica sive historia de rebus Glastoniensibus
, 2 vols (Oxford, 1726), II, pp. 509, 521.

21
As recorded by Richard Mulcaster in his
The passage of our most drad Soveraigne Lady Quene Elyzabeth through the citie of London to Westminster the daye before her coronacion
(London, 1558).

22
1 Eliz.c.2.,
Statutes
IV, pp. 358–9.

23
See W. P. Haugaard, ‘Elizabeth Tudor’s Book of Devotions: A neglected clue to the Queen’s life and character’,
The
Sixteenth-Century Journal
12:2 (1981), pp. 79–106, at p. 93.

24
J. E. Neale,
Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1584

1601
, 3 vols (London, 1957), I, p. 128.

25
CSP Ven
, 1558–80, pp. 22–3.

26
1 Eliz I, c.1, ‘The Act of Supremacy’ and 1 Eliz I, c.2, ‘The Act of Uniformity’, printed in
Statutes
IV, pp. 355–8.

Chapter 3:
Familia Reginae

  
1
CSP Ven
, 1558–80, p. 12.

  
2
J. R. Planché,
Regal Records, or a Chronicle of the Coronations of the Queen Regnants of England
(London, 1838), p. 35.

  
3
See Mary Hill Cole,
The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony
(Amherst, 1999); Julian Munby, ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Coaches: The Wardrobe on Wheels’,
Antiquaries Journal
, 83 (2003), pp. 311–67.

  
4
TNA SP 12/6/36 fol. 78.

  
5
Pam Wright, ‘A change in direction: the ramifications of a female household, 1558–1603’, in D. Starkey et al., eds,
The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War
(London, 1987), pp. 147–72; C. Merton, ‘The Women Who Served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth: Ladies, Gentlewomen and Maids of the Privy Chamber, 1553–1603’, (PhD thesis, Cambridge, 1992). See also K. Bundesen, ‘Circling the crown: political power and female agency in sixteenth-century England’, in J. Jordan, ed.,
Desperate Housewives: Politics, Propriety and Pornography, Three Centuries of Women in England
(Cambridge, 2009), pp. 3–28 and William Tighe, ‘Familia Reginae: The Privy Court’, in Susan Doran and Norman Jones, eds,
The Elizabethan World
(Oxford, 2011), pp. 76–91.

  
6
TNA LC 2/4/3 fol. 62r.

  
7
TNA LC 2/4/3 fols 53v–54r. Subsequent documents do not identify the women in these groups, suggesting the boundaries were in practice rather fluid.

  
8
See A. Hoskins, ‘Mary Boleyn’s Carey Children and offspring of Henry VIII’,
Genealogists Magazine,
25 (1997), pp. 345–52.

  
9
See N. M. Sutherland, ‘The Marian Exiles and the Establishment of the Elizabethan Regime’,
Archive for Reformation History
78 (1987), pp. 253–84; G. Peck, ‘John Hales and the Puritans during the Marian Exile’,
Church History
10 (1941), pp. 159–177 at p. 174.

10
BL Lansdowne MS 94, fol. 21 printed in G. B. Harrison,
The Letters of Queen Elizabeth
(London, 1935), p. 19.

11
BL Lansdowne MS 3, fol. 193 lists Lettice Knollys as a ‘gentlewoman of our Privy Chamber’.

12
See S. Varlow, ‘Sir Francis Knolly’s Latin dictionary: new evidence for Katherine Carey’,
BIHR
, 80 (2007), pp. 315–23.

13
She is listed in the Coronation Account Book, TNA LC 2/4/3 fol. 53v; although it does not say ‘Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber’, her name is listed under ‘the Bedchamber’ and listed above the category of ‘Chamberers’. Therefore in the Coronation Account Book, she was a Gentlewoman of the Bedchamber, and not a Lady of the Bedchamber as her social rank was only that of a Gentlewoman, denoted with a ‘Mrs’ before her name as opposed to ‘Lady’.

14
He served as Master of the Jewel House until his death in 1596 and was also one of only two men to hold the position of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber under Elizabeth. The other was Christopher Hatton who served from 1572 to 1591. Kat’s husband John was made Master and Treasurer of Her Majesty’s Jewels and Plate. According to the inscription on his monument at Maidstone he also became ‘prime Gentleman of the Privy Chamber’. See A. F. Collins, ed.,
Jewels and Plate of Queen Elizabeth I: The Inventory of 1574
(London, 1955), p. 210.

15
See J. Graves,
A Brief Memoir of the Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Known as the Fair Geraldine
(Dublin, 1874).

16
Henry Stafford had re-converted to Catholicism during Mary’s reign.

17
See C. H. Garrett,
The Marian Exiles: a Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism
(Cambridge, 1938); G. Peck, ‘John Hales and the Puritans during the Marian Exile’, pp. 159–77.

18
BL Lansdowne MS 59, no. 22, fol. 43; TNA LC 2/4/4 fols 45v–46.

19
J. G. Nichols (ed.),
The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth
, 3 vols (London, 1823), I, p. 38; TNA LC 2/4/3 is the account book for Elizabeth I’s coronation.

20
See
CSP Dom
, 1547–80, p. 648.

21
BL Additional [hereafter Add.] MS 48161, Robert Beale, ‘A Treatise of the Office of … Principall Secretarie’, printed in C. Read,
Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth,
3 vols (Cambridge, Mass, 1925), vol. I, pp. 423–43.

Chapter 4: Not a Morning Person

  
1
BL Add. MS 35185, fol. 23v.

  
2
Simon Thurley,
Whitehall Palace: an Architectural History of the Royal Apartments 1240–1698
(New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 65–74. There starts in the reign of Elizabeth a series of accounts of foreign travellers who visited Whitehall. They were generally shown not only the outer chambers but, when the Queen was away, her privy lodgings too. ‘Journey through England and Scotland made by Lupold von Wedel in the Years 1584 and 1585’, trans. Gottfried von Bulow,
TRHS
, new series, vol. 9 (London, 1895), pp. 223–70 at pp. 234–7;
The Diary of Baron Waldstein: A Traveller in Elizabethan England
, trans. and ed. G. W. Groos (London, 1981), pp. 43–59; ‘Diary of the Journey of Philip Julius Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, through England in the year 1602’,
TRHS,
n.s. vol. 6 (London, 1892), pp. 1–67 at pp. 23–5;
Thomas Platter’s Travels in England, 1599,
trans. Clare Williams (London, 1937), pp. 163–6.

  
3
‘Diary of the Journey of the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania’, p. 25; ‘Journey of von Wedel’, p. 325.

  
4
HMC
Bath
, vol. IV, p. 186.

  
5
Manchet or fine white bread came from wheat grown at Heston as it was accounted the purest. See John Norden,
Speculum Brittanie: Description of Middlesex and Hertfordshire
(London, 1723).

  
6
John Harington,
Nugae Antiquae
, ed. Henry Harington, 3 vols (London, 1779), II, p. 135.

  
7
R. R. Tighe and J. C. Davis,
Annals of Windsor
, 2 vols (London, 1858), I, p. 641.

  
8
See N. Williams,
Powder and Paint: a History of the Englishwoman’s Toilet
(London, 1957), p. 14.

  
9
See Sir Hugh Platt,
Delight for Ladies
(London, 1594).

10
For example, ‘By Mrs Twiste, six towthclothes wrought with blake silke, and edged with golde’, New Years Gift Roll 1579, in Nichols (ed.),
Progresses of Queen Elizabeth,
vol. II, p. 260.

11
See Thomas Cogan,
The Haven of Health: Chiefly Made for the Comfort of Students and Consquently all Those That Have a Care of Their Health
(London, 1565) and William Vaughan, author of
Fifteen Directions to Preserve Health
(London, 1602) – ‘Vaughan’s water’ for the cleaning of teeth was made by boiling together half a glass of vinegar and half a glass of mastic resin with an ounce each of rosemary, myrrh, ammoniac, dragon’s herb and rock alum, half an ounce of cinnamon and three glasses of water. Half a pound of honey was added and the mixture was left to cook for a quarter of an hour. The solution was then poured into clean bottles. He also gave four rules for keeping clean, healthy teeth: rinse your mouth after every meal, ‘sleep with your mouth somewhat open’, expectorate every morning and rub all round the teeth and gums with a linen cloth ‘to take away the fumosity of the meat and yellowness of teeth’.

Other books

Wrecked by Walker, Shiloh
Flashman in the Peninsula by Robert Brightwell
Against the Brotherhood by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Bill Fawcett
Jayne Doe by jamie brook thompson
Suzi Love by Embracing Scandal