A secret that could have changed the course of English history... Acclaimed historian Paul Doherty offers an insightful interpretation of one of the most fascinating English monarchs in his masterful 'faction', The Secret Life of Elizabeth I. From master historian Paul Doherty comes a detective story with a difference: tracking down the real Elizabeth I, and capturing the atmosphere of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Written as a 'faction', The Secret Life of Elizabeth I interprets original sources through one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting. These illuminating 'recollections' form the book, uncovering everything from the passionate relationship between Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, to the stunning revelation that they had a son, Arthur Dudley, seized by the Spanish in 1587. What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: 'Doherty is a spellbinding storyteller with an exceptional grasp of history. This story is of the usual high standard we expect from him and utterly fascinating, I couldn't put it down ' 'This book is beyond fantastic. Paul Doherty brought Elizabethan times back to life here - making you feel you're there' ' Doherty proves that he is a scholar as well as a writer of novels'
Release date:
June 6, 2013
Publisher:
Headline
Print pages:
196
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Mysteries of Alexander the Great (as Anna Apostolou)
A MURDER IN MACEDON
A MURDER IN THEBES
Alexander the Great
THE HOUSE OF DEATH
THE GODLESS MAN
THE GATES OF HELL
Matthew Jankyn (as P C Doherty)
THE WHYTE HARTE
THE SERPENT AMONGST THE LILIES
Non-fiction
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF TUTANKHAMUN
ISABELLA AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF EDWARD II
ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE DEATH OF A GOD
THE GREAT CROWN JEWELS ROBBERY OF 1303
THE SECRET LIFE OF ELIZABETH I
THE DEATH OF THE RED KING
THE COURT OF HENRY VIII
HENRY VIII (1509-1547) – son of Henry VII, younger brother of Arthur.
MARY – Henry VIII’s sister, married for a short time to Louis XII of France, later Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.
THOMAS CRANMER (1489-1556) – Archbishop of Canterbury, presided over Henry VIII’s divorce, executed by Mary Tudor.
THOMAS WOLSEY (1473-1530) – Cardinal Archbishop of York, Chief Minister of Henry VIII until 1529 when he fell from power over Henry’s divorce from
Catherine of Aragon.
THOMAS CROMWELL (1485-1540) – Chief Minister after Wolsey, fell from power after Henry VIII’s inglorious marriage to Anne of Cleves.
CATHERINE OF ARAGON – Spanish Princess, Henry VIII’s first wife, died 1536.
ANNE BOLEYN – second wife of Henry VIII, executed in 1536.
THOMAS AND ELIZABETH BOLEYN – Anne’s parents.
MARY BOLEYN – Anne’s sister, mother of an illegitimate child by Henry VIII.
GEORGE BOLEYN, HENRY NORRIS, MARK SMEATON – alleged lovers of Anne Boleyn.
KATHERINE HOWARD – Henry’s fifth wife, executed for alleged adultery with Thomas Culpepper, 1542.
THE COURT OF EDWARD VI ANDMARY TUDOR (1547-1558)
EDWARD VI – son of Henry VIII and Lady Jane Seymour.
THOMAS SEYMOUR – brother to Jane Seymour, uncle of the King. He married Henry VIII’s widow Catherine Parr (who died in 1548). Entertained
aspirations of marrying the Princess Elizabeth, executed for treason, 1549.
EDWARD SEYMOUR – Duke of Somerset, brother of Jane Seymour, uncle of the King, Protector of the Realm after the death of Henry VIII, fell
from power 1552 and was executed.
JOHN DUDLEY – Earl of Warwick, Duke of Northumberland. He succeeded Somerset as Virtual Protector until the death of Edward VI in 1553.
After the young King’s death, Dudley married his son, Guildford, to Lady Jane Grey in an attempt to bypass the rights of Mary
Tudor. The plot failed and Dudley was sent to the block.
MARY TUDOR – daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Attempted to restore Catholicism, married Philip of Spain: her reign was
characterised by plots, rebellion and persecution. She died in 1558.
THE COURT OF ELIZABETH 1
ROBERT DUDLEY – son of the above-mentioned John Dudley. Lover of Queen Elizabeth, later created Earl of Leicester, a dominant force in
Elizabeth’s court and council until his death in 1588.
WILLIAM CECIL – Elizabeth’s chief minister, later created Lord Burghley. He virtually dominated Elizabeth’s politics until his death in
1598 when he was succeeded by his diminutive and cunning son, Robert, a powerful force in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign.
Robert Cecil survived the Queen’s death to become first minister of James I of England.
CHARLES HOWARD – of Effingham, Earl of Nottingham (1536-1624), held in great respect by Elizabeth and her successor James I.
JOHN WHITGIFT (Died 1604) – Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of Elizabeth’s death.
SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM (Died 1590) – Secretary of State under Elizabeth, responsible for security both at home and abroad.
THE SCOTTISH COURT
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (1542-1587) – daughter of James V, she married Francis II of France and, on his death, moved back to Scotland. She married the feckless
Henry Darnley, whose murder led to civil war. Mary fled to England in 1568 where she became Elizabeth’s prisoner and the focus
of many plots until her execution in 1587.
JAMES VI OF SCOTLAND (Later James I of England) – Mary’s only child who succeeded to the throne of England after Elizabeth, due to the work of men such as Robert Cecil and
Henry Howard. James was married to Anne of Denmark.
SIR THOMAS BODLEY (1545-1613) – scholar, diplomat, bibliophile, responsible for refounding the library of Oxford University.
1533
July: Robert Dudley born.
7th September: Elizabeth born to Henry VIII and his second queen, Anne Boleyn, proclaimed heir to the throne. State christening.
Elizabeth was put under the charge of Margaret, Lady Bryan. Since Henry’s first queen, the Catholic Catherine of Aragon, was
still alive, Catherine’s daughter, Mary, regarded Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn as bigamous and Elizabeth as illegitimate.
1536
Death of Catherine of Aragon. Anne Boleyn found guilty on multiple charges of adultery and incest and executed. Henry VIII
marries Jane Seymour, by whom he fathers a son, Edward. Elizabeth declared illegitimate, no longer heir to the throne.
1544
Mary and Elizabeth restored to the succession, after Edward.
1547
28th January: Death of Henry VIII, accession of Edward VI.
1547
Thomas Seymour marries the Queen Dowager, Catherine Parr, and soon begins a flirtation with her stepdaughter, the adolescent
Elizabeth.
1548
Catherine Parr sends the Princess away from her household.
7th September: Catherine Parr dies following childbirth.
1549
17th January: Thomas Seymour arrested on charges of treason, which included plotting to marry the Princess Elizabeth without
the consent of the Council. Elizabeth and her household are subjected to interrogations and “shameful slanders”.
20th March: Seymour executed. Elizabeth resident at Hatfield.
Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, seizes power.
1550
Robert Dudley marries Lady Amy Robsart.
1553
6th July: Edward VI dies.
10th July: Jane Grey is proclaimed Queen.
11th July: Mary proclaims herself Queen and is swept to power.
19th July: Dudley, Duke of Northumberland is executed.
8th September: under increasing pressure from her sister Queen Mary, Elizabeth attends Mass.
1554
25th January: Wyatt’s rebellion breaks out in protest at the marriage negotiations between Mary and Philip of Spain. It is
suppressed, resulting in the speedy execution of Jane Grey and her husband, Guildford Dudley, and the subsequent imprisonment and interrogation of Elizabeth in the Tower.
17th March: Elizabeth spends the next few weeks there [almost certainly without contact with Robert Dudley] until mid May,
when she begins her journey north to Woodstock. She remains under house arrest in the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield until
the following year.
25th July: Philip of Spain and Mary marry.
1558
17th November: Mary dies, childless. Elizabeth is proclaimed Queen in London on the same day; the news is delivered to her
at Hatfield by Robert Dudley.
1559
14th January: Eve of Coronation procession through the City.
15th January: Coronation.
10th February: Elizabeth replies to the House of Commons’ petition urging her to marry: “in the end, this shall be for me
sufficient that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin”. Nevertheless,
marriage negotiations are opened with a range of possible suitors: Philip of Spain, Archduke Charles of Austria, and Prince
Eric of Sweden. Elizabeth’s relationship with Robert Dudley deepens.
23rd April: Dudley dubbed Knight of the Garter. Gossip about his relationship with the Queen circulates.
1559/1560
Diplomatic circles are rife with news of Dudley’s ascendancy, about his wife’s ‘malady of the breast’ and that Dudley intends
to divorce or even murder her by poison. Lady Amy moves to different residences: Denchworth then to Cumnor Place, only thirty miles from Windsor where
the Queen, Dudley and Court gather for Elizabeth’s 27th Birthday.
8th September 1560: Lady Amy rises early and demands that she be left alone. She wants the ladies resident with her to go
to Abingdon Fair. They object. Dudley and Elizabeth apparently spend the weekend hunting and feasting.
8th September: Sudden death of Lady Amy. Dudley banished from court to Kew during the inquest. Although the coroner returns
a verdict of accidental death, many suspect Dudley of having her murdered (possibly with Elizabeth’s connivance) in order
to be free to marry the Queen.
8th to 18th September: A time of frenetic activity: Dudley dispatches Blount, his henchman, to Cumnor to discover what really
happened. The Mayor/Coroner of Abingdon sits with the jury: Dudley and Blount are in correspondence with them.
October: Throckmorton, Elizabeth’s ambassador in Paris, is busy warning Cecil of the real scandal being caused.
November: Interview between Elizabeth and Throckmorton’s envoy, Mr Jones.
1561
Arundel and others harass Dudley. They scrutinise the verdict of the Cumnor jury.
June: The Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, records how Elizabeth and Dudley, sharing a boat with him on the Thames, joked that
he himself might conduct a marriage ceremony between them on the spot.
1562
Queen dangerously ill with smallpox. (The Tamworth episode). From now on she is under renewed pressure to marry both from
her Council and the Commons.
1564
The Scots ambassador, James Melville, visits the English court. His account of his conversations with the English Queen concerning
the rival accomplishments and the appearance of Mary, Queen of Scots, lays the foundation for some of the later stories of
the rivalry between the two. He witnesses Dudley’s investiture as Earl of Leicester, during which the Queen fondles Leicester’s
neck.
1566/1567
John Appleyard, Lady Amy’s half-brother, supported by Norfolk (who has quarrelled violently with Dudley) begins to hint that
he is not happy with the Cumnor jury verdict. Appleyard is imprisoned and interrogated by members of the Privy Council. He
makes a full submission.
1569
Northern Rebellion quashed. Discovery of the Ridolfi Plot leads to the imprisonment of Appleyard.
1573
Sir Francis Walsingham is made Principal Secretary of State. He begins to develop an elaborate intelligence network.
1575
Leicester entertains Elizabeth lavishly at Kenilworth, perhaps in a final bid to marry her.
1578
Leicester marries Lettice Knollys secretly.
1585
‘Leicester’s Commonwealth’ published, an attack on Leicester by an anonymous Catholic propagandist, which claims that, in
September 1560, Leicester had his wife murdered by Richard Verney and Anthony Forster.
1587
1st February: Elizabeth signs the death warrant of Mary, Queen of Scots.
8th February: Mary, Queen of Scots, is executed at Fotheringay. Elizabeth claims her secretary, Davison, sent the warrant
without her consent.
1587/1588
Sir Francis Englefield writes to Philip of Spain regarding Arthur Dudley. The English agent in Spain, known as B.C., writes
about the same to Cecil in England.
1588
12th July: The Spanish Armada sets sail.
September: Death of Robert Dudley.
1598
Death of William Cecil, Lord Burghley.
1601
8th February: Essex sent to the Tower for treason.
25th February: Essex executed.
1603
February: Elizabeth falls ill, soon after the funeral of her old friend, the Countess of Nottingham. Some time in March the
Coronation ring is filed from the Queen’s hand.
24th March: Death of the Queen at Richmond Palace.
28th April: Funeral of the Queen, Westminster Abbey.
My Mistress is dead. The Queen, Elizabeth of England, is no more. Glorious Gloriana has gone to her eternal glory, so swiftly,
like the darting of a martin bird from beneath the eaves of my house. Yet, God be my witness, her going was shrouded in mystery.
Her Majesty, being in her 69th year, was Queen – and a great one – reigning for 45 years, longer than anyone, even more so
than her mother, God assoil her, who never survived four. In her last years Her Majesty grew conscious of her age and appearance.
Everyone at Court, myself included, knew how it pleased the Queen very much for it to be seen, for it to be thought, and for
it to be told, that she looked very young. At our final Christmas, when the Court was in its last blaze of glory, Mr Secretary
Cecil presented her with a jewel set with rubies and topaz to match, as he told me, “the life of Her Majesty’s eyes and the
colour of her lips”. False flattery aside, the Queen was still very majestic in her final years. Her face was oblong, fair
but wrinkled, her eyes were small, jet-black and pleasant, her nose a little hooked, her lips narrow, and her teeth black;
her hair was of auburn colour, but false. Upon her head she often wore a small crown. Her bosom was all uncovered, as we English
ladies have it, until we marry. My Mistress’ hands were slender, her fingers rather long and her stature neither tall nor
low. Her air was stately and her manner of speech mild. She would speak very graciously, first to one then to another, and her command of tongues was remarkable. She could converse in French and Italian, being also skilled in Latin
and Greek. She was mistress of Spanish and Dutch. Foreign envoys could converse most easily with her. Whoever spoke to her
must kneel. Now and then she’d raise some with her hands. Wherever she turned her face, everyone fell to their knees. I was
no different. In her private chamber, she would crouch by me and whisper, one hand on my shoulder or knee. In public, however,
she was the Great Queen, the Heart of the Blaze, the Source of the Glory, whilst I was a mere taper flickering before the
Imperial presence. I must assure you of this, even to the end, despite passing moods, my Mistress’ wits remained razor sharp.
She could politic with the best but, as she once told me, she had no time for her brother princes whom she dismissed as “Antichrists
of Ingratitude”. To all her Court she was Beauty Incarnate, endowed with eternal youth. Woe betide any man, be he priest or
lay, who broke that rule. Master Rudd, Bishop of St David’s, found this to his cost when he preached the Lenten Sermon to
the Queen in her Royal Chapel at Richmond during her 63rd year, the spring of our Lord, 1596. The good Bishop took as his
text that verse from the 90th psalm, “So teach us to number our days. . .”, and proceeded to preach about sacred, mystical
numbers; how three was the number of the Trinity, seven of the Sabbath, and seven times nine, 63, the Great Climacteric Year.
The Queen, as usual, listened to this sermon in her private closet behind a screen. She seethed like a panther in its cage.
After the service was finished, it was customary for her to open the closet window and thank the preacher. But, Lord be praised,
on this occasion, Her Majesty winked at me, opened the window and sharply declared that Master Bishop should keep his arithmetic
to himself whilst all he’d proved was that the greatest clerks were not the wisest men. “God’s teeth,” she swore to me later,
“Bishops should preach and leave such numbers to God.” Her Majesty certainly entertained dreams of reigning long and her Court
favoured her in this. On one occasion, Sir John Stanhope the Vice-Chamberlain, one of Master Secretary’s creatures, a fawning greyhound of a man, presented
Her Majesty with a piece of gold, big as an angel, dimly marked with some small, mysterious characters. Sir John informed
me, so I could tell the Queen, how an old woman in Wales had bequeathed it to Her Majesty. He alleged the same old woman,
by virtue of this piece of gold, had lived to over one hundred years. Now the old woman wished Her Majesty to hold the gold
and live as long. My Mistress truly believed Sir John had bought it from some Cheapside chapman but told me to keep it in
her special coffer, just in case. Be that as it may, in the January of the year of our Lord 1603, the Queen and I journeyed
from Whitehall to Richmond. The Queen did not like Whitehall. I reminded her how she had been warned by the necromancer, John
Dee, to be wary of that palace, while she and I always regarded Richmond as a warm winter box for her old age. My Mistress
was in low spirits. At Whitehall she had premonitions, so she claimed, of an impending tragedy and shared them with her closest
friends. Now, I saw none of these portents. I cannot say that, during these dreadful nights, the front of the heavens was
lit by fiery shapes or blazing cressets. However, the Queen told Lady Southwell, with whom she was very private and confident,
how one night, just before she left Whitehall, she had a vision of her own body, lean and fearful, in the glow of a mysterious
fire. I cannot comment on the truth of this. Sometimes I was with Her Majesty, seated before a roaring fire in some wainscoted
chamber with the wind rattling at the casement and the candlelight flickering like will-o-the-wisps in the dark. Other times,
I was not. My Mistress did not wish to overtax me and would order me to withdraw. Certes, whilst she was alive, what she said
to one of her ladies, would not be repeated to another. Whilst, as regards gossip between ourselves – well, we were like cloistered
nuns with a tight rein on our tongues and a lock about our lips. On occasion, . . .
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