Category Archives: Sixteenth Century

Sir Richard Croft

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Croft Castle church is older than it looks. Historians think that the church as first built in about 1300. In the seventeenth century the clock tower was added and the interior provided with box pews. All well and good. I failed to photograph the sun in splendour on the stained glass window, representing an association with the House of York, and although I noted the medieval floor tiles I didn’t photograph them either. I was sidetracked! I nearly didn’t photograph the fortified house (ok I know that later architects have romanticised the whole concoction)

Sir Richard Croft died on 29 July 1509 and is depicted in effigy form with his wife Eleanor, the widow of Sir Hugh Mortimer. Eleanor ran the royal household of Edward, Prince of Wales a.k.a one of ‘The Princes in the Tower’ while he was at Ludlow learning how to be a king. Croft was Henry VII’s treasurer, fought at Mortimer’s Cross (Yorkist), Towton (Yorkist) , Tewkesbury (Yorkist) and Stoke (Tudor). The Pastor Letters record that plain Richard Croft was knighted in the aftermath of Tewkesbury. He also became High Sheriff of Herefordshire, as did his son.

Sir Richard inherited Croft Castle when he was just 14-years of age in 1445. He and his younger brother were tutored with Edward Earl of March and Edmund Earl of Rutland. History knows this because in 1454 a letter was sent to Richard of York complaining about their behaviour. He owed loyalty to his powerful Mortimer neighbours. He was their steward but rose under the Yorkists before transferring allegiance to Henry VII who made him Prince Arthur’s steward at Ludlow making him a key official educating the prince (p.528 -Anthony Emery, Great Medieval Houses of England and Wales volume 2).

Sir Richard was very much part of the “famous and very Knightly family of the Crofts”, as William Camden called them in his Britannia. Somehow, a member of the minor gentry became a key player serving as a royal official for Kings Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII. Sir Richard was one of the nobles who wished for the young King Edward V to be crowned at once to avoid the need for a protectorate. Rumours of their murder spread throughout court. Believing the boys’ deaths to have been ordered by their uncle, Sir Richard Croft, an astute player of court politics, remained a royal official to Richard III while secretly offering his support to Henry Tudor’s cause it would appear although Breverton records that Croft was in exile with Henry Tudor and played an important part in his coronation.

And you’ll love this (not a lot) Richard Croft had a brother who was younger than him also called Richard! Richard the Younger was born in 1437 and died in 1502. Little brother was one of Edward Prince of Wales’ tutors at Ludlow. The Younger Richard fought for Henry at Bosworth as did Richard the Younger’s illegitimate son Thomas who was appointed a ranger at Woodstock but got himself into a spot of bother over a murder in the marches.

The Crofts did not get on well with the Stanley family. The latter were rather too acquisitive of land and the Crofts weren’t keen on losing territory to their neighbours.

I love the happy looking Croft lion laying at Sir Richard’s feet but most historians are fascinated with the boar on the wonderfully carved tomb. The hog actually belongs to St Anthony, one of the saints decorating the niches behind Sir Richard’s head, but its impossible to escape the thought of Richard III with his white boar…and then there’s that sun in splendour.

And because I can…Sir Richard Croft was the great grandfather of Henry VIII’s mistress Bess Blount making him the 2x great grandfather of Bessie and Henry’s son, Henry FitzRoy.

Bremerton, Terry, Henry VII: The Maligned King

Elizabeth I rebellions, conspiracies and associations

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It’s been said that you don’t need to know any dates to pass a GCSE History exam but quite frankly without chronology and some grasp of the important dates its just a series of stories. A vital concept in physics is the space-time continuum – they’re also rather important for the study of history and the evolution of all those tangled political, social and economic webs! So, and this final sentence is specifically from my granddaughters who are studying History at GCSE, please learn the dates below…. I will be checking!

Elizabeth was born on 7 September 1533.

She was bastardised in 1536 when her mother, Anne Boleyn, was found guilty of adultery and executed. 1536 was the year of the three queens – Catherine, or Katherine, of Aragon died; Anne was executed and Henry VIII married Jane Seymour. Oh yes, and Thomas Cromwell started shutting down small monastic houses and there was a revolt – The Pilgrimage of Grace which saw things get rather nasty in 1537 when Henry VIII stamped his authority on the places that objected to the closure of monasteries and changes to religious belief.

1544 Third Act of Succession identifies Elizabeth’s place in the order of succession – Edward, Mary, Elizabeth.

1553 Mary becomes queen after Edward VI’s death and the nine days when John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland tries to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne having married her to his youngest son Guildford Dudley. Life becomes very difficult for Elizabeth who is Mary’s heir but is Protestant. Mary is trying to turn back the cloth to Catholicism.

1558 Elizabeth becomes Queen Elizabeth I

1562 Elizabeth licences sailors as privateers – they attack Spanish shipping and she takes a share which helps treasury finances.

1568 Mary Queen of Scots flees Scotland, crosses the Solway Firth and arrives in Workington. She spends the next 19 years in captivity but is also the focus for Catholic plotting.

1569 The Northern Rebellion – involving the Duke of Norfolk, and the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland.

1570 Pope Pius V excommunicates Elizabeth I

1571 Treason Act makes it illegal to deny Elizabeth I is queen.

1572 The Ridolfi Plot

1570s increased number of Jesuit Priests arriving in England.

1583 The Throckmorton Plot

1584 Murder of William of Orange (Protestant leader of the Dutch by a Catholic assassin). The Bond of Association

1585 Official start of the Anglo-Spanish War which will continue intermittently until 1604. Elizabeth sends the Earl of Leicester with an army to the Low Countries to fight the Spanish.

1586 The Babington Plot

8 February 1587 Mary Queen of Scots executed at Fotheringhay.

1587 Drake goes with a fleet to Cadiz which he burns to slow down the launch of Philip II’s invasion fleet.

1588 The Spanish Armada – the English victory was celebrated by the Armada Portrait pictured at the start of this post – although the weather was what really did for the Spanish.

The Throckmorton Plot

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The Throckmorton Plot of 1583 was named after Sir Francis Throckmorton. He was the cousin of Bess Throckmorton, a lady-in-waiting who married Sir Walter Raleigh, demonstrating that families can arrive at very different religious viewpoints. Francis’ father John Throckmorton was a prominent Catholic during the reign of Queen Mary. It should be noted though that John conformed outwardly to the change in faith after Mary’s death even though his sons were raised as Catholics. Bess Throckmorton’s father Nicholas was raised in the household of Catherine Parr and had leanings towards the reformation as a consequence. He was also part of Edward VI’s circle as well as a friend of Elizabeth from her childhood.

It was planned that the Spanish would back a French invasion led by the Duke of Guise. Having subdued the heretic protestants and killed Elizabeth the plan was to put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne. Guise was not popular in Protestant Europe. He played a leading role in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 – which Sir Francis Walsingham (pictured at the start of the post) witnesses as he was in Paris at the time.

In 1579 Nicholas Throckmorton was suspended from the office of Chief Justice of Chester and fined. His beliefs had become a problem. He died the following year. But Francis now began to be involved in Catholic conspiracies against Elizabeth when he journeyed to France in 1580 with his brother Thomas and were recruited by the Catholic exiles Charles Paget and Thomas Morgan.

The latter was the Earl of Shrewsbury’s secretary and had made contact with Mary Queen of Scots who was in the earl’s custody. Morgan acted as the Scottish queen’s go between until 1572 when he was sent to the Tower for three years before going to France. He continued to correspond secretly with the queen. Throckmorton was not the only English Catholic that Morgan was involved with. He would be involved with the Babington plot in 1585.

When Francis returned to London from Paris he carried messages to Mary and to Bernadino Mendoza, Philip II’s ambassador in London. All the messages passed through the French embassy which was headed by Michelle de Castelnau.

One of Walsingham’s spies in the French embassy alerted him to Throckmorton’s involvement. Francis was arrested in November 1583 along with a list of Mary’s Catholic supporters and a letter to Mary that he was in the process of encoding. Nor was he alone in the Tower. Another man, George More, was also arrested but he arrived at an agreement with Walsingham and was released. Throckmorton, who wasn’t really a key player, was racked until he provided names and admitted that Mary was involved.

Mendoza could not be arrested because he had diplomatic immunity but in January 1584 he was invited to leave England. There would be no more Spanish Ambassadors in England during Elizabeth’s reign. Throckmorton was put on trial in May and execution on 10 July 1584. He was the only one of the plotters to be executed. His brother Thomas who was also involved managed to escape.

In many respects the plot was as inept as the earlier plans to topple Elizabeth and restore Catholicism. However, the 1571 Treason Act made it illegal to deny that Elizabeth was queen of England and since the 1570s trained Jesuit priests had been arriving in England encouraging the Catholic population to hold firm to their beliefs. In 1581 it had become more difficult for Catholics not to attend church on a Sunday. If they persisted the recusants, as they were called, could be fined £20 per month and imprisoned.

Mary’s imprisonment became ever more restrictive. She was sent to Chartley in Staffordshire. Walsingham and William Cecil drew up the Bond of Association. All its signatories agreed that if anyone attempt to usurp the throne or to assassinate the queen that they should be executed as should anyone who benefitted from the queen’s death i.e. Mary Queen of Scots. Mary signed the bond even though it was effectively her own death warrant.

Francis Throckmorton’s execution on 10 July 1584 coincided with the murder of William of Orange, the leader of the Dutch Protestants. He was assassinated by a Catholic. In part the Bond of Association was a response to the murder of the Dutch leader.

Elizabeth had stated that she did not wish ‘to make windows into men’s souls’. Her way had been a middle way but the Catholic plots and threats to her life and realm which had gradually escalated meant that men like Walsingham were increasingly convinced that Mary had to die.

The Ridolfi Plot

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When the Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland seized control of Durham in November 1569 it was the first time that a Catholic Mass had been celebrated for a decade.  So many people attended the Mass held in Durham Cathedral that it was almost impossible to get through the throng.

When the earls rallied their men at Durham they also marched under the banner of the Firve Wounds of Christ. More importantly at home, many people set about overturning communion tables and destroying protestant prayer books in their parish churches. At Sedgefield they made a bonfire from the Protestant prayer books.  The churchwarden, who had attended services regularly, fanned the flames! It was also an opportunity to have babies baptised and to get married the old way. This demonstrates that the majority of people in the north accepted official changes even if they did fully adopt those changes in their minds.  

For Queen Elizabeth the Northern Rebellion was part of the testing times dating from the arrival of her cousin Mary in 1568. Pope Pius V’s excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570. The crisis extended to 1572 when the Duke of Norfolk was finally executed because of his implication in the Ridolfi Plot which also sought to put Mary on the throne and which is usually regarded as the first of the major plots against Elizabeth.

When the pope excommunicated the queen, Parliament responded to the Papal Bull with a new Treason Act. It became treason to say that Elizabeth wasn’t the rightful queen and illegal tp publish the papal bull. Some Catholics left the country. Parliament gave them a year to return home or else their lands would be confiscated by the states. 

The key plotters in 1572 were Roberto Ridolfi, an Italian banker, The Spansih Ambadassador, de Spes and the Duke of Norfolk who was released from custody but still fancied being king of England. He was descended from George Duke of Clarence so had his own claim to the throne. In addition Mary was becoming increasingly desperate to escape custody so she was more willing to be involved as was her priest, Bishop Leslie.

Ridolfi had taken a very minor part in the northern uprising but his role as messanger carried him deeper into the new intrigue. He visted the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands carrying letters in coder with the aim of encouraging the Spanish army to invade England. A Spanish army, it was argued, would topple Elizabeth from power and place Mary on the throne, restoring Catholicsm to England. Mary agreed to the plan in May 1571.

From the Low Countries, Ridolfi carried messages from Queen Mary to Pope Pious V and to Phiip II of Spain in Madrid. He was able to travel as a banker without attracting too much attention. 

King Philip was not keen on the idea of assassinating Elizabeth but he was fed up of English privateers attacking Spanish ships carrying gold destined for the Netherlands to pay the army under the command of the Duke of Alva.

Fortunately for Elizabeth one of Queen Mary’s messengers, Charles Baillie, carrying a message to Ridolfi was intercepted by William Cecil’s agents at Dover. He eventually revealed the plot under torture. Bishop Leslie was arreseted and so were  two of Norfolk’s secretaries were also arrested. They provided helpful information. Leslie blamed Mary. 

Norfolk who was already in trouble with Elizabeth was returned to the Tower and convicted of treason.  He was executed on 2 June 1572. 

Ridolfi had the common good sense to remain in Italy (He died in France in 1612). Mary acknowledged that she sought financial advice from Ridolfi. She had dower lands in France.However, she absolutely denied trying to topple Elizabeth from power. Elizabeth did not want to execute her cousin so Mary was kept in closer confinement.  There were also diplomatic repercussions. The Spanish ambassador was expelled from England.

In England the crisis was a test of Elizabeth’s political and religious settlement. It also saw a hardening of attitudes – religious identities became more polarised with the passage of time. As the treason laws tightened, Catholics who had the money to do so went abroad or had to practise their faith in secret.

The Rising of the North – a quick run through.

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The rebellion took place in the autumn of 1569 -in all the crisis lasted for three months, possibly prompting William Cecil to say ‘I told you so!’ when the council considered that it was Mary’s presence in England that triggered the uprising.

The North had a reputation for recusancy – or Catholicism. In 1536 as the smaller monastic houses were being shut the Pilgrims of the North rebelled under a banner bearing the five wounds of Christ. The following year Bigod’s Rebellion was similarly associated with a demand for Henry VIII to return to Catholicism, restore the Mass and bring back the monasteries. The Rebellion of 1537 gave Henry the excuse to punish the rebels of the previous year. He sent an army north, imposed martial law and had 100s of rebels hanged virtually on their own doorsteps.

In 1569, the desire to place Mary Queen of Scots on the throne and restore the country to Catholicism wasn’t the only reason for the rebellion. Oh no – not by a long chalk.

  1. The northern earls were somewhat rattled by the administrative interference coming from London. They were not keen on William Cecil. Men like Northumberland and Norfolk also felt frozen out of power by Elizabeth’s choice of advisers.
  2. For reasons best known to themselves a group of powerful men including Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Arundel decided that in order to cancel out the threat posed by Mary that she should marry an English nobleman, convert to Protestantism and then the English could help rule Scotland and everything would be simply wonderful. No one quite plucked up the nerve to tell Elizabeth this cunning plan or that the proposed groom was Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk (think vain and ambitious and you’ll be in the right ball park).

The plot when it first began was not a Catholic plot! Mary’s half brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray is for the plan to begin with but after he’s had a think about it decided that he doesn’t really want Mary back in Scotland whatever her faith might be, and certainly not with Norfolk at her side. For the English earls loyal to Elizabeth who came up with the idea this was a killer blow – the game, which was never a good one if the truth was told, was over by the start of the autumn. Besides which they still haven’t told Elizabeth about their plan to marry Mary off to one of themselves …and no one wanted that particular job. So they probably all heaved a sigh of relief.

However, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk had also had some thinking time and he rather fancied a crown of some description…and besides which he resented William Cecil who he regarded as having too much power, which he thought ought more rightfully to have belonged to him….so asked the northern earls for support to marry Mary.

Robert Dudley, the queen’s favourite, recognising that things were getting out of hand told Elizabeth in September 1569 that Norfolk intended to marry Mary without the consent of the privy council – which was treason. Norfolk had also left court without royal permission. By October Howard, who really wasn’t rebel material and hadn’t done any serious planning before he asked his northern pals to lend a hand, was back in London and begging for mercy. Elizabeth had him sent to the Tower.

In the north, the Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland, who were both Catholics, were still plotting but not, it appears, actually doing very much. In reality although they had an alternative to Elizabeth in the form of Mary they really weren’t very organised and were a bit vague about their aims. They were hauled up in front of the president of the Council of the North who cleared them of any wrongdoing and sent them on their way.

In London, Elizabeth wasn’t so convinced about the loyalty of the two men, so decided that she wanted a little chat with Northumberland and Westmorland. Not to put too fine a point on it, the earls panicked. Not wanting to end up in the Tower with Norfolk the two terrified men finally…rebelled, raising about 4,600 men from among their tenantry and kinship networks. They marched south. One of their key demands was that Cecil had to go – And the second was that they wanted the Religious Settlement of 1559 overturned so that the Mass could be restored.

On 14 November, 1569, Westmorland and Northumberland captured Durham; restored it to Catholicism, threw out the Protestant hymn books, and celebrated the Mass. They also called on all Catholics to take up arms in the defence of the true faith. Fortunately for Elizabeth most of England’s Catholics ignored the demand. Even though Barnard Castle and the port at Hartlepool fell to the rebels – the whole affair was really rather restricted.

It should be noted that James Pilkington was made Bishop of Durham in 1561 and had imposed Protestantism on his diocese despite the fact that the locals really weren’t that keen on the idea. His attitude helped rubbed the earls up the wrong way and added to the opinion that London was interfering in the way things were done in the north.

In London there was some difficulty raising a force to resist the rebels. Finally the Earl of Sussex (who wasn’t a fan of Robert Dudley) was appointed Lord Lieutenant of the North, put an army together and headed north to restore order. Elizabeth had Mary moved for safe keeping to Coventry and by December it was all over. Mary Queen of Scots and King Philip II of Spain hadn’t backed the rebels and neither had the majority of the kingdom. Recognising that the game was up the earls fled to Scotland.

Elizabeth registered her irritation by having at least 400 rebels executed for treason. The Earl of Westmorland spent the rest of his life in exile and the Earl of Northumberland was executed in 1572 when he was captured and given back to the English.

It was the only armed rebellion of Elizabeth’s reign – discounting the Earl of Essex’s failed uprising at the end of her life. The lack of support at the time is an indicator of her popularity. Her response to the rebels indicated that she was a chip off the old block and not to be trifled with. And laws were passed that made any further Catholic threat punishable as treason. She also appointed Robert Dudley’s brother-in-law Henry Hastings 3rd Earl of Huntingdon as the President of the Council of the North after Sussex (who held the post from 1569 until his death in 1572.) Huntingdon was an active Puritan who spent the next 23 years keeping the north in check.

Katherine of York

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Katherine was one of Elizabeth of York’s younger sisters. Her parents were Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. When her father died in 1483 she was not yet four years of age but like her older siblings found herself in sanctuary at Westminster and declared illegitimate under the terms of Titulus Regius which accepted Bishop Stillington’s declaration that Edward was pre-contracted in marriage to Lady Eleanor Talbot (Butler) prior to his secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville.

Eventually Elizabeth Woodville came to terms with Richard III and her daughters returned to their nursery or to court. Richard promised that he would provide for his brother’s children but the marriage of an illegitimate daughter of a king would never be as sparkling as that of a princess.

However, in 1485 Fortune’s wheel took a downward turn for Richard on the battlefield at Bosworth and Henry Tudor became king. He had sworn to marry Katherine’s sister Elizabeth, and with no sign of the two sons of Edward IV, Titulus Regius was revoked and an order was issued for all copies to be destroyed. Katherine was once again a Plantagenet princess. Her care and education lay in the hands of her sister Elizabeth who married Henry uniting the houses of York and Lancaster but her marriage was in her brother-in-law’s gift.

Katherine and her sisters were valuable pawns in the marriage game. it was suggested at one time that she marry the Duke of Ross but nothing came of the proposal. It was essential so far as Henry was concerned that the princesses were either married out of the country to countries sympathetic to Henry Tudor or else they should be married to men he trusted at home. Henry trusted precious few people – which isn’t surprising given the number of rebellions he had to deal with once he became king.

In 1495, Henry thought he had found just the man – William Courtenay, heir to the Earl of Devon. She was packed off to Tiverton where she became a mother in 1496. In 1497 her husband rose further in royal favour when he helped to defeat Perkin Warbeck, a royal pretender. Two more children followed, a daughter Margaret and another son named Edward. Catherine could often be found at court with her sister and she took an active part in royal events including the betrothal celebrations of her niece Margaret Tudor to James IV of Scotland.

Unfortunately Courtenay’s favour was not to last. He was implicated in the Duke of Suffolk’s rebellion in 1502 and found himself incarcerated in the Tower – although evidence was lacking. Henry VII swiftly confiscated all his goods leaving Katherine and her three children dependent on Elizabeth of York, but at least they were still free and Courtney did not suffer a traitor’s death. His main problem was that he was married to a Plantagenet princess and Henry VII simply didn’t trust that he wouldn’t make an attempt on the throne. Poor Katherine faced difficult times which were compounded by the death of her youngest son while she was with Elizabeth. Without the funds to pay for Edward’s funeral, Katherine was reliant upon her sister’s kindness for the burial of the little boy and for her mourning robes.

The following year, it was Katherine who led the mourners to Westminster where Elizabeth of York was buried. The queen had died as a result of complications following childbirth. Katherine had lost the sister to whom she was closest and the source by which she was able to live. Now she had to turn to her father-in-law for help and to her young nephew Prince Henry who was fond of his aunt.

After Henry VII’s death, Katherine’s life changed for the better. She was welcome at court, her husband was finally freed from his prison and Katherine was granted estates by which the couple could live, although she had to sign away her rights to her share of the earldom of March. When Courtenay died in 1511, Katherine took a vow of celibacy so that no new husband could be found for her. She also set about ensuring that her son, Henry Courtenay, who was now ten years of age should inherit his father’s title. In 1512 she arranged for her daughter Margaret to marry the heir of the Earl of Worcester.

She came rarely to court after that but she did become Mary Tudor’s godmother in 1516. She did not know that her Plantagenet bloodline would send Fortune’s wheel turning once more when her nephew Henry VIII attempted to divorce his wife Katherine of Aragon. Her son Henry Courtenay would be executed for corresponding with another cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole. Her grandson Edward Courtenay would spend time in prison and because of his involvement in Wyatt’s Rebellion, which sought to topple Mary Tudor, be exiled from the country.

Katherine died on 15 November 1527 having spent the latter part of her life living in Tiverton.

Mercator projections – changing navigation

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Gerardus Mercator

Gerardus Mercator was a sixteenth century Belgian cartographer. In 1569 he created a world map based on straight lines of contstant course known as rhumb lines. He successfully presented a three dimensional object (the world) on a two dimension piece of paper. For the mathematical minded amongst you its a line that creates an arc on a constant course – I tend to think of it as cutting the world into sections straight through the middle of the planet like so many slices of cake at a constant angle (its not a right angle) but I have the feeling that I have horribly over simplified and may have become fixated on the cake part of the equation…but you get the gist.

Essentially Mercator used the rhumb lines which were constant to draw his charts and maps. He imagined the world, or a chart, as a piece of paper which was rolled into a scroll. This enabled him to link all the lines of latitude (east west lines) that we imagine going around the world. So far so good and on a small scale it works well. But a problem arises because the world is not a cylinder – it’s a sphere. This means that the lines of longitude (the north south lines) are distorted and if you draw countries based on the straightened out lines the countries at the top of the map like Antartica and Siberia look much bigger than they really are unless you draw the segments so that the top of the world looks like a series of fingers with white paper between them – which isn’t great if you’re trying to navigate somewhere. So having ruled that option out the Mercator projection makes Greenland looks huge – bigger than Africa and that folks is just not true! But Mercator was creating charts for sailors – the oceans needed to be right for them to make navigational decisions not so they could compare the relative size of land masses. Nor does it help that the world is ‘Old World’ centric – the sailors were setting off from the known world into the New World. Basically a world map based on Mercator Projections sees its priorities through sixteenth century eyes.

Essentially, anything past 70degrees latitude isn’t quite the right shape on a map created using Mercator’s projection. Corrections were made even in the sixteenth century but we’re not going there today because that’s more than enough for my brain to cope with in one go. Suffice it to say at the time it was an excellent step forward because it made navigation by mathematical means far easier.

Robert Dudley, calling himself the Duke of Northumberland and the Earl of Warwick was the first Englishman to create an atlas of the sea using mercator’s projections. It was published in 1646-1647 in Florence. It contained more than 100 beautifully engraved maps.

Sir Robert Dudley – son the the Earl of Leicester

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Probably Sir Robert Dudley, illegitimate son of the Earl of Leicester NPG 2613
© National Portrait Gallery, London

The handsome young man in the image has been on my mind rather a lot in the past year. During lockdown I wrote a historical biography about him for Pen and Sword which is due to be released in July and which can now be pre-ordered.

Robert Dudley was related to Queen Elizabeth I via his mother Lady Douglas Howard (yes she was a girl). His uncle was Lord Howard of Effingham and his father was the queen’s own favourite Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester – which is why the circumstances of his birth and upbringing are rather sketchy.

Douglas was eventually discarded – complete with conspiracy theory- in favour of Lettice Knollys who was the widow of the Earl of Essex not to mention the queen’s beautiful younger cousin. Whereas Douglas had been content to live a life in the shadows, Lettice was not – there was an awful lot of screaming, swearing and boxing of ears when the queen discovered that her favourite was married. Lettice unlike Douglas was never forgiven nor permitted to return to court. Young Robert came to hold a special place in Elizabeth’s heart reminding her as he did of the earl. Lettice was not so sentimental and tried to prevent Robert from entering into his inheritance.

Dudley loved the sea and he wanted nothing more than to be an explorer – his boarding school was close to the sea and his father and Uncle the Earl of Warwick were investors in foreign exploration as well as having vessels of their own. Robert was at Tilbury with his father and heard the queen’s famous speech as well as being introduced to her there. After the earl’s death Robert came to court in the hope that he would be permitted to go a voyage of exploration. Elizabeth wasn’t so keen on letting the son of her favourite run the risk of drowning but he sailed the Caribbean and went in search of El Dorado a few months before the rather better publicised adventures of Sir Walter Raleigh; he was at Cadiz with his step-brother the Earl of Essex and was knighted in the street in Plymouth. He also took a small part in the Earl of Essex’s rebellion against the queen.

The problem for Robert was that he came to believe that he was legitimate and more than anything else he wanted his father and uncle’s titles. When it came to a show down with James I he found that he was the son of the wrong father- James held Leicester conveniently responsible for his mother’s execution. Nor did it help that he was something of a sea dog with a reputation for privateering and gallantry which ran counter to James’ need for peace with Spain.

Dudley left England with his young beautiful cousin and started afresh in Florence leaving a wife and a family of daughters at home to fend for themselves. He carved a career working for the Dukes of Tuscany and had a large family (who had their own adventures.) His life was a tale of treachery, skullduggery, piracy, exploration and love – he was beloved by his cousin, his wife and by Queen Elizabeth I. By the end of his life gentleman were ticking him off their list of things to see whilst on the grand tour. His enduring achievement was a six volume sea atlas containing many beautiful engravings as well as charts using mercator projections which took twelve years to write and have printed. The sea and mathematics were his passion. When he died he left his collection of navigational instruments to the Duke of Tuscany.

He even had a small part to play in the English Civil War thanks to a pamphlet he wrote for King James when he was trying to charm his way back into favour so that he could return home – not sure how his two families would have coped with that particular scenario!

He deserves to be so much more than an unremembered footnote.

The book can be pre-ordered from Pen and Sword here:

https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-Son-that-Elizabeth-I-Never-Had-Hardback/p/21463

Blowing up the bed…the queen and the plotter’s mother.

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Elizabeth I – The Armada Portrait

In 1586 the younger brother of Sir Edward Stafford, the English ambassador in Paris, went to see the secretary of the French ambassador, a man called Leonard des Tappes. Stafford had a plan. Des Tappes informed his master – Chateauneuf.

Stafford explained that the plan was to blow up the queen’s bed with the queen in it. Unfortunately the queen was afraid of the dark and never slept without one of her ladies in waiting. Stafford’s own mother Lady Dorothy Stafford served Elizabeth faithfully. Although the job title Mistress of the Robes hadn’t yet been created it was what Dorothy did.

Lady Dorothy Stafford

The ambassador pointed out that the risk of blowing up Lady Dorothy was quite great. Stafford said that in that case it would probably be best to stab Elizabeth or possibly poison her.

Stafford was very swiftly arrested and escorted to the Tower as was Des Tappes. The ambassador was questioned and eventually admitted that he knew about the plot. What he should have done was to reveal to the Privy Council, to Cecil, to Walsingham…to any one who would listen really…that there was a dastardly plot afoot. He hadn’t blabbed which wrong footed him and effectively put him out of the complicated Anglo-French game of spies and intrigue for a significant month of two. He was placed under house arrest and thus unable to get anywhere near Mary Queen of Scots who was being quietly entrapped by Walsingham (Babbington Plot)

Elizabeth’s guard was doubled and she became much more wary of Mary Queen of Scots which was exactly what Walsingham hoped to achieve.

And Stafford, described in documents as “a lewd, discontented person?” His mother was very distressed at the thought that he might try to blow either her or the queen up so it’s unlikely that Elizabeth was aware that it was a ruse. Certainly he was in Walsingham’s pay as indeed had Moody been at various times.

The Spanish Ambassador wrote to Philip II telling the story. Apparently Lady Dorothy and her older son were not on good terms with little brother William but that William had pretended to be a Catholic and told the French that he would place a barrel of gunpowder in the bedroom and er, well – kerboom!

And whilst we’re on the subject of Dorothy Stafford her grandmother was Margaret Pole the 8th Countess of Salisbury – yes – that one. The daughter of the Duke of Clarence (the one drowned in a vat of Malmsey) married off to a member of Margaret Beaufort’s extended family and eventually executed without trial by Henry VIII in 1541 making her grand daughter Dorothy Stafford doubly related to some degree to Elizabeth I.

Margaret Pole Countess of Salisbury

Whitelock, Anna. The Queen’s Bed.

Dr Simon Forman – a Tudor version of Pepys…with magic and poison

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Simon Forman was born on December 30, 1552, near Salisbury. Unlike Shakespeare for whom there is no evidence of attending grammar school we have Forman’s account of his teacher and his education which began when he was seven. Unfortunately Simon’s father died suddenly and the boy had to leave school taking employment with a merchant who sold herbs and drugs.

Ten years later Simon left Salisbury, apparently after an argument with his master’s wife, and went to Oxford to live with his cousins. It appears that although he was eager to continue his education that he was unhappy in Oxford so when back to Salisbury where he became a teacher.

In 1579 things changed, Simon became a prophet! “I did prophesy the truth of many things which afterwards came to pass…the very spirits were subject unto me”. He also moved to London where presumably there was more need for doctoring, astrology and magic – remember these three things weren’t at odds with one another during the Tudor period. What made the real difference to Forman’s career as a doctor was that he remained in London during the plagues of 1592 and 1594. As a result he became known for his skills and the publication in 1595 of a book entitled Discourses on the Plague. He claimed that he was able to work with plague cases because he had caught and recovered from the disease.

Unfortunately the Royal College of Physicians took umbrage because he lacked their training. They described his herbal medicines as “magical potions.” In short they determined that he was a quack, fined him and told him not to call himself a doctor. Forman ignored them but within nine months a man died soon after taking one of his prescriptions and he found himself in prison. He finally gained a licence from Cambridge University in 1603 despite the fact that he had never studied there.

Forman wrote a lot of books and kept a diary which recorded his own life as well as his consultations with people from all ranks of society. He recorded some of his womanising activities even though he’d married Jane Baker in 1599.

William Lilly

We even know how Forman died thanks to another astrologer, William Lilly. In September of 1611, Forman apparently told his wife that he was about to make his last prophesy, namely that he would die the next Thursday evening which he did whilst rowing on the Thames.

That wasn’t the end of Forman though. Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset went on trial in 1616 for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1613. Whilst she was still Lady Essex married to Robert Devereux. Frances had gone with her friend Anne Turner to see Forman for potions that would keep Lord Essex at arm’s length and another to attract the attentions of James I’s favourite Robert Carr as he seemed a better financial and political bet than the spouse that she had been required to marry when they were both children. Forman was also accused of providing the poison which added to some tarts killed Sir Thomas Overbury whilst he was in the Tower.

Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset

Ultimately Forman’s papers ended up in the care of Elias Ashmole, the founder of the Ashmolean in Oxford and thus his diary which includes visits to the theatre to see Macbeth and The Winter’s Tale survive – though not without some dispute as to their veracity.

Kassell, Lauren (2007) Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician

Rowse, A.L. (1974) The Casebooks of Simon Forman

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