The seminar takes place on 3 February 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

Political discourse is rooted in speech, and students of modern parliamentary politics have a wealth of material to draw on – Hansard, TV broadcasts of debates, newspaper reports, even WhatsApp messages. The picture for the House of Lords in the reign of Elizabeth I is very different. The principal source, the Lords’ Journal, was conceived by the Tudor clerks quite narrowly as a record of business transacted and decisions reached, but with a veil drawn over the accompanying discussions, which were, after all, meant to be confidential.

A typical page in the manuscript Journal has the date of the current sitting at the top, the date of the next sitting at the bottom, and three columns down the rest of the page; of these, two are used for recording which bishops and lay peers attended that day, while the third column, on the right-hand side, is reserved for any actual proceedings. (Not until 1597 was it thought necessary to allocate more than one page per sitting, to allow for a more detailed account of events.)

The final column might list bills read, and the verdicts agreed on them, reports of conferences with the Commons or audiences with the queen, or such mundane matters as apologies for absence. Or it might not – for some sittings no business is listed at all, creating the impression that the peers were twiddling their thumbs or perhaps nodding off to sleep.

By comparison, the Commons’ Journal, augmented in the latter years of Elizabeth’s reign by several private diaries, is full of summarised speeches, disputes and other incidents which give a good sense of the moods, initiatives and objectives of the lower House. Unsurprisingly, historians have tended to rely on these sources to reconstruct the political narrative of the Elizabethan parliaments, in the process exaggerating the importance of the Commons at the expense of the poorly reported Lords.

In recent decades some effort has been made to correct this imbalance, utilising a variety of different approaches. During the 1980s and 1990s the Lords’ management of legislation was examined in great detail by Sir Geoffrey Elton and David Dean. In conjunction with their research, T. E. Hartley published three volumes of material supplementing the Lords’ and Commons’ Journals, including a few actual speeches made by bishops or lay peers. Around the same time, a ground-breaking study of the 1559 Parliament by Norman Jones demonstrated how manoeuvrings in the Lords could be illuminated through reports from outside Parliament, close reading of the chronology of events at Westminster, and careful examination of the wider political context.

What was missing from these endeavours was a detailed understanding of the individuals who sat in the upper House, a gap in our knowledge which is now close to being filled by the History of Parliament’s project on the Elizabethan Lords. Since 2020 nearly 250 new biographies have been researched and written, reconstructing the lives of the bishops and lay peers who participated in Elizabeth’s 13 parliamentary sessions, identifying their political networks and personal objectives at Westminster, and pondering the place that Parliament occupied in their wider careers.

In following these men’s careers in the Lords over several decades, it has become possible to develop a sense of what ‘normal’ business may have involved and the routine patterns by which things got done. That in turn allows us to observe anomalies in those patterns, and to consider the political forces which operated in those grey areas for which we have only patchy documentation.

However, it is still enormously helpful to pursue these questions in a scenario where we have enough contextual data to speculate with some confidence on how individual peers may have behaved. Accordingly, the focus of this seminar is the Parliament of 1584-5, and specifically the struggles over religion that gave this session much of its flavour.

A quarter of a century after the Elizabethan church settlement of 1559, English Protestantism had reached another crossroads. The first generation of Elizabethan bishops, many notable for their evangelical fervour, were mostly dead, their hopes of continuing reformation disappointed. Their successors, headed by the recently appointed archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, were mostly content to defend what was now the ecclesiastical status quo, despite the poor quality of many clergy, and numerous abuses in appointments and funding.

Indeed, upon becoming archbishop, Whitgift had attempted to clamp down on Protestant clergy who refused to conform to those aspects of the Elizabethan settlement that seemed to hark back to Catholicism. In the process, Whitgift incurred the wrath of Elizabeth’s two most powerful advisers, Lord Burghley and the earl of Leicester, who believed that the primate’s tactics would weaken the Protestant cause at a time when English Catholic numbers were rising again and the threat of war with Catholic Spain was also increasing. Despite enjoying the continuing support of the queen, Whitgift was forced to scrap his plans. Even so, when Parliament met in November 1584, the archbishop came under attack again, this time from the fervently Protestant House of Commons, which petitioned for major reform of the Church, and introduced numerous bills to the same end.

But what of the Lords? When this Parliament opened, only 11 out of a possible 25 other bishops were present to offer the primate their support. On the face of things Whitgift was isolated and on the back foot. He continued to face hostility from Burghley and Leicester, and three of the Commons’ provocative bills were passed by the peers, before being vetoed by Elizabeth.

The bare facts look bad – but they are not the full picture. By exploring the group dynamics of the bishops in 1584-5, and drawing on contextual documentation both from the Commons and from outside Parliament, this paper will argue that Whitgift stood his ground, gathering his closest allies around him, and in the process consolidating the Church hierarchy’s revised priorities. Moreover, although Burghley and Leicester were broadly sympathetic to the demands of the Commons, they also knew that they could not afford to oppose the queen’s own views on the Church too strongly, and were therefore obliged to moderate their attacks on the archbishop. That sense of royal protection for the bishops in turn sheds light on their status within the Lords during Elizabeth’s reign.

The seminar takes place on 3 February 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

PMH

Further reading:

G.R. Elton, The Parliament of England 1559-1581 (1986)

David Dean, Law-making and Society in Late Elizabethan England (1996)

T. E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I (3 volumes, 1981-95)

Norman L. Jones, Faith by Statute (1982)

In 1760 Thomas Worsley of Hovingham, a close friend of George III’s favourite, the earl of Bute, penned a letter to his friend and patron insisting on his family’s antiquity. In their possession, he claimed, were ‘authentic documents of coming over with William the Conquerer’. Worsley’s concern to prove that he was no johnny-come-lately had originally been seen when he was appointed to the privy chamber back in the 1730s, but he was still clearly concerned to emphasise his suitability at the time of his appointment as surveyor general of the king’s works (thanks to Bute).

He had nothing to worry about. The Worsleys were an old family, who could trace their ownership of estates in Lancashire to at least the 14th century. Another branch of the family, ultimately settled in Hampshire (and on the Isle of Wight), produced a parliamentary dynasty of their own.

Supporting Thomas Worsley’s assertion of descent from a companion of William the Conqueror were accounts in ‘ancient chronicles’ recording the family’s progenitor as the giant Sir Elias de Workesley, who had followed Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, on ‘crusade’. The 1533 Visitation of Lancashire referred to this character as Elias, surnamed Gigas on account of his massive proportions, and suggested he was a contemporary of William I.

It took some time for the northern Worsleys to establish themselves but by the 15th century a number of distinguished figures had already emerged. The marriage of Seth Worsley to Margaret Booth linked the family to two archbishops of York, Margaret’s uncles, William Booth (archbishop 1452-64) and Lawrence Booth (1476-80). Their son, William, later became dean of St Paul’s Cathedral and towards the end of his life became caught up in the Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, for which he was sent to the Tower.

William Worsley may have conspired against Henry VII, but by the 16th century other members of the family had managed to establish themselves on the fringes of the Tudor court in the retinue of the earl of Derby and it seems to have been thanks to the 3rd earl (Edward Stanley) that Sir Robert Worsley was returned to Parliament in 1553 as knight of the shire for Lancashire. Nine years earlier, he had been knighted at Leith in recognition of his services in the English army. Worsley’s return in 1553 seems to have been somewhat accidental, only occurring as a result of a by-election after one of the other recently elected members had declared himself too ill to serve. By becoming one of the Lancashire knights of the shire, Worsley was following in the footsteps of his father-in-law, Thurstan Tyldesley, who had been elected to the same seat in 1547.

Sir Robert’s son, another Robert, continued the family tradition of following the Derbys by attaching himself to the retinue of the 4th earl (Henry Stanley). A passionate Protestant, as keeper of the gaol at Salford he had numerous recusant (Catholic) prisoners in his care, whom he tried to persuade away from their faith by organising time dedicated to reading from the Bible. How successful that policy was is uncertain, but he found the burden of his role intolerable and by the end of his life he had lost all of his principal estates in Lancashire. Like his father, he seems to have owed his election to Parliament to his patron, Derby, though in his case he was returned for the Cornish borough of Callington.

The best part of a century passed before another Worsley was returned to the Commons. In the interim, having lost their original estates, the family had relocated to Hovingham, near Malton in North Yorkshire. The manor had been acquired by Sir Robert Worsley in 1563 from Sir Thomas Gerard, and the connection was reinforced by the subsequent marriage of the younger Robert to Gerard’s daughter, Elizabeth. In 1685, it was one of the Hovingham Worsleys, Thomas (great-great-grandson of Robert and Elizabeth), who succeeded in being returned for Parliament, where he proved to be ‘totally inactive’.

Inactive he may have been, but this did not prevent him from making his views clear to the lord lieutenant when he was faced with the ‘Three Questions’, framed to tease out opposition to James II’s policies. In response to them he insisted that he would ‘go free into the House, and give my vote as my judgment and reason shall direct when I hear the debates’. This was not at all the response required by the king’s officials, and he was removed from his local offices. He regained them shortly after at the Revolution but it was not until 1698 that he was re-elected to Parliament, again for Malton. In 1712 he was removed from local office again, this time probably on account of his Whiggery.

The older Thomas lived to see the Hanoverian accession, which he doubtless welcomed. Three years before that his son (another Thomas) had been returned to Parliament as one of the Members for Thirsk, after failed attempts in 1708 and 1710. This Thomas Worsley also seems to have played little or no role in the Commons. This was perhaps ironic, given that his marriage to Mary Frankland linked him directly to Oliver Cromwell. Efforts by his father to secure him a government post through the patronage of the earl of Carlisle came to nothing.

The trio of Thomas Worsleys in Parliament was completed by the election for Orford of the second Thomas’s son in 1761. It was this Thomas Worsley, the friend of Bute, who had been so concerned to prove his family’s antiquity. Although he was to sit first for Orford and then (like his forebear, Robert) for Callington, Parliament was not Thomas’s passion. Rather, his interests lay in equestrianism, collecting and architecture. His true claim to fame was rebuilding the family seat at Hovingham, creating the elegant Georgian house that endures to this day, but his dedication to horseflesh was equally strong and he seems to have looked out for suitable mounts for his contacts, the king among them. Writing to Sir James Lowther, 5th bt. (future earl of Lonsdale) in 1763, he mentioned trying out one of Lowther’s horses in front of the king and queen. They liked the animal, but concluded it was not ‘strong enough to carry [the king’s] weight’. [HMC Lonsdale, 132]

Thomas Worsley died in December 1778 at his London residence in Scotland Yard. [Morning Chronicle, 15 Dec. 1778] Just a few months before, he had been contacted by the duke of Ancaster, the lord great chamberlain, requiring him to see to the repair of the House of Lords, which was reported to be ‘in bad condition’. [PA, LGC/5/1, f. 279] By then, he was probably in no fit state to oversee the work.

This Thomas seems to have been the last member of his family to show much interest in national politics until the 20th century. His eldest son, another Thomas, had died four years before him, leaving the inheritance to a younger son, Edward. In 1838 Edward’s nephew, Sir William Worsley, was created a baronet but his interests appear to have been largely confined to his immediate surroundings in North Yorkshire. The 4th baronet was a talented cricketer, serving as captain of Yorkshire, as well as president of the MCC. It was his son, Sir Marcus Worsley, 5th bt., who finally broke the family duck and returned to Parliament, first as MP for Keighley and latterly for Chelsea. In November 1969 he presented a bill to encourage the preservation of collections of manuscripts by controlling and regulating their export. His other chief preoccupation was as one of the church commissioners.

The late duchess of Kent was Sir Marcus’s younger sister. She continued the family’s long tradition of interest in sport (in her case tennis) and quiet dedication to their locality.

RDEE

Further reading
Estate and Household Accounts of William Worsley, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral 1479-1497 (Richard III & Yorkist Trust and London Record Society, 2004), ed. H. Kleineke and S. Hovland
VCH Yorkshire North Riding, volume one
Visitation of Lancashire and a part of Cheshire, 1533, ed. William Langton (Chetham Soc. 1876)

In 21st-century Britain, clothes are seen as a means of expressing our individuality. Distinctions between smart and casual dress have become blurred, and anyone can buy designer outfits, provided they have enough money. That was not the case four or five centuries ago. Back then, clothing was seen as a key marker of social status, and it was government policy to preserve clear visual distinctions. Poor people were expected to dress cheaply, in linen and coarse woollen cloth, while the most commonly available dyes were drab browns and greys, or pale blues and pinks.

More vibrant colours, such as bright red, deep blue, or purple, were harder to produce, and therefore the preserve of the rich and powerful. Similarly, the finest cloth was made of silk thread, which had to be imported, and was very expensive. Silk might be woven into satin, velvet, brocade, damask or taffeta. For the ultimate in luxury, silk was blended with gold or silver thread, which in Tudor times was also manufactured abroad. Cloth of gold or silver might have a smooth metallic sheen – as seen in Holbein’s portrait of Sir Henry Guildford – or be woven with some sections in relief to create patterns (called tissue). Another approach was to interweave coloured silk with gold or silver threads to produce a sparkly fabric known as tinsel.

These top-quality fabrics were beyond the reach of most of the population, but provided scope for competition within its higher echelons. Wealthier members of the lower classes might also try to dress above their accustomed status as a means of social climbing. To regulate the former, and guard against the latter, Acts of Parliament were brought in from the mid-14th century. Known as sumptuary laws, these statutes dictated which fabrics and adornments were permissible for men of different ranks and income levels. Ostensibly, they were intended to encourage the use of home-produced cloth, and to discourage poorer people from spending beyond their means. But in reality their primary concern was to ensure that only the most privileged classes had access to the most exclusive materials.

The Acts were very precise in their stipulations. Henry VIII’s first such legislation, promulgated in 1510, specified that only the royal family might wear cloth of gold made with purple silk, and that no man below the rank of baron could dress in tinsel. Imported furs were banned for anyone below the status of gentleman (except university graduates, and landowners worth at least £10 p.a.). Another Act of 1515 ruled that only peers, and the sons of dukes and earls, were allowed clothes embroidered with gold, silver or silk thread, while men below the rank of knight were barred from wearing gold chains or bracelets. A subsequent Act of 1555, during Mary I’s reign, denied silk nightcaps to anyone with a landed income of less than £20 p.a. These rules were underpinned by quite stiff penalties: forfeiture of non-compliant garments, and fines of 3s. 4d. a day for the duration of the offence.

It speaks volumes about the essentially patriarchal nature of Tudor society that no regulation of women’s dress was attempted until the mid-1570s, the female population being exempted from statutory oversight prior to this. It’s tempting to speculate that Elizabeth I was worried about competition from her subjects. At this juncture the use of cloth of gold, cloth of gold of tissue, and sable fur was prohibited for anyone below the rank of countess. To wear sleeves trimmed with gold or silver ornamentation, one needed to be at least the wife of a knight. Only women who were at least knights’ daughters were permitted taffeta petticoats.

The sumptuary laws were not totally inflexible. Further exceptions were made for the robes of office customarily worn by judges and mayors, and for clerical vestments. Other special categories included heralds, minstrels and actors, all of whom were allowed to dress above their station during public appearances. Nor did the government generally attempt to regulate fashion trends, though the wide, padded breeches and elaborate ruffs characteristic of Elizabethan male dress intermittently came in for criticism. The primary objective was to preserve an ordered society, where everyone could tell at a glance who they were dealing with, and where people knew their place.

While it’s clear that the laws were largely ignored, in broad terms they conformed to popular expectations. It was taken for granted that peers of the realm would put on a show. In the later 16th century Henry Stanley, 4th earl of Derby, routinely sported a gold chain and two diamonds, and was also famous for his golden breeches. Conversely, one of his contemporaries, Henry Howard, 2nd Viscount Howard of Bindon, scandalized polite society by periodically appearing in public dressed like a peasant. Accordingly, the sumptuary laws, by prescribing the dress appropriate to specific ranks, helped to define the terms of competition at the highest levels.

We can get a good sense of the sartorial tastes of England’s elite from their portraits, in which the costumes are generally depicted with care and precision. Such paintings are also likely to show their subjects in their most expensive outfits, such as they might have worn at court. There the benchmark was of course set by the monarch. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in particular were famous for their magnificent clothes. The so-called ‘Ermine portrait’ of Elizabeth (ermine was both a mark of status and a symbol of virginity) clearly demonstrates the aesthetic encouraged by the sumptuary laws. Here the queen is a vision of costly silks, gold and silver embroidery, and lavish and abundant jewellery.

However, there was more than one way to create an impact within the legislative guidelines. In 1590 the 2nd earl of Essex, the queen’s favourite, was in temporary disgrace following his marriage to Frances Sidney. In a public show of penitence, he appeared at that year’s Accession Day tilt at court ‘in sable sad’, sporting black armour. Nevertheless, that was topped by a spectacular black surcoat richly embroidered with silver thread, pearls and gemstones. Having demonstrated that he was literally an ornament to the court, Essex was soon back in favour.

By the closing years of the 16th century the sumptuary laws had in fact run their course. Although Elizabethan parliaments saw more than half-a-dozen government attempts to update the legislation, only one measure was passed, a short-lived Act in 1563 banning the purchase of expensive foreign clothing on credit. While the House of Lords was happy to entrench peers’ existing privileges, Members of the Commons proved increasingly resistant to further restrictions on their own sartorial choices. The queen was instead obliged to issue a string of proclamations enforcing or modifying the sumptuary statutes. Her successor, James I, all but abandoned this struggle, and instead tried to profit from the manufacture of gold and silver thread, which had by now reached England. (Famously, his attempt to introduce silkworms to the country failed when the wrong kind of mulberry tree was employed.)

Even so, the cultural impact of the sumptuary laws lingered into the 17th century. When Richard Sackville, 3rd earl of Dorset needed an outfit for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine in 1613, he opted for this extraordinary ensemble, which featured a doublet of cloth of silver embroidered in gold and black silk, a black velvet cloak embellished with gold and silver, and silk stockings similarly decorated with gold, silver, and black silk thread. In the light of such unashamed excess, it is no surprise that the last sumptuary bills debated by Parliament, during the 1620s, were promoted by puritans intent on banning the elitist luxury which the old legislation had encouraged.

PMH

Further reading:

Eleri Lynn, Tudor Fashion (2017)

Roy Strong, The Elizabethan Image (2019)

Anna Reynolds, In Fine Style: the Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion (2013)

Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England (2005)

A biography of the 3rd earl of Dorset features in The House of Lords 1604-29 ed. Andrew Thrush (2021). Biographies of the 2nd earl of Essex, 4th earl of Derby and 2nd Viscount Howard are in preparation as part of our project on the House of Lords 1558-1603.

In July 1599 the mayor and aldermen of Hull complained to the Privy Council that five ships from their town had been seized by Christian IV, king of Denmark-Norway, while fishing near ‘Wardhouse’ (Vardøhus), a fortress off Vardo, on the north Norwegian coast. Their crews had been placed in irons, and some of the seamen were allegedly tortured. Four of the ships were detained as prizes, while the fifth was sent back to England with a message that no-one was to fish in Danish-Norwegian waters without licence. Hull’s governors were incensed. Even though Hull’s ships had long fished off the Norwegian coast, many of the town’s merchants now faced financial ruin. Moreover Christian’s aggressive actions, if left unchecked, threatened the English trade route to Muscovy. The harsh treatment meted out to the Hull fishermen was undoubtedly due to the fact that Christian IV was then trying to assert his authority over northern Norway. He was engaged in a territorial dispute with Muscovy, which claimed that Vardo and the surrounding Lapp country belonged to the Tsar.

Naturally both the queen, Elizabeth I, and the Privy Council sympathized with Hull’s complaint and agreed to intervene. However, as neither England nor Denmark employed a resident ambassador in the other’s capital, it took several months and the dispatch of a special ambassador to Copenhagen to arrange a meeting to discuss the dispute. Eventually, over the winter of 1599/1600, it was agreed that commissioners from both countries would meet on neutral ground the following Easter. The place chosen was Emden, a quasi-autonomous city in north-western Germany which enjoyed the protection of the neighbouring Dutch Republic. In March 1600, with the conference now imminent, Elizabeth selected three delegates to attend this conference. Unsurprisingly, two were civil lawyers experienced in maritime law, Dr Christopher Parkins and Richard Swale. However, the third figure chosen, and the nominal head of the mission, was a leading churchman, Richard Bancroft, the 45-year old bishop of London.

Perhaps no one was more astonished by Bancroft’s selection for this mission than Bancroft himself. Quite apart from the fact that he had never been abroad and lacked both diplomatic experience and expertise in the civil law, he was the first bishop chosen to serve on a diplomatic mission since Thomas Thirlby, bishop of Ely, had been included on the delegation which negotiated the 1559 treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis. Since her accession in 1558, Elizabeth had broken with the practice of the past and largely restricted prelates to their ecclesiastical duties. The only exceptions to this rule were her appointment of Thomas Young, archbishop of York as lord president of the council in the North in 1564 and the addition of John Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, to the Privy Council in 1586.

Elizabeth’s reasons for choosing Bancroft remain unknown. She may have thought that, as a Protestant bishop with well-known anti-Calvinist leanings, he would be acceptable to the Lutheran Danes. However, why choose a bishop at all? Would not a nobleman have been preferable? The answer to this question is probably ‘yes’. But by the late 1590s the queen was having difficulty in finding noblemen capable of performing diplomatic missions, as many peers were either not up to the task or simply lacked the means to subsidise the cost of an official embassy. Bancroft, by contrast, was shrewd and capable, the bane of radical puritans. Moreover, he had neither wife nor children to support and an annual income of more than £1,100 at his disposal. Elizabeth’s only concern was not the depth of Bancroft’s pockets but his notorious thriftiness. For that reason, she reminded him that, as leader of the Emden mission, he would be expected to ‘keep a bountiful house’.

Bancroft was not in the least bit pleased to have been selected for this mission and initially pleaded inexperience and a ‘tertian ague’ (malaria) to avoid having to go. However, once it became clear the queen would not budge, he threw himself into the task with his customary vigour. Determined to make a good impression, he decided to take with him a 40-strong entourage and a large amount of plate, which he borrowed, with the queen’s permission, from the Jewel House. He also got himself admitted to membership of Doctors’ Commons, the professional body to which all leading civil lawyers belonged, presumably in order to improve his credentials in the eyes of the Danes.

Bancroft and his two fellow commissioners sailed from Gravesend on 18 April 1600. However, a persistent easterly wind meant that as late as the 29th they were still at Queenborough, in north Kent. By the time they reached Emden on 10 May the Danish commissioners were on the point of departure, their commission being about to expire, having awaited the English delegation for more than a month. Thoroughly angry, the Danes refused to confer with the newly arrived delegates unless the English rowed out to their ship, an offer which Bancroft and his colleagues rejected as humiliating. Eventually the English were forced to relent, whereupon one of their number, perhaps Bancroft himself, took to the water. On seeing this the Danes immediately spread sail and departed.

In the immediate aftermath of this fiasco, the English delegates were obliged to return home empty-handed. As a result, the governors of Hull had no choice but to renew their suit for redress later that same year. The queen did not blame Bancroft for the ignominious failure of his mission, though, but rather thanked him for undertaking the journey.

In the aftermath of this, his first and only diplomatic mission, Bancroft managed to retrieve something from the wreckage. During his short time at Emden, he had succeeded in cultivating some useful contacts in the town, where he was evidently wined and dined. Consequently, over the next few years, he was able to keep the queen’s chief minister, Sir Robert Cecil, informed of events in north-west Germany, a not unimportant service in an era when reliable news was often in short supply. Bancroft may have derived a further benefit from his trip to Emden. According to the newsletter-writer John Chamberlain, a well-informed observer, he did not return to England with his two colleagues but instead travelled alone and incognito through the United Provinces. This raises the intriguing but hitherto unconsidered possibility that Bancroft, who liked to study his religious enemies up close, used the opportunity of this unplanned adventure to witness Dutch Calvinist practices at first hand. Whatever the truth of the matter, Bancroft’s trip to Emden is notable as being the last occasion on which a bishop headed a diplomatic mission until 1712-13, when John Robinson, bishop of Bristol, represented Great Britain at the Congress of Utrecht.

ADT

Further reading:

P. Collinson, Richard Bancroft and Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge, 2013)

S.B. Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft (London, 1962)

Although neither of these studies discusses it, Bancroft’s trip to Emden will feature in the biography now in preparation for our volumes on the Elizabethan House of Lords. For the bishop’s later career, see also his entry in The House of Lords 1604-29 ed. Andrew Thrush (Cambridge, 2021).

One of the most striking features of Queen Elizabeth I’s funeral, held on 28 April 1603, is that the place of Chief Mourner in the procession was taken by Helena, dowager marchioness of Northampton, a member of the privy chamber. Despite having served Elizabeth for the past thirty-six years, Helena was not English-born but a native of Sweden.

Born in about 1549, Helena (or ‘Elin’ as she signed herself before she settled in England) was the daughter of Ulf Henrikson Snakenborg, member of an old Swedish baronial family, and Agneta Knutson, also of aristocratic stock. Helena’s parents enjoyed considerable standing in Sweden. In fact, their marriage five years earlier had been held at Stockholm Castle, in the presence of the king and queen. Not surprisingly, by the mid-1560s their daughter Helena was a maid of honour to Princess Cecilia, sister to the then king of Sweden, Eric XIV.

In September 1565 Helena, aged about 16, accompanied the princess on a fruitless mission to England to persuade Queen Elizabeth to marry King Eric. Cecilia and her entourage were lodged at Bedford House, on the Strand, where they were visited by leading members of the English court. Among the more regular callers was the 53-year old William Parr, marquess of Northampton, the childless brother of Elizabeth I’s late stepmother, Queen Catherine Parr. In all likelihood, Northampton was a keen exponent of a Swedish match, just like his second wife, Elizabeth Brooke (daughter of William Brooke, 10th Lord Cobham), who had died of breast cancer five months earlier. However, concern for the queen’s marriage was not the only reason Northampton was drawn to Bedford House. The marquess soon began to take an interest in Helena’s welfare, beginning with arranging for her medical treatment, as she was ill by the time she arrived in England. Despite the age difference Northampton fell in love with Helena, who was reportedly ‘very beautiful’. Before the year was out Helena accepted Northampton’s offer of marriage. However, as a letter to her mother makes clear, Helena’s feelings were affectionate rather than amorous: ‘the marquess has been both father and mother to me’, she explained, and ‘most kind in every detail’.

Following Princess Cecilia’s departure for the Continent in May 1566, Helena remained in England, cared for by eight or ten of Northampton’s servants. However, the planned marriage was placed on hold because of the queen’s disapproval. Though Northampton was now a widower following the death of his second wife Elizabeth Brooke, his adulterous first wife, Anne Bourchier, was still alive. In 1548 a royal commission, headed by Archbishop Cranmer, had concluded that Anne’s unfaithfulness had ended their union. However, the queen disagreed, oddly, as she never challenged the legitimacy of Northampton’s marriage to Elizabeth Brooke, with whom she was great friends. For the queen, there could be no question of Northampton marrying Helena until Anne was dead. When, in November 1566, Northampton joined the chorus of voices demanding that she take a husband, Elizabeth retorted that the marquess would be better advised thinking of arguments to persuade her to let him remarry ‘instead of mincing words with her’.

Helena and Northampton finally reached the altar on 6 May 1571, four months after Anne’s death. The ceremony was held in the Chapel Royal, and the queen danced at the wedding feast, which was followed by two days of jousting. However, the marriage proved to be short-lived, as Northampton died just five months later. Northampton’s demise threatened to spell disaster for Helena, as the marquess had neglected to provide his new wife with a jointure, and his entire estate, worth about £1,200 per annum, escheated to the crown. Fortunately for Helena, Queen Elizabeth took pity on the marquess’ young widow. She not only paid for Northampton’s funeral but also assigned Helena lands worth £400 a year. Additionally, at some point Helena was admitted to the privy chamber. Perhaps because of this Helena met the man who was soon to become her second husband, Thomas Gorges. Thirteen years her senior, Gorges was a Wiltshire landowner and one of the grooms of the privy chamber.

The social gulf between Gorges and Helena, who continued to be known as the marchioness of Northampton, was considerable. It was not unknown for women of a high social rank to marry beneath them. In fact, before Elizabeth’s accession Katherine Brandon, dowager duchess of Suffolk had taken Richard Bertie, a Lincolnshire gentleman, as her second husband. However, the queen looked askance at such matches. Realizing that Elizabeth would never agree to their marriage, the couple took matters into their own hands and sometime in 1576 they were secretly wed. When the queen discovered this she was naturally furious. Helena was banished to Gorges’ house in the Whitefriars, while Gorges himself was jailed. However, Elizabeth’s anger eventually subsided and within a year or so she had become reconciled to the match. In January 1578 she and Gorges exchanged New Year gifts; six months later, Elizabeth stood as godmother at the baptism of the couple’s first child, prudently christened Elizabeth.

Helena retained Queen Elizabeth’s favour for the rest of the reign. Formally, at least, her duties were limited, partly because she was an unwaged member of the privy chamber but also because of her gender. Behind the scenes, though, she may have been more active than has previously been supposed. In 1582 her husband was dispatched to Sweden on a mission to recover certain debts owed by the Swedish king, John III. There is no evidence that Helena remained in England. Her presence in Sweden may have been considered essential, as Gorges would not have been selected for this delicate mission had it not been for his wife’s intimate knowledge of the Swedish court. Helena can certainly be glimpsed alongside her husband in September 1586, when Gorges was entrusted with the task of conveying Mary, Queen of Scots from Chartley to Tixall, both in Staffordshire. Mary, fearing that her plotting against Elizabeth had been discovered, reportedly ‘raged and stormed, and showered invectives on Gorges and his mistress’. That same year, Gorges became responsible for the queen’s robes. It seems unlikely that Helena did not share in her husband’s official duties.

Following Elizabeth’s death, Helena lost her position at court. This cannot have been entirely unexpected, especially as Anne, the new queen consort, was Danish, and Denmark and Sweden were longstanding enemies. Nevertheless, in 1605 Helena and her husband were granted the keepership of Richmond Park for life. On the death of Gorges in 1610, Helena largely retired from public view. She lived on until April 1635, dying at Redlynch, in Somerset, the home of her youngest son Sir Robert Gorges, who sat in three parliaments during the late 1620s. At her request, Helena was buried alongside ‘my dear and late husband Sir Thomas Gorges’ in Salisbury Cathedral.

A.T

Further reading:

Charles Angell Bradford, Helena, Marchioness of Northampton (London, 1936)

Raymond Gorges, The Story of a family through eleven centuries illustrated by portraits and pedigrees, being a history of the family of Gorges (Boston, 1944)

The last of the Fitzalans, Earl Henry was a member of one of the oldest aristocratic dynasties in England. Indeed, his family had held the earldom of Arundel since the early thirteenth century. He was also extremely wealthy, having a large estate in Sussex, with other lands scattered throughout southern England. Born in 1512, three years after the accession of Henry VIII, Arundel first achieved high office in 1546, when he was appointed lord chamberlain. However, it was under Mary I that he attained a position of great prominence, as Mary, thankful for his support against Lady Jane Grey, promoted him to lord steward and also made him lord president of the Privy Council.

Seniority of rank was no guide to ability, of course. Contemporary observers regarded Arundel as a light-weight. The Imperial ambassador, for example, thought him ‘silly’, while Spanish diplomats considered him ‘flighty’ and ‘weak’. He was certainly unable to control his temper and did not like to be contradicted. On one occasion early in Elizabeth I’s reign he and the lord admiral, Lord Clinton, quarrelled so vehemently that they ‘fell to fisticuffs and grabbing each other’s beards’, to the considerable embarrassment of the queen, who witnessed this childish behaviour. However, it would be a mistake to write off Arundel as inconsequential.

Despite his character flaws, Arundel was an important figure at the Elizabethan court because he was regarded as potentially dangerous. His wealth and landed estate made him powerful. So too did his connections: until recently he had been father-in-law to the queen’s cousin, Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk, England’s premier peer. There was also the fact that, like many members of the ancient nobility, Arundel clung to the Catholic faith. Unless handled carefully, he might easily become a rallying point for disaffected members of the nobility and gentry alike. He was certainly a popular figure. When, in April 1567, he travelled to London through Kent, having spent some time in northern Italy, he was accompanied by six or seven hundred members of the gentry of Kent, Surrey and Sussex. By the time he reached the capital, his entourage had reportedly swollen to more than 2,000, including many of London’s aldermen and several of his fellow nobles.

From the very start of her reign, Elizabeth had the good sense to treat Arundel with kid gloves. When Arundel, then one of the commissioners entrusted with the task of negotiating a peace with France, returned to England without her permission in late 1559, Elizabeth neither upbraided him nor sent him back. On the contrary, she let his presumption go unpunished and instead confirmed him in office as lord steward. She also allowed him to retain his seat on the Privy Council, whereas four other Catholics lost theirs, among them Arundel’s Sussex neighbour, Viscount Montagu. Moreover, she allowed Arundel to play a central role in her coronation, appointing him lord high steward and constable of England for the occasion.

One reason Elizabeth trod so carefully was that she could not afford to alienate such a powerful Catholic peer before she secured parliamentary approval for the restoration of the royal supremacy and the Protestant faith. Arundel might otherwise serve as the focus of Catholic opposition in the Lords. This consideration probably explains why, before Parliament met, Elizabeth encouraged Arundel to believe that she might marry him, despite the more than twenty-year difference in their ages. The earl was completely taken in by this deception, and showered the queen’s ladies-in-waiting with jewels in the hope that they would further his suit. A few weeks after Parliament assembled in January 1559, Arundel made himself scarce, pleading illness, presumably to avoid incurring the queen’s displeasure, as he would have found it difficult to avoid allying himself in Parliament with fellow Catholic peers opposed to the reintroduction of Protestantism. Although he resumed his seat some weeks later, he quickly withdrew again.

Arundel seems to have been slow to discover that he had been deceived. As late as August 1559, in a bold attempt to win the queen’s hand, he lavishly entertained the queen at Nonsuch, the former royal palace he had bought from Queen Mary. However, the following year he learned that Elizabeth was amorously involved with Lord Robert Dudley. Thereafter, he proved to be something of a thorn in the queen’s side, though it soon became clear that he was less dangerous than was at first feared.

Arundel, in fact, was his own worst enemy. In July 1564 he lost his temper with the queen and surrendered his staff of office, for which offence he was placed under house arrest for the next five months. He thereby deprived himself of his key position at court. Sullen and resentful, he spent the next few years trying to avoid matters of state. However, he returned to the fray in 1569, when he and the duke of Norfolk began plotting with the Spanish ambassador to overthrow the queen’s chief minister, William Cecil, whom they blamed for Elizabeth’s hostility to her heir apparent, Mary, Queen of Scots. Arundel saw in Mary, by now Elizabeth’s prisoner, the best chance of restoring England to the Catholic faith. However, neither he nor Norfolk was ever able to deliver the coup they promised as they proved unable to win over Dudley, now earl of Leicester.

The following year Arundel became implicated in a plot to marry Norfolk to Mary, which Elizabeth considered treasonable. Indeed, according to Norfolk, the plan actually originated with Arundel. As a result, Arundel was once again placed under restraint, and only released in April 1570, after the suppression of the rebellion of the Northern Earls, the first serious Catholic conspiracy of the reign. Between September 1571 and December 1572 he was again imprisoned, this time in the Tower of London, after it was discovered that he was closely involved in the Ridolfi Plot, a Spanish-backed scheme which aimed to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. However, his life, unlike Norfolk’s, was spared as it was clearly Norfolk who posed the major threat. Following his release, Arundel was permitted to resume his seat on the Council. This was a surprising decision, perhaps, but as Dr Neil Younger has recently shown, the Elizabethan Privy Council was never the sole preserve of Protestants but included many Catholics and crypto-Catholics, among them the well-known Sir Christopher Hatton. Besides, it may have been expected that Arundel would not live much longer as by then he was in poor health. In fact, he did not die until February 1580, whereupon his lands and titles descended to Philip Howard, the eldest son of his fellow conspirator, the late duke of Norfolk.

ADT

Further reading:

Neil Younger, ‘How Protestant was the Elizabethan Regime?’, English Historical Review, vol. 133 (2018)

Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity (1998)

Wallace MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (1969)

On 10 October 1562 Elizabeth I, England’s 29-year old queen, the last of the Tudors, was suddenly taken ill at Hampton Court Palace. By 16 October it was clear she was suffering from smallpox, which had recently claimed the life of the young countess of Bedford. So severe was her condition that her courtiers supposed that her death was imminent. The queen herself shared this fear, as she urged the Privy Council to appoint as Lord Protector her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, in the event of her demise. Somehow, though, she pulled through. By 25 October she was on her feet again.

What would have happened had Elizabeth, like Mary II in 1694, succumbed to smallpox? Who would have succeeded her, given that she was unmarried, childless and lacked surviving siblings? And what would have been the implications of her death for the recent restoration of Protestantism? Would England have returned to the Catholic fold, as it had in 1553, following the short reign of the Protestant boy king Edward VI? Or would the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 have endured in some form?

On paper at least, the rightful successor to Elizabeth was her first cousin once removed, Mary Queen of Scots. Mary was the direct descendant of Henry VIII’s eldest sister, Margaret Tudor, and already considered herself the rightful Queen of England, on the grounds that Elizabeth had been declared illegitimate following the execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn in 1536. However, Mary was a committed Catholic. As such, she posed an existential threat, both to the Elizabethan religious settlement and to the lives and careers of many on the Privy Council, including the queen’s chief minister, Sir William Cecil, who were not eager to return to the persecution of Protestants that had characterized the reign of Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary I. Pointing to the will of Henry VIII, which specifically barred the descendants of Margaret Tudor from the succession, they therefore resolved to set aside the claims of Queen Mary. This had the effect of forcing one of the leading Catholic members of the Council, the Lord Treasurer, William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, to advance instead the candidacy of Margaret, Countess of Lennox, the daughter of Margaret Tudor by her second marriage (to the 6th Earl of Angus). Unlike Mary Queen of Scots, whose accession threatened not only the Protestant religious settlement but also the intrusion of Scots into English affairs, the Countess of Lennox had the advantage of being English-born. However, her Catholicism made her no less unacceptable to English Protestants.

Since a Catholic claimant to the throne was ruled out by a majority on the Privy Council, who else was in the running to succeed Elizabeth? Perhaps the strongest candidate was the 25-year-old Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon. Directly descended from George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV and Richard III, Huntingdon was the sole remaining Yorkist claimant to the throne. Huntingdon enjoyed impeccable religious credentials, having been educated alongside Edward VI, which made him acceptable to leading Protestant noblemen like William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford and Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. He was the brother-in-law of the royal favourite, Lord Robert Dudley and the latter’s brother, Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick. Between them, Huntingdon, Norfolk, Pembroke, Bedford, Warwick and Dudley controlled much of the Midlands, East Anglia, South Wales and South-West England.

Huntingdon was not the only Protestant claimant available, though, as Lady Katherine Grey, the eldest surviving great-granddaughter of Henry VII and sister of the nine days’ queen, Lady Jane Grey, also enjoyed widespread support. Her claim was arguably stronger than Huntingdon’s, as she was the direct descendant of Henry VIII’s younger sister Mary, whose heirs were favoured by Henry VIII’s will. Lady Katherine was married to the Wiltshire-based Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford. She also enjoyed the backing of the Lord Chamberlain, William Howard, Lord Howard of Effingham, who exercised influence in Surrey. Moreover, when Parliament met in 1563, it also became apparent that she enjoyed considerable support in the House of Commons. However, her candidacy was not without its complications. The legitimacy of her marriage to Hertford was questionable, and she herself was then a prisoner in the Tower for having married without royal approval. Moreover, if Lady Katherine were to be recognized as Elizabeth’s successor, what would be the status of her putative husband, Hertford? Would he accept that he was merely the queen’s consort, or would he demand, like Mary I’s husband, Philip II of Spain, to be recognized as king in his own right?

Because there were two non-Catholic claimants to the throne rather than one, there was a risk that Elizabeth’s death in 1562 would have precipitated civil war. However, mutual self-interest suggests that the two sides were unlikely ever to have come to blows for fear that the ultimate beneficiary would be Mary Queen of Scots. Although Mary had been ruled out of contention by the Privy Council, she might still have tried to take the throne by force. Until recently, she had been married to the French king, François II, who had endorsed her claim to the English throne. Although François was now dead, and his successor was preoccupied with a rebellion of the prince of Condé and Admiral Coligny, this did not mean that Mary would not eventually be able to call upon French support. In March 1563 peace returned to France, in time for the start of the new campaigning season.

Faced with the threat of a Franco-Scottish invasion, the two Protestant candidates for the throne, Huntingdon and Lady Katherine Grey, would either have been forced to bury their differences or fight in the hope of eliminating their rival quickly. In this power struggle, Huntingdon would have quickly gained the upper hand, as his backers were arguably stronger than Katherine’s and Katherine would still have been a prisoner in the Tower on Elizabeth’s death. The outcome of the ensuing struggle between Huntingdon and Mary Queen of Scots is perhaps less certain. However, it is probable that Mary would have been defeated. Her cause would have elicited little support among English Catholics, whose spiritual leaders, the Marian bishops, were under lock and key. Moreover, in the north of England, where Catholicism remained strong, anti-Scottish sentiments would probably have trumped hatred of Protestantism. Mary, too, could not have counted on the solid support of her Scottish subjects. During her absence in France, the Scottish Parliament had embraced the Protestant reformation. In all likelihood, therefore, many of Mary’s countrymen would have taken up arms against her. Of course, Mary’s side would probably have been bolstered by forces provided by France. However, in the recent Anglo-Scottish conflict of 1559-60, the Scots had suffered defeat despite French support. All this means that Elizabeth I’s death in 1562 was unlikely to have resulted in a Stuart succession and an early union of the crowns of England and Scotland.

Elizabeth’s most likely successor, then, was not Mary but Huntingdon. As Huntingdon lived on until 1604, there are reasonable grounds for supposing that he would have held the throne for the next forty years. What might then have occurred we cannot easily guess. However, we do know that Huntingdon’s wife never bore him any children. That alone is grounds for supposing that the early years of Huntingdon’s reign would have been characterized by a succession crisis not dissimilar to the one actually experienced by Elizabeth following her narrow brush with death. Sooner or later, ‘Henry IX’, like Henry VIII before him, would have come under pressure to annul his marriage and take another wife. In that event, his chief supporters, the Dudley brothers, might have experienced a fall akin to the one that had destroyed their father, the Duke of Northumberland in 1553.

ADT

Further reading (for those who enjoy counterfactual history):

Conrad Russell, ‘The Catholic Wind’ in Unrevolutionary England, 1603-1642 (London and Ronceverte, 1990)

Geoffrey Parker, ‘If the Armada had landed’, History, vol. 61, no. 203 (1976)

When the succession of Charles III to the throne was formally proclaimed on 10 September 2022, it marked the first appearance on television of an accession council. This body dates back to 24 March 1603, when a meeting of the lord mayor of London, assorted English peers and bishops, and those commoners who had served as privy councillors to the recently deceased monarch, Elizabeth I, proclaimed the accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England. Forty-four years earlier Elizabeth had issued the proclamation of her accession in her own name, but a new procedure was now necessary because James was still in Scotland. As it took several days for the news of his accession to reach him, and rather longer for his authorization of a new privy council to arrive in London, for several weeks the accession council effectively ran the country.

The secretary of state, Sir Robert Cecil, had established contact with James before Elizabeth’s death, and they had agreed the wording of the accession proclamation, but Cecil was obliged to act in secret because Elizabeth refused to allow any discussion of the succession. Cecil therefore could do nothing formally until after the queen had died, nor could James issue a proclamation as king of England until he had been informed of the queen’s death, leaving a potentially dangerous hiatus in which England had no legitimate authority. Accordingly, on 20 March 1603 the privy council convened a meeting of the peers and bishops who were then in and around London. They informed this assembly that, on the death of the queen, the powers of the councillors and other royal officers would cease. Only those such as the lord mayor of London who held offices in urban corporations would retain their places. However, those present were reminded that the peers and bishops constituted the great council (whose membership was the same as the upper house of Parliament) and were told that it would fall to them to preserve the peace of the realm.

The queen died at Richmond in the early hours of 24 March, whereupon those members of the council who had attended her deathbed returned to Whitehall, where another meeting of the peers and bishops was convened. According to one widely circulated account of these events, the lord admiral, Charles Howard, 1st earl of Nottingham announced that the queen had finally been induced to name James as her successor. The accession council then agreed to proclaim James as the new king of England, which they promptly did outside the palace. The proclamation was signed by 21 peers and four bishops, together with the lord mayor of London, seven of the former commoner privy councillors and one Irish peer. However, the names of three further peers were added to later printed editions of the document.

The accession council then went to the city of London, where they were admitted after promising to proclaim James, the lord mayor taking as security the Garter insignia of the lord treasurer, Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, before allowing them to enter. They again proclaimed the new king at Cheapside and then dined at the house of one of the sheriffs of London, from where they sent three heralds and a trumpeter to proclaim James on Tower Hill. At 10 at night they wrote to James to notify him of the death of the queen, although they acknowledged that he might have already heard the news from Sir Robert Carey, who had departed for Scotland without their authorization as soon as the queen died.

Cecil probably intended that the accession council would confine itself to proclaiming the new monarch, after which it should be brought to an end as soon as possible and the normal processes of government by the privy council be resumed. In the short term this would require the former members of the Elizabethan privy council to continue meeting as though the queen was still alive, but this met with objections from the nobles. According to one report, Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland asserted that nothing should be done without the participation of the nobility, who were councillors by birth but had been neglected for too long, and that their exclusion would set a bad example to the king.

James was probably also keen to quickly dissolve the accession council, as its members did not owe their place to royal appointment, implying that there existed in England an alternative source of authority to the crown. On 27 March he authorized the former members of Elizabeth’s privy council to act in his name, which would have rendered the accession council redundant. However, the following day he felt obliged to order the nobility to continue to meet together, and consequently the accession council continued until the middle of April. In addition to those whose names appear on the accession proclamation, at least four further peers, three bishops and another Irish lord also took part in the council’s proceedings. Cecil complained to his brother, Thomas Cecil, 2nd Lord Burghley, about having to deal with what he called ‘our Parliament council’, stating that he dared not act without its consent and that business which had previously been done in a day now took a week.

On 25 March the accession council wrote to the magistrates of the various counties of England ordering them to proclaim James in their localities. The accession of the new king passed off peacefully, which in practice left the council with little more to do. Aside from facilitating communications with James, they issued warrants to the lord treasurer for the payment of money, and sent advice to English commissioners negotiating a commercial treaty in Bremen. They also authorized local magistrates to continue impressing men for service in the Netherlands in the war against Spain. On 10 Apr. James wrote to the council from Newcastle ordering the privy council (to whom he had added Northumberland and three other noblemen), to resume normal meeting. The other peers were instructed to remain in the vicinity of London to assist the privy council if needed, but implicitly were no longer to meet together. By 17 April James’s new privy council was operational, and the accession council had been dissolved.

BC

Further reading:

Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata ed. W.P. Baildon (1894)

E. Howes, Annales … Begun by John Stow (1631)

M. Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot (c.1991)

A. Nelson, Monstrous Adversary (2003)

Biographies of Robert Cecil (as 1st earl of Salisbury), the 1st earl of Nottingham, Lord Buckhurst, Robert Carey (as 1st earl of Monmouth), the 3rd earl of Northumberland and the 2nd Lord Burghley may also be found in The House of Lords 1604-29 ed. Andrew Thrush (2021).

At Richmond Palace on 24 November 1586, four hundred and twenty-six years ago to the day, Elizabeth I delivered a speech which profoundly disappointed her listeners. After almost four weeks of intense parliamentary activity, the delegation sent to hear her reply to a petition from both Houses had expected better than to receive an ‘answer answerless’, as Elizabeth herself described it.

The Parliament of 1586-7 – the sixth of Elizabeth’s reign – had been called after the discovery of the Babington Plot, whereby Elizabeth’s prisoner, the deposed Scottish queen, Mary Stuart, had plotted to murder Elizabeth and take the throne for herself. The purpose of the Parliament, summoned at the behest of Elizabeth’s chief minister, William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley and his fellow privy councillors, was to decide what to do with Mary, who had been convicted by a jury of English noblemen and sentenced to death shortly before Parliament met. Unlike her Parliament, however, Elizabeth was reluctant to order the execution of a fellow monarch, for reasons both political and personal. Mary was not only a kinswoman but also the heir-apparent. Elizabeth was worried, too, that Mary’s execution would merely fuel the claim, widely expressed in Continental Catholic courts, that England’s Queen was a tyrant and worthy of death herself. And while most of Elizabeth’s Protestant subjects believed that their Queen would only be safe if Mary were to be executed, Elizabeth herself feared that execution of her rival would merely increase the risk to her own safety. Caught between the danger involved in not executing Mary and the peril she faced if she did, Elizabeth did what she did best: she prevaricated. The result was her ‘answer answerless’, in which she declared that she would neither agree to order Mary’s execution nor decline to do so. She thereby wrong-footed Lord Burghley, who had tried to use Parliament to force Elizabeth to order the Scottish Queen’s death and was now compelled to employ underhand means to secure Mary’s execution. As a result, he incurred the wrath of Elizabeth and his own temporary banishment from Court.

The evasive nature of the ‘answer answerless’, and Elizabeth’s thwarting of Burghley, were arguably the two most striking features of the 1586-7 Parliament. However, there were two significant points of difference between this assembly and most other parliaments, both of which also deserve our attention.

The first was that this Parliament was summoned almost immediately after the dissolution of its predecessor. Elizabeth, like her predecessors, usually left an interval of three or four years between meetings of Parliament. By contrast, for the first time in English history, an interval of just one day separated the dissolution of the 1584-5 Parliament on 14 September 1586 and the summons of the 1586-7 Parliament. (Not until 1690, following the Glorious Revolution, did the practice of summoning one Parliament hot on the heels of another become established.) The reason for this departure from customary practice was the urgent need to deal with Mary Queen of Scots, which was considered incompatible with the continued existence of the 1584-5 Parliament. Mary’s involvement in the Babington Plot was exposed in August 1586, but the prorogued 1584-5 Parliament was not due to reconvene until 14 November 1586. As no mechanism for shortening a prorogation existed – not until 1667, following the Dutch Raid on the Medway, was the solution of holding an extra-sessional meeting devised – the Council urged the Queen to dissolve the 1584-5 Parliament and summon a fresh assembly which, it was planned, would meet on 15 October, one full month before the 1584-5 Parliament had been due to reconvene.

The second extraordinary difference between the 1586-7 assembly and all other parliaments was Elizabeth’s decision to distance herself from the meeting. When the new Parliament finally opened on 29 October 1586 it was without the Queen who, though in good health, remained at Richmond. No English monarch before or since has ever failed to attend the State Opening for reasons other than physical or mental infirmity. It seems likely that Elizabeth’s decision, which was reached as early as 4 October, aroused strong opposition in the Council, for on 26 October Burghley reported that Elizabeth would now open Parliament in person after all. In the event, Elizabeth reverted to her original plan, so leaving Parliament to be opened by Burghley and two of his fellow ministers, acting as commissioners for the Queen.

Elizabeth’s refusal to attend the State Opening, and her continued residence thereafter at Richmond, led to widespread speculation that the Queen was afraid that returning to the capital would invite assassination. There were certainly good grounds for the belief that the danger remained: although the 14 conspirators involved in the Babington Plot had already been put to death, another assassination plot was uncovered in January 1587. Elizabeth naturally denied that her absence from Westminster was occasioned by fears for her safety, telling a parliamentary deputation on 12 November that the real reason was grief, as she could not bear to be repeatedly reminded of Mary’s crimes. A less plausible explanation would be hard to imagine.

Aside from considerations of personal safety, probably the main reason Elizabeth chose to distance herself from Parliament was that she wanted to avoid incriminating herself on the European stage. She hoped that someone else would rid her of Mary, so that she might avoid the blame. This was not entirely unreasonable, as many members of the gentry and nobility had previously sworn to hunt down and kill anyone who attempted to assassinate the Queen (the Bond of Association, 1584-5). Elizabeth later expressed disappointment that Mary’s gaoler, Sir Amias Paulet, who had taken the Oath, had not quietly murdered the Scottish Queen. Elizabeth did not want to be seen as complicit in regicide and bitterly resented Parliament’s expectation that she herself would wield the knife. Her desire to keep Mary at arm’s length was evident even before Parliament met. In the wake of the discovery of the Babington Plot, Mary had not been placed in the Tower and tried in Westminster Hall, as would normally have been the case for such a high-profile prisoner. Instead, she was transferred to Fotheringhay Castle, in Northamptonshire, where her trial (and ultimately her execution) took place, well away from Elizabeth, London and Westminster.

ADT

Further reading:

Antonia Fraser, Mary, Queen of Scots (1969)

Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (1960)

Read more from our First Elizabethan Age blog series here.

On 1 February 1587 Sir Francis Walsingham and his fellow Secretary of State, William Davison, wrote on behalf of Elizabeth I to the privy councillor Sir Amias Paulet, one of the gaolers of the deposed Scottish queen, Mary Stuart, who had fled to England more than twenty years earlier and had recently been judged guilty of plotting to overthrow and murder Elizabeth. In this letter – perhaps the most extraordinary ever to have been written at the behest of an English monarch – Paulet was informed that Elizabeth ‘doth note in you a lack of that care and zeal of her service that she looketh for at your hands’. The Queen was astonished that though Paulet had been Mary’s gaoler for more than two years, he had not yet, in all that time, ‘found out some way to shorten the life’ of Mary, whose continued existence posed a very great threat, not only to Elizabeth herself but also to ‘religion and the public good’. Mary, after all, had made no secret of the fact that she considered herself the rightful Queen of England, or that she desired to return Protestant England to the Catholic faith.

For those of us brought up to regard England’s most famous Queen in an heroic light, it is sobering to learn that Elizabeth expressly advocated the murder of her Scottish cousin. However, the murder of royalty was hardly unknown in England, as Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI and the uncrowned Edward V had all been quietly dispatched. Even so, those responsible were normally careful to leave nothing in writing that might incriminate them. In this case, however, Elizabeth felt no such compunction. That is because, in her view, she was not asking Paulet to commit murder. As she observed, Paulet already had ‘good … warrant and ground’ for quietly dispatching Mary, because he had taken the Oath of Association of 1584. Formulated in the aftermath of the assassination of the Dutch Protestant leader William the Silent, and given statutory authority by the Parliament of 1584-5, the Oath required all those who took it to eliminate anyone who tried to kill Elizabeth. As Mary had recently been tried and found guilty of conspiring with Anthony Babington and other English Catholics to overthrow and murder Elizabeth, Paulet was duty-bound to end the life of his prisoner without further ado.

Unsurprisingly, Paulet did not share Elizabeth’s view of his obligations in respect of the Oath. On receiving the Queen’s rebuke, he penned a response that has become justly famous: ‘God forbid that I should make such a shipwreck of conscience, or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, [as] to shed blood without law or warrant’. Elizabeth, though, was furious at Paulet’s refusal to take matters into his own hands. She stormed at ‘the niceness of those precise fellows who in words would do great things but in deed perform nothing’. As she saw it, Paulet’s dereliction of duty meant that the responsibility for killing Mary now fell to her.

Elizabeth’s reluctance to execute Mary was partly informed by a horror of taking direct responsibility for killing a fellow queen and a close relative – Mary was her first cousin once removed. It also owed something to a desire not to play into Mary’s hands by turning her into a Catholic martyr. However, the main reason Elizabeth wished to do away with Mary secretly was that she feared how the news of her involvement in Mary’s death would be received in Paris and Edinburgh. Now that England was at war with Spain, Elizabeth was anxious to avoid antagonizing either France (where Mary was a former queen consort) or Scotland (where Mary was a former queen regnant) by executing a fellow monarch. Were Mary to be killed as a result of private enterprise rather than state action, Elizabeth could hope to assuage the wrath of these foreign powers by blaming her death upon the zeal of one of her subjects. A state execution, on the other hand, seemed to offer Elizabeth little prospect of pleading innocence. It would also provide her enemies with the perfect justification for carrying out further attempts on her own life.

Elizabeth’s desire for Mary to be killed secretly was not shared by her chief minister, William Cecil, Lord Burghley. This was ironic, to say the least, as Burghley was one of the architects of the Bond of Association, which had authorized the killing of anyone who threatened the life of Elizabeth. Like other members of the Council, Burghley considered it important that Mary should die at the hands of the public executioner. When in November 1586 Parliament prepared a petition urging the Queen to execute Mary, Burghley struck out a long reference to the Bond of Association lest it should encourage Elizabeth to cling to the hope that one of her enterprising subjects would make it unnecessary for her to sign Mary’s death warrant. However, in the short term, Burghley was beating his head against a brick wall, as before the beginning of February 1587, Elizabeth declined to append her signature to the warrant. Even after she did sign it, she decided not to issue the warrant until she had first put pressure on Sir Amias Paulet to take Mary’s life.

What happened next is well known: Burghley and his fellow councillors issued the warrant without the Queen’s knowledge and Mary was executed on 8 February. Elizabeth was livid, because Mary’s death would now, inevitably, be laid at her door. Burghley was temporarily banished from the royal presence, and William Davison was deprived of office, tried, imprisoned and fined. However, for Elizabeth the matter had actually worked out rather well. By acting independently, Burghley and his colleagues had given the Queen what she wanted. Not only had they succeeded in ridding her of the threat posed by Mary, they had also ensured that she could deny direct responsibility for Mary’s death.

ADT

Further reading:

Antonia Fraser, Mary, Queen of Scots (1969)

J. Wormald, Mary, Queen of Scots: a Study in Failure (1988)