HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/tag/life-elizabethan-england Fri, 16 Jan 2026 14:50:22 GMT en hourly 1 The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-virgin-queen-elizabeth-is-forbidden-love/ Fri, 04 Jul 2025 08:00:14 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-virgin-queen-elizabeth-is-forbidden-love/ In 1579, the queen embarked on a romance with a French duke she affectionately dubbed her “frog”. The pair seemed destined for marriage. Yet, writes Elizabeth Tunstall, the people of England had other ideas… On 17 August 1579, a ship sailed up the Thames and dropped anchor in Greenwich. Moments later a duke emerged, dressed in the finest clothes that money could buy, and conversing with his entourage in French.
The prince’s nationality might have provoked the suspicion – if not the outright hostility – of many residents of Tudor London. Yet this Frenchman was about to be welcomed into the heart of Richmond Palace. There he would be entertained lavishly, wined and dined at parties and balls. And all with good reason. For this Frenchman was being lined up to marry Queen Elizabeth I.
Over the centuries, Elizabeth’s romantic travails have become one of the great soap operas of English history. When Elizabeth ascended the English throne in 1558 as a 25-year-old, it was widely expected that she would find herself a husband and produce an heir to carry on the Tudor dynasty for another generation. However, while the queen had several suitors over the years, each proposed match hit the rocks before she could be tempted to offer her hand in marriage. From English earls to Scandinavian kings, none quite fitted the bill.
And so, by the time the party of Frenchmen disembarked in Greenwich in the summer of 1579, Elizabeth was well on her way to securing her place in the history books as the ‘Virgin Queen’: the woman who would, so we’re told, sacrifice her heart for the good of the nation. Yet she wasn’t done with trying just yet. As her 46th birthday closed in, Elizabeth would embark on one final bid to find a husband. And this one would take her closer to marriage than perhaps any courtship yet.
So who was the Frenchman who almost changed the course of English history? And why – as she entered the embrace of middle age – was the queen considering marrying him now?
The suitor’s name was François de Valois, Duke of Anjou, fourth son of King Henri II of France and Catherine de’ Medici. Anjou had begun life as a royal also-ran, with little prospect of ascending the French throne. Yet, by the early 1570s, he found himself heir to his childless brother, Henri III. The duke was now odds-on to succeed his sibling as King of France. That made him a figure of immense importance.
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Anjou was also eager to make his mark on Europe by campaigning against Spanish forces in the Netherlands. And it’s this last fact that brought him into Elizabeth’s orbit in the late 1570s. With England becoming increasingly isolated from Europe – and relations with Spain deteriorating fast – Elizabeth’s advisors were desperate to forge enduring ties with allies across the channel. What better way to achieve exactly that than by suggesting a match between Elizabeth and the French duke?
The union had been proposed as early as 1572, but it wasn’t until 1579 that Elizabeth herself fully committed to the courtship. At the outset, the queen’s interest in Anjou was purely the product of political necessity, for a marriage alliance with France would help stave off the growing military threat presented by Spain. But, as the two got to know one another in August 1579, the relationship became personal, the first courtship to do so since the queen’s flirtation with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester two decades earlier.
French connections
While Anjou was not a physically impressive figure – possessing bandy legs and a scarred face from a bout of smallpox – Elizabeth undoubtedly grew fond of him, calling him her “frog” on account of his appearance and his gravelly voice. He was highly attentive, which she very much enjoyed. The two conversed in French, as it was the only language they shared. And, despite the fact that Anjou was 21 years younger than the queen, they found plenty to talk about.
Also playing to the duke’s advantage was the fact that he had made the journey to England at all. Throughout her many courtships, Elizabeth had stuck to the firm position that she “would never marry with any person whom she should not first herself see”. Her demand to meet a potential husband before committing herself to marriage was viewed at the time with astonishment. Royal courtships were long-distance affairs in the 16th century – to such an extent that even the marriage itself could be carried out with ambassadors standing in as proxies for the bride. Through each courtship Elizabeth had held her ground, yet no suitor had chosen to make the journey to her court. All that changed with Anjou.
Violent opposition
The duke could not stay in England for long and, on 29 August, sailed back to France. His visit had, to all intents and purposes, been a diplomatic and personal success. Yet there was a catch. And it was a major one. This had been a trip that the English government had attempted to keep secret. Anjou had travelled to London under a pseudonym: Seigneur du Pont de Sé. However, it didn’t take long for the true identity of the queen’s guest to seep beyond the confines of the court – and, once it did, it triggered a firestorm of opposition.
But why? In short, Elizabeth was a Protestant; Anjou was a Catholic. And in a Europe riven by the Reformation and religious war, marriage between two people of differing beliefs was, to most, simply unthinkable.
Within one week of Anjou’s visit, England was awash with a public outcry against the match. London preachers decried the marriage from their pulpits. Popular ballads made their rounds. Anonymous verses and pamphlets lampooned the match. Threats to meet French attention with violence began to appear in public spaces.
It was into this tumult that John Stubbs, a lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn, published a pamphlet with the catchy title ‘The discovery of a gaping gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banes, by letting her Majesty see the sin and punishment thereof’. Stubbs’ work argued that the clandestine nature of Anjou’s visit demonstrated a “very strange this unmanlike, unprincelike, secret, fearful, suspicious, disdainful, needy French kind of wooing in monsieur”.
It wasn’t only the French duke who Stubbs pursued in his work. He also questioned why Elizabeth would consent to marry “an imp of the crown of France”. In his view, and many others, at Elizabeth’s age any pregnancy would likely result in her death. If a child was born it was feared that it would result in England becoming a vassal state to France rather than securing an independent future for the Protestant realm.
Upon learning of Stubbs’ pamphlet, Elizabeth was furious. For her, the matter of her marriage was deeply personal and a matter of royal prerogative. And it didn’t escape her notice that Stubbs’ arguments mirrored those that had also been raised against the Anjou match within her Privy Council. Could her own councillors have leaked information to the wayward lawyer?
It wasn’t long before the authorities attempted to suppress public opposition to the match. Stubbs was tried for seditious writing and taken to the public scaffold in the marketplace of Westminster on 3 November. There his right hand was removed with a cleaver before an unusually silent crowd.
It was not only the wider public that challenged Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to Anjou. Sir Philip Sydney, the courtier and poet, wrote a letter to his queen that circulated in the court, and though he did not face the same punishment as Stubbs, he shared much of the same fears over the match. He argued that, should Elizabeth marry Anjou, her people’s “hearts will be galled, if not alienated, when they shall see you take to husband a Frenchman, a papist, in whom, howsoever fine wits may find further dangers or painted excuses, the very common people well know this: that he is the son of the Jezebel of our age”. To Sydney, Anjou represented the worst possible suitor, a Catholic Frenchman who would only lead Protestant England to ruin.
A name but no power
Despite the ferocity of these objections, the marriage negotiations continued. In late November, a delegation of Elizabeth’s Privy Council, led by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, worked with Anjou’s representative, Jean de Simier, to create a draft marriage contract. This document was based on the union of Elizabeth’s sister, Mary I, with Philip II of Spain, and would see Anjou granted the title of king but little real power in England. But it did have one new clause: it gave Elizabeth the right to withdraw within two months of signing the contract.
And sign the contract is exactly what Elizabeth did. Now, with 1579 drawing to a close, the queen was further along the road to marriage than she would be at any point in her reign. Yet she wasn’t married yet. And such was the continuing strength of the hostility towards the match that within a few short weeks she felt she had no choice but to turn back. She wrote to Anjou that “I do not want this negotiation to trouble you thus any more”, but still hoped “that we may remain faithful friends and assured in all out actions”. Her contractual get-out clause was duly activated.
Elizabeth’s change of heart would, you might think, signal the end of her courtship with Anjou. But it was revived on one more occasion. In April 1581 a French delegation arrived in England to discuss once more the prospects of a marriage alliance between the two kingdoms. Elizabeth herself had turned away from the courtship, but – with Spain still threatening English security – she allowed the negotiations to recommence. Those negotiations reached an impasse and would have faded away – but for the return of Anjou to England.
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On 31 October 1581, the duke arrived at Rye and then travelled onwards to Richmond Palace. In contrast with his first visit, he moved openly and spoke more of alliance than marriage. Both the duke and queen were fully preoccupied by the issues of their nations’ finances and conflict with Spain, but the question of marriage had not disappeared entirely.
Three weeks after his arrival, as Elizabeth and Anjou walked along a gallery, they were approached by the French ambassador. The ambassador asked the queen what he could tell his king about the chances of her marrying. In response Elizabeth smiled and replied: “You may write this to the king: that the Duke of Anjou shall be my husband.” She then proceeded to give Anjou a ring from her finger, accompanied by a kiss.
Elizabeth’s response to the ambassador sent her court into uproar. That night her ladies expressed their shock. The next morning saw members of her council advising strongly against the match, as it would undermine her relationship with her people. With doubts playing on her mind in the cold light of day, Elizabeth performed yet another volte face, withdrawing her offer to Anjou and telling him that she would be a better friend than a wife.
Anjou left London for the Netherlands on 1 February 1582. However, he did not travel the whole way alone. Elizabeth accompanied him as far as Canterbury where she said her farewell to her final suitor. As the duke sailed away from England, he took with him the queen’s last chance at marriage. Anjou’s departure also closed the door on the queen’s youth: at 48-years-old, the games of courtship were no longer hers, and her unmarried state would now define her reign.
Today, more than 400 years after these events, it’s tempting to assume that Elizabeth was always destined to be the Virgin Queen – and it was a role in which she revelled. But in the first half of her reign, she engaged in numerous courtships and came close to marrying twice. These two men – the Earl of Leicester and Duke of Anjou – found a special place in the queen’s heart, even when it was unwise for her to allow them that space.
On each occasion it was the resistance of her people that prevented her from taking that final step towards matrimony. Elizabeth understood that without the support of her subjects, she risked deposition and civil war. It was this cold, hard reality that prevented her from taking a husband.
So maybe it’s time to look upon the Virgin Queen in a new light: as the creation of the people rather than the queen herself. The image of an untouchable woman who preserved the state through her own person was crafted, it seems, not by an individual but a nation. It was a role Elizabeth committed to as she bid Anjou farewell. And it was one that she would play until her final days.
Romancing the throne
Three other men who were in the frame to marry the Virgin Queen
The dashing favourite
When Elizabeth took the throne there was some support for the queen to marry an Englishman. But while most looked to the
peers of the realm, it was Robert Dudley who had caught both her eye and her heart. Indeed, she once commented that “she thought she could find no person with better qualities”. Dudley was made Master of the Horse shortly after Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, a position that allowed him frequent access to his queen. After Dudley’s wife, Amy, died in September 1560 it appeared that Elizabeth might marry her dashing favourite. However, the suspicious circumstances of Amy’s death made the marriage impossible. While their chance was lost, the two would remain close friends until Leicester’s death in 1588. The controversial Catholic
After closing the door on marriage with Leicester, Elizabeth consented to the opening of a courtship with Archduke Charles of Austria, the third surviving son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I. For the English, the archduke was seen as a means of easing the escalating tensions with Spain (based on his family ties with the king of Spain), while providing some safety from France.
This idea of the match was first raised in 1559 but was only seriously explored from 1563. As with so many of Elizabeth’s foreign courtships, the question of religion proved unresolvable. The potential marriage of Elizabeth to a Catholic caused unrest, leading her to observe that “two persons of different faiths could not live peaceably in one house”, even if that house was England itself. At the end of 1567 she turned Charles down. The eager Swede
Elizabeth was first approached by Swedish ambassadors about a courtship with Erik XIV of Sweden in 1558 while still a princess. Erik presented fewer difficulties than many of her other suitors, being a Protestant – and wealthy. This courtship was also elevated by its timing, as leading members of Elizabeth’s Privy Council sought to use his suit to counter that of Dudley.
Erik was highly persistent and offered to travel to England to meet Elizabeth in person. Upon hearing of Erik’s intentions, Elizabeth wrote to him, asking “that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship”. Elizabeth was thoroughly unconvinced by the arguments in favour of the match, and it all came to an end in 1562.
Elizabeth Tunstall is a visiting research fellow at the University of Adelaide
This article was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> Plots and Rebellions, with Professor Tracy Borman https://www.historyextra.com/membership/plots-and-rebellions-with-professor-tracy-borman/ Mon, 25 Mar 2024 12:50:47 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/plots-and-rebellions-with-professor-tracy-borman/ In the third week of the HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course, Professor Tracy Borman explains how Elizabeth's seat on the throne was far from secure, and explores some of the many threats to her life that she faced throughout her long reign View Green Video on the source website
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Did Thomas Seymour sexually abuse the teenage Princess Elizabeth? – reading time 8 mins Sisters at war: Mary I and Elizabeth I – reading time 11 mins Margaret Douglas: The forgotten Tudor princess – reading time 8 mins Mary, Queen of Scots’ tragic life – listening time 33 mins Queens at war: Elizabeth I vs Mary, Queen of Scots – reading time 15 mins Sir Francis Walsingham: spy-master extraordinaire and Elizabeth I's security chief – reading time 11 mins Alternate history: what if the Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth I had succeeded? – reading time 5 mins
]]> Elizabethans quiz – week two https://www.historyextra.com/membership/elizabethans-quiz-week-two/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 13:23:56 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/elizabethans-quiz-week-two/ How much did you learn about the Elizabethan daily life this week? Test your knowledge in our quiz View Riddle on the source website
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Elizabethan daily life, with Professor Tracy Borman – watching time 15 mins What did the Tudors wear? – listening time 36 mins The dark side of Elizabethan England – reading time 9 mins Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England – reading time 14 mins 10 ways to die in Elizabethan England – reading time 6 mins Tudor childhood: from dodging death to nursery rhymes – listening time 44 mins The missing Tudors: black people in 16th-century England – reading time 5 mins Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century – reading time 9 mins
]]> Elizabethan Daily Life, with Professor Tracy Borman https://www.historyextra.com/membership/week-two-elizabethan-daily-life-with-professor-tracy-borman/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 12:17:11 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/week-two-elizabethan-daily-life-with-professor-tracy-borman/ In the second lecture of the HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course, Professor Tracy Borman explores everyday life in the 16th century – from food and fashion, to work and play View Green Video on the source website
Discover more learning from week two of the HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course
What did the Tudors wear? – listening time 36 mins The dark side of Elizabethan England – reading time 9 mins Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England – reading time 14 mins 10 ways to die in Elizabethan England – reading time 6 mins Tudor childhood: from dodging death to nursery rhymes – listening time 44 mins The missing Tudors: black people in 16th-century England – reading time 5 mins Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century – reading time 9 mins
]]> Elizabethans quiz - week one https://www.historyextra.com/membership/elizabethans-quiz-week-one/ Mon, 11 Mar 2024 11:52:30 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/elizabethans-quiz-week-one/ How much did you learn about the Elizabethan court this week? Test your knowledge in our quiz View Riddle on the source website]]> What did the Tudors wear? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-did-the-tudors-wear-podcast-jane-malcolm-davies/ Tue, 04 Apr 2023 06:35:58 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-did-the-tudors-wear-podcast-jane-malcolm-davies/ Jane Malcolm-Davies unpicks the historical sources to uncover what people wore in the 16th century How many pieces of clothing did the average Tudor own? Did women in the 16th century have specialised maternity wear? And what was behind the fascination with codpieces? Jane Malcolm-Davies stitches together our understanding of what the Tudors wore, from knitted hats and linen handkerchiefs right down to underwear. Speaking with Emily Briffett, Jane details how clothes were lovingly made, kept and cleaned – and reveals the unusual fashion trend she’d like to see revived.
Jane Malcolm-Davies is the co-author of The Typical Tudor. You can purchase the book here.
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Discover more learning from week two of the HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course
The dark side of Elizabethan England – reading time 9 mins Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England – reading time 14 mins 10 ways to die in Elizabethan England – reading time 6 mins Tudor childhood: from dodging death to nursery rhymes – listening time 44 mins The missing Tudors: black people in 16th-century England – reading time 5 mins Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century – reading time 9 mins
]]> In conversation: Tracy Borman on Queen Elizabeth I https://www.historyextra.com/membership/tracy-borman-queen-elizabeth-i/ Mon, 12 Dec 2022 09:43:19 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/tracy-borman-queen-elizabeth-i/ Historian Tracy Borman talks to BBC History Magazine section editor Rhiannon Davies about Queen Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII How much do you know about Elizabeth I (1533–1603)? Historian Tracy Borman talks to BBC History Magazine section editor Rhiannon Davies about the daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII
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View Green Video on the source website
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The Elizabethan Court, with Professor Tracy Borman – watching time 15 mins 7 things you (probably) didn't know about Tudor fashion – reading time 5 mins Where history happened: Tudor courtiers with Suzannah Lipscomb – reading time 13 mins Elizabeth I's personality: the unfathomable queen – reading time 9 mins Princely pleasures at Kenilworth: Robert Dudley's three-week marriage proposal to Elizabeth I – reading time 6 mins Elizabeth I's Accession Day Celebrations – reading time 7 mins Robert Dudley: Queen Elizabeth I's great love – reading time 12 mins
]]> Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England https://www.historyextra.com/membership/smells-sounds-sights-elizabethan-england-food-clothes-music-bathing-toilets-medicine-surgery-witchcraft/ Tue, 12 Oct 2021 04:07:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/smells-sounds-sights-elizabethan-england-food-clothes-music-bathing-toilets-medicine-surgery-witchcraft/ The act of ‘doing history’ is one of reaching for something that has gone and is, therefore, out of reach. It is hardly surprising that we approach its remains objectively, picking over them with a pair of metaphorical tweezers. But what would we feel if the past were not out of reach? Ian Mortimer prepares prospective time travellers for the sights, sounds, smells and tastes that will await them in the 16th century... Traditionally, the past is something we look at from afar. But imagine how your ideas about the past would be different if you could get close up and personal with your forebears. What would you notice if you could see through their eyes, hear with their ears, and smell through their nostrils? What were the tastes and feelings of the past? Can we make any headway in trying to recover them?
Adopting this approach is a particularly interesting exercise when it comes to Elizabethan England, and much more revealing than simply looking at ourselves in a 450-year-old mirror. Not only do we see the similarities, we see the differences too: the cruelty of a society that enthusiastically supports baiting games, regularly sentences people to horrific executions, and approves of torture in the interests of the state. We see the hierarchy, violence and misogyny of society, and how young people are (half are under 22).
Then, as we peel away the layers of tradition that make us feel that we are fundamentally the same as William Shakespeare’s contemporaries, we realise how they inhabit a sensory world that is considerably different from our own. Here are what six of the senses can tell us about life in Elizabethan England...
Sight
Darkness reigns in a world where only the rich can afford glass
Six months of every year, there is less than 12 hours of daylight, and street lighting is almost unheard of in Elizabethan England. Time outdoors in autumn and winter is characterised by darkness.
Dimness is always an aspect of seeing indoors too, even in summer. Domestic glass is rare, due to the paucity of glassmakers in 16th-century England. Although the aristocracy have used glass since the late Middle Ages, and the Countess of Shrewsbury famously has “more glass than wall” at Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire, most houses have to have small windows to prevent heat loss in winter.
Wooden shutters or small opaque screens of horn are used to cover the windows, so there is never much light inside. In winter, you will walk around a farmhouse or cottage in near-darkness.
Candles are expensive and, if unprotected by a lantern casing, they constitute a serious fire hazard, so most people make do with just one or two, and carry them between rooms. If they cannot afford wax candles, then they use tallow candles and rushlights, or just the light of the hearth.
Foreign dyes
When you do have light, you will notice that Elizabethans see colour differently from you, due to the restricted range of dyes in nature. The only natural red in England is madder (taken from the plant of that name); most women have their petticoats dyed this colour. If you want a brighter red you will need to obtain it from abroad.
Scarlet is made from kermes, a parasitic larva from the Mediterranean. Cochineal is hardly known in England, being made from an insect in Latin America, and brazilwood has to be imported from the Middle East or from Portuguese traders coming from the New World. These sources are not easily available to English merchants, being under the control of Catholic states – especially the Spanish, who are at war with the English from 1585.
As for purple, very few Elizabethans will have ever seen it. The nearest they will have seen is a sort of violet made from madder, and the only natural blue dye commonly available in England is woad. If you were to appear in a purple shirt, you would leave Elizabethans reeling.
Status is not the only significance of colour. True black (again, very rare) is a sign of death and mourning. It also symbolises eternity. White symbolises virginity, so the queen’s use of black and white clothing in her early years is a bold statement of her intention to remain unwed.
Visiting Elizabethan England would require learning a whole visual vocabulary to understand these modes of expression among those who can afford them.
Sound
Bells and bagpipes shatter the silence
In modern times, there have been various brave attempts to recreate the ‘authentic’ sounds of the past by playing the music on instruments constructed to contemporary designs. As you will soon realise from experiencing sensations in Elizabethan England, even if you can recreate the sound you cannot recreate the experience of hearing it, for listening to music takes place in a different context in Elizabethan times.
There is no backdrop of motor, train and air traffic, no blaring sirens, no background of recorded music or radio, and no hum of electrical appliances. In fact, there are few loud noises. There is thunder; occasionally there is the report of a gun or cannon; and certain instruments, such as large bells, trumpets and shawms can create a striking impression, as can the galloping of many horses together.
But all these things are occasional or only heard in specific situations. The general range of aural experience is therefore much narrower and more sensitive to sounds, which are normally heard in isolation.
Elizabethans notice when a church bell rings the hour – they sometimes refer to a time as ‘ten of the bell’ rather than ‘ten of the clock’ – because they are used to listening out for the time. People also listen to music more intently because it stands out from their normal day-to-day silence.
The sound of music
A large number of people play an instrument of some sort. At the bottom end of society it is the bagpipes and fiddle that you will most often encounter. Walk into an alehouse in London at the end of the day and you will frequently be encouraged to dance by a smiling musician or two.
Most large towns employ their own small bands of musicians, called ‘waits’, who regularly play in public. The wealthy employ their own bands to perform the airs and madrigals that are the most popular musical entertainment of the day.
For most ordinary Elizabethans, however, it is a rare privilege to hear a five-part air by Anthony Holborne, John Dowland or Thomas Morley, played on a selection of viols and violins, citterns, recorders, flutes and keyboard instruments (harpsichord, spinet and virginals). That is why they stand and gape while you, with your far greater aural experience, might consider the music quite ordinary.
Smell
The wealthy wash themselves daily; the masses go filthy
Popular culture would have you believe that all Elizabethans are smelly (like everyone else living before Jane Austen, except the Romans). In reality, the personal and public olfactory landscape is far more complex.
At one end of the scale, if you are circumnavigating the world with Francis Drake in the years 1577–80, it is true that you will not bathe. Your hair and clothes will have lice and you will stink to high heaven, and so will everyone else on the ship (as will the ship itself). Your breath will reek. But in the context of the psychological pressures of such a voyage, including the awareness that most of the crew will die along the way, your shipmates’ aroma is the least of your worries.
At the other end of the spectrum, wealthy people wash themselves daily by rubbing themselves in clean linen and washing their hands and faces in clean water. They immerse themselves occasionally in hot water carefully selected for its purity. They wash their hands before, after and during every meal. They wash their hair in lye, clean their teeth with tooth powder, and sweeten their breath with mouthwashes and liquorice.
In the presence of a refined lady you will not smell her body, but the perfume she is wearing and the orris root with which her clothes were powdered while in storage.
Water pressure
Water availability is the key. If you live in a rented room on the fourth or fifth floor of an old timber-framed townhouse then it will simply be too much effort to go to the public conduit to fetch enough water for a bath and to carry it up the stairs and heat it up.
In any case, you probably won’t be able to afford the firewood to heat the water if you are staying in such a tenement. Nor will you be able to afford fresh linen every day to rub yourself clean. So you will go filthy.
Those of a comparable wealth to you will understand. People of a similar social standing accept similar conditions. They smell each other and know that they themselves smell too; but they know how much it costs to smell like a perfumed lady or gentleman. Living in close proximity to one another, and recognising that the alternatives are unaffordable, they get used to their own smells and the smells of those they know.
- A brief history of human filth: how did people try to keep clean in the past?
Much the same can be said for sanitation. If you don’t have a private water supply, you won’t be able to build a water closet, even if you can afford to build a copy of Sir John Harington’s flushing loo. Moreover, if you and 20 other family members and neighbours are sharing a single cesspit, it will need emptying regularly.
The cost of removing a few tonnes of excrement, kitchen waste and menstrual cloths can be heavy: £2 4s in 1575, the equivalent of 132 days’ work for a labourer. So the poor don’t have their own cesspits, but use common sewers and public latrines.
If you’re too poor to eat, the last thing you want is the added cost of getting rid of detritus and faeces.
Touch
Visiting the surgeon could prove a real pain
The aforementioned darkness of Elizabethan England explains why people rely on their sense of touch far more than we do in the modern world. In short, they often cannot see where they are going, so finding objects, going from room to room or making a visit to the outhouse is much more a matter of touch than sight.
Another variation in feeling relates to the things with which people surround themselves. Clothes vary hugely in texture, from fine linen to coarse canvas.
At the top end of society, the finest fabrics, such as silk, lawn and velvet, allow a much greater range of soft tactile sensations than are available to those at the bottom, who have to make do with canvas, buckram, worsted, serge, bays and linsey-wolsey.
The same can be said for bed linen and bedding. Fine holland sheets and two or three ‘feather beds’ (ie feather mattresses) on a slung bed with down-filled pillows are a luxury far beyond the reach of most labourers’ families. They have to get by with straw mattresses on boards with canvas sheets and a wooden headrest.
The cleanliness of the bedding will be something you can feel: vermin such as body lice, bed bugs and fleas get everywhere and you can only be sure of not feeling the biting and itching if you have new bedding on a new mattress.
Comfort and pain
There is also the perennial problem of how to keep warm. This is not to be underestimated, especially during a harsh Elizabethan winter (such as that of 1564–65). Firewood is scarce and expensive, and coal used only for industrial work, so fires are not left burning in every room.
Many bed chambers have no fireplaces at all, and most windows are without glass. Even when shuttered, cold draughts get in and out. Gentlemen’s houses normally have just one or two fires burning through the day.
The only way to be sure of keeping warm is to wear lots of layers and keep active. It is no wonder that the elderly do not last long. For the old, and especially the aged poor, winters are deadly.
As for the feeling of pain, opiates are available to Elizabethan surgeons, but they are expensive. If you have to have part of a limb removed, the operation will normally be done without any better pain-killer than copious amounts of alcohol (wine if you can afford it, beer if you cannot). Cutting the flesh is done with a sharp knife. After that, the surgeon saws through the bone – you have to hope he has cut through the nerve quickly to prevent it being shredded in the teeth of the saw.
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As for toothache, you could go to a tooth-drawer. He will use an iron ‘pelican’ to solve the problem. This has a hook, which goes under the tooth on the tongue side; the supporting side goes on the outside of the mouth. By means of a long handle he yanks the tooth out.
If that doesn’t appeal, you could always ask for help from your local blacksmith, who will do the same thing with his pliers.
Taste
Hunger turns everyone into a foodie
It is said that there is no sauce quite like hunger. For this reason you may safely assume that poor Elizabethans enjoy their plain meals just as much as the rich enjoy their feasts and banquets. Food is not as scarce as in the late medieval and early Tudor periods, and nowhere near as scarce as it was in early medieval times; but nonetheless, you will be shocked at proportionately how expensive it is.
Consider the price of meat: on average an Elizabethan sheep costs 3s – nine times as much as a worker’s daily wage in southern England – even though the largest sheep weigh about 60lbs, much less than half the weight of their modern descendants. If meat had the same value to us today, a small sheep would cost about £900 and a modern 180lb animal about three times that.
Another way of gauging how special food is to Elizabethans is to reflect that in the famine of 1594–97, thousands died of starvation. When you can’t take meals for granted, the taste of food is going to occupy a more important position in your life.
Godly chicken
The diet eaten by the poor will probably not strike you as particularly exciting. For them, chicken boiled for an hour with garlic and cabbage is an absolute godsend. Although you may turn your nose up at plain over-boiled meat, it is just as well it is over-boiled when it is several days old. Both the water and the meat might poison you. This explains the tradition of boiling everything and serving it with butter. You will be surprised at how much butter is consumed by all classes.
Without doubt you will prefer to dine on the food of the rich. This especially applies if you enjoy roast meats. In order to entertain the queen for just two days at Kirtling in 1577, Lord North lays in store 11½ cows, 17½ veal calves, 67 sheep, 7 lambs, 34 pigs, 96 conies, 8 stags, 16 bucks, 8 gammons of bacon, 32 geese, 363 capons, 6 turkeys, 32 swans, 273 ducks, 1 crane, 38 heronsews, 110 bitterns, 12 shovellers, 1,194 chickens, 2,604 pigeons, 106 pewits, 68 godwits, 18 gulls, 99 dotterels, 8 snipe, 29 knots, 28 plovers, 5 stints, 18 redshanks, 2 yerwhelps, 22 partridges, 344 quail, 2 curlews and a pheasant. And that is just the meat.
- Read more about Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century
Three days a week, you are not allowed to eat red meat (by law), so the wealthy eat an equally wide range of fish. Most of this is baked or stewed and served in sauces made of spices, mustard, salt, sugar and vinegar. Beware: the strong flavours will not be to everyone’s taste.
At a banquet (a selection of sweets following a feast), you might be startled to see marzipan sculptures dyed blue and green with azurite and spinach. And it might take you a little while to get used to sweetmeats that really are meat mixed with sugar and spices. You’ll even be able to tuck into mince pies made of mutton.
Fear
Terror stalks an age of plague and paranoia
People in the UK have obvious reasons to be less fearful than in the past. They’re not starving in their thousands or living with the continual daily threat of plague, which kills approximately 250,000 Elizabethans, or influenza (the outbreak of 1557–59 kills about five per cent of England’s population – more than twice the proportion killed by the First World War and the influenza pandemic of 1918–19 combined).
Most Elizabethan people who have children will see half of them die before they reach adulthood, if they themselves live long enough. Smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis and innumerable other diseases are rife and uncontrollable. Every family clutches at its Bible in fear of God’s fatal judgement. All too often there is nothing else to cling to.
- Read more about the dark side of Elizabethan England
As if fear of death from disease were not enough, people live with fear of incrimination. At first, the break from the Catholic church leads to moderate restrictions on Catholics; but rebellions and plots against the queen mean things rapidly deteriorate.
After the pope’s excommunication and ‘deposition’ of Elizabeth I in 1570, it behoves every Catholic in England to try to overthrow her rule. A wave of state persecution ensues, followed by a second more bloody wave after the coming of the Jesuits in 1580 and further anti-Catholic legislation after the Spanish Armada (1588).
By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, hearing Mass is a sufficient crime to warrant you being fined £133, and not attending church for a month will lead to a period of imprisonment. All the time people are watching you. You have to be careful what you say and do in public, even when among the servants in your own home.
Dark shadows
This ever-present, deep-seated unease with your fellow men and women might trouble you just as much as the lack of food and the prospect of dying from a fatal disease. If they see someone of the opposite sex enter your house after dark, people might report you to the authorities on suspicion of committing adultery. Then it is down to you to provide compurgators to prove your innocence. If you do not, you will lose your good reputation, be humiliated in front of the community, and may find yourself shunned thereafter.
People might report you simply out of envy or malice. This is especially the case with witchcraft: if someone’s child dies and that person has a grudge against you, he or she might blame the death on your necromancy, especially if you are a woman. Such accusations can end up with you on the gallows, swinging with a rope round your neck.
It does not matter that witchcraft is mere superstition; people are still terrified of it as they are terrified of death, invasion and harvest failure. What is more, the law is on their side. After 1563, witchcraft is officially recognised as a means of killing people.
All in all, the late 16th century might be a golden age of literature, exploration, scientific discovery and architecture, but when you consider the sensations that Elizabethan people experience every day, dark shadows appear in the golden glow.
You might say that that makes the great achievements all the more remarkable. But you might conclude that when we look at ourselves in the mirror of the past, we see many different aspects of humanity, and have a different insight into what we really are.
Dr Ian Mortimer is a historian, historical novelist and author, best known for his series of The Time Traveller's Guide To... books
This article was first published in the March 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine
Discover more learning from week two of the HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course
Elizabethan daily life, with Professor Tracy Borman – watching time 15 mins What did the Tudors wear? – listening time 36 mins The dark side of Elizabethan England – reading time 9 mins Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan 10 ways to die in Elizabethan England – reading time 6 mins Tudor childhood: from dodging death to nursery rhymes – listening time 44 mins The missing Tudors: black people in 16th-century England – reading time 5 mins Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century – reading time 9 mins
]]> The missing Tudors: black people in 16th-century England https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-missing-tudors-black-people-in-16th-century-england/ Fri, 02 Oct 2020 04:05:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-missing-tudors-black-people-in-16th-century-england/ They were baptised and buried in parishes across the country, and even attended queens at court. So why, asks Onyeka, do we continue to airbrush black Africans out of Tudor England? When we think of Tudor England, we don’t immediately imagine black Africans being part of that society. Yet there were Africans here at that time, and they were considered numerous enough in Tudor towns and cities to inspire the phrases “to manie” and “great numbers” in two letters signed by Elizabeth I in July 1596.
Both letters sought to have groups of these Africans treated as slaves and exchanged for white English prisoners held captive in Spain and Portugal. Yet it appears that the letters’ authors – an English merchant Thomas Sherley, Sherley’s son of the same name, and a Dutch slave-trader from Lubeck in Germany called Casper Van Senden – were to meet with disappointment. They failed, in their own words “to get any” of the Africans – perhaps because Robert Cecil, the most influential man in Elizabeth’s court, did not like a “commission of that nature”.
Cecil’s view was probably shaped by the likelihood that most Africans were integrated members of the parish communities they lived in, and it would have been difficult to extract them from their homes and families.
Africans are described in Tudor parish records from 1558 (when most official records began) until well into the 17th century by terms such as “Blackamoores”, “Neygers”, “Aethiopians” and “Negroes”. Meanwhile, in True Discourse (1578), the English traveller and writer George Best refers to them as being as “black as cole”, “so blacke” that when a “faire [white] English woman” engages in a relationship with them they “begat a sonne in all respects as blacke as the father was”.
These Africans were baptised, buried and recorded in parish records in London, Plymouth, Southampton, Barnstaple, Bristol, Leicester, Northampton and other places across the country. They include men, women and children such as “Christopher Cappervert, a blackemoore”, who was 28 years old when he died. He was buried in the St Botolph without Aldgate area of London on 22 October 1586.
We also have the baptismal record of Mary Fillis, dated 3 June 1597, who was “a black more… dwelling with Millicent Porter, a semester”. Mary had been in England since she was six years old and had originally come with her father from “Morisco” (Andalusia) in Spain.
- "Black history affects all of us – it is British history"
Piracy and adventure
In Plymouth, there are records for “Bastien, a Blackmoore of Mr Willm Hawkins” who was buried on 10 December 1583. William Hawkins was the son of William Hawkins the elder and the brother of John Hawkins, all of whom practised piracy and adventuring along the Barbary coast, west Africa and beyond. Bastien may have arrived in England as a result of these voyages.
Other Africans buried in England include “Anthony John, a Neyger” on 18 March 1587. There are also baptism records for Africans such as “Helene, daughter of Cristian the negro svant to Richard Sheere, the supposed father being Cuthbert Holman, illeg.” on 2 May 1593. The recorder has chosen to identify Cristian, Helene’s mother, by a racial epithet, and Cuthbert Holman, her “supposed father”, without one. This probably means that Helene was of mixed parentage.
Yet Africans weren’t just found in England’s provinces. In fact, some rubbed shoulders with the country’s most powerful figures – in the Tudor court. One such was the Iberian Moor Catalina de Cardones, who arrived in England in 1501 with her employer Catherine of Aragon, later Henry VIII’s wife and queen. Catalina served her mistress for 26 years as the lady of the bedchamber and was married to a “Hace ballestas”, a crossbowman also of Moorish origin.
Other Africans who inhabited the court include John Blanke, the “blacke trumpeter”, who was employed by Henry VII and Henry VIII from 1506–12. Blanke had a prominent role in the Westminster Tournament celebrations of 1511 staged to commemorate the birth of Prince Henry Duke of Cornwall, the son of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII. Blanke appears twice on the Westminster Tournament Roll, a contemporary manuscript that shows the procession to and from Westminster Abbey.
Elizabeth I also had at least one African in her personal entourage – “a Blackamoore boy”, who is mentioned in a warrant dated 14 April 1574. The warrant states that the queen ordered the clothes-maker Henry Henre to make the African boy a “garcon coat… of white taphata cutt and lyned… striped with gold and silver with buckeram bayes… knitted stockings [and] white shoes”. This boy was employed until at least the following April, when a further warrant granted this “littel black a More” another set of fine clothing.
The fact that Africans were not just living in Tudor parishes but were employed inside the royal court helps us to understand that they were part of the anatomy of that society. However, we tend to have a rather romantic view of our history and, as a result, our perceptions of our identity are unwittingly distorted. This revisionism means that Tudor England is often portrayed as being all white.
Going missing
This is reflected in some of the best-known depictions of Tudor England on television, in film and even in books written by both popular and academic historians. In The Tudors (2007–10) and the BBC-commissioned series Elizabeth R (1971), for example, Africans are not only absent from English society, but almost entirely missing from the 16th-century world.
An African does appear in Elizabeth R, in a scene set at the French court. Yet he is on camera for just a few seconds before disappearing altogether, as if an apparition. His presence seems tokenistic and – since he does not speak, and his existence is unexplained in what is otherwise an entirely white society – this makes him seem like a stranger and a curiosity.
Africans are entirely absent in Elizabeth (1998), and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) – though, in the latter, two Native Americans arrive in the English court with Walter Ralegh. These characters are probably based on the real Wanchese and Manteo who came to England with Ralegh in 1584 and who are described in John Stow’s written account of the times, The Chronicles (1615).
Interestingly, in the same chapter of The Chronicles, Stow also talks about a famous African needle-maker living in Cheapside, London during the reign of Mary I. However, this African has never been portrayed in film or on television.
The most worrying consequence of our failure to discuss diversity in 16th-century England is that it influences how we develop public policies on a range of important political matters, and it affects how we educate children in schools.
As the historian Marika Sherwood warns us, many black people rightly state that: “In this curriculum I don’t exist.” Yet their absence from modern accounts of the past can’t be explained by the fact that they didn’t live in Tudor England. Rather, we are ignorant of their existence – or have decided to forget or trivialise it.
Of course, Catalina de Cardones, John Blanke, Mary Fillis of Morisco and Bastien did exist. They are not mere footnotes in our history. Indeed, they are as much a part of England’s story as their employers Catherine of Aragon, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Millicent Porter and William Hawkins.
Onyeka is the author of Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, Their Presence, Status and Origin.
This article was first published in the July 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine
Discover more learning from week two of the HistoryExtra Academy Elizabethans course
Elizabethan daily life, with Professor Tracy Borman – watching time 15 mins What did the Tudors wear? – listening time 36 mins The dark side of Elizabethan England – reading time 9 mins Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England – reading time 14 mins 10 ways to die in Elizabethan England – reading time 6 mins Tudor childhood: from dodging death to nursery rhymes – listening time 44 mins Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century – reading time 9 mins
]]> Your guide to William Cecil, chief adviser to Queen Elizabeth I https://www.historyextra.com/period/elizabethan/william-cecil-elizabeth-i-adviser-who-why-important/ Wed, 09 Sep 2020 10:09:03 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/elizabethan/william-cecil-elizabeth-i-adviser-who-why-important/ William Cecil’s name is indelibly linked to the reign of Elizabeth I. But to reduce his vast influence in the Elizabethan era to his relationship with the queen does him a disservice, says Janet Dickinson. Ahead of the 500th anniversary of Cecil’s birth, she considers the prolific work and legacy of one of the Tudor queen’s most famous advisers… Who was William Cecil, Lord Burghley?
William Cecil (1520/1–98) appears omnipresent in Elizabethan history. His proximity to Queen Elizabeth I – and the dominant role that he played in government – makes it hard to write a history of the reign without seeing it partly through Cecil’s eyes. Indeed, the largest collection of documents relating to the reign were collected into Cecil’s family archive.
Despite this, getting to really know Cecil remains oddly difficult. The sheer scale and scope of his activities overcomes even the most energetic biographer and the unglamorous hard work that typified his daily life outweighs glimpses that we get of his humanity and his close relations with his contemporaries, notably Mildred, his second wife, to whom he was married for 43 years. We cannot even be sure about Cecil’s year of birth: he himself gave 13 September 1520 and 1521 as his birthdate, helpfully allowing flexibility in plans to commemorate his 500th anniversary.
William Cecil: a biography
Born: 13 September 1520 or 1521, exact date unknown, in Bourne, Lincolnshire Died: 4 August 1598, after years of declining health, at Cecil House on the Strand in London Buried: St Martin's Church in Stamford, the local church to Burghley House Married to: Mary Cheke (m. 1541–44) & Mildred Cooke (m. 1545–98) Children: A son by Mary Cheke and four children by Mildred Cooke – a son and three daughters, one of whom died in infancy Religion: Protestant Known for: Being the Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth I and one of her most famous advisers
William Cecil’s rise to prominence
The Cecils were a Welsh gentry family, with both William’s grandfather and father engaged in royal service. He was destined to follow their path, though in the end his achievements far exceeded both of them. At the age of 14 or 15, Cecil went to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he joined a circle of Protestants that included Roger Ascham, later tutor to the future Elizabeth I, and John Cheke, who taught Edward VI.
Cecil married Cheke’s sister Mary in 1541. It was a surprising move for an ambitious young man on the rise, as this was not a good match either financially or socially. The marriage produced a son, but Mary died in 1544. Cecil married again, in December 1545, to Mildred Cooke, whose sharp intelligence and political connections and acumen were of vital importance to his life and work.
Mildred’s connections to Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth queen, brought Cecil to the court and into the service of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and uncle of Edward VI (who later served as Lord Protector of England during his nephew’s minority). Cecil’s abilities were sufficiently apparent that he survived Somerset’s fall in 1549 and entered into the service of his replacement, John Dudley. Cecil was knighted on the same day that Dudley was elevated to become Duke of Northumberland, and appointed secretary to the king – a moment at which his career appeared set.
The acute infection which struck and killed Edward VI in 1553 was very nearly a disaster for Cecil. Northumberland was executed by Mary I for his part in putting his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, on the throne, and Cecil was left exposed by his own overt Protestantism. The answer lay again with Cecil’s wife; Mildred and her family’s support was of critical importance at this dangerous time. Her sister Anne had been lady-in-waiting to Mary I before her accession, and she sought an audience with the new queen for her own husband and Cecil, guaranteeing their loyalty to the regime.
Watch: What was Elizabeth I's relationship like with her sister, Mary Tudor?
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William Cecil and Elizabeth I
We don’t know exactly when or how William Cecil first became close to Elizabeth. They corresponded at least intermittently from 1547, and Elizabeth seems to have sought Cecil’s advice during the often-difficult years of her siblings’ reigns. Cecil was at her side when news came of her accession in 1558, and he was appointed Secretary of State on 17 November, the first day of the new reign. He was clearly someone Elizabeth trusted and believed she could rely upon; keeping him close was one of the most important decisions she ever made.
But Cecil’s relationship with the queen is frustratingly difficult to interpret. Much of their interaction took place in person and so little was written down that the historical record is limited. They certainly were not of one mind on all matters, and perhaps they did not agree fully on anything. What is certain is that Cecil was at the heart of Elizabeth’s government for 40 years and that above all else he was determined to ensure not only the queen’s survival, but that she flourished.
Cecil was actively involved in almost every dimension of Elizabethan politics and governance. As Secretary of State he was able to monitor the flow of correspondence through government. No one knew more than Cecil about what was going on.
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He was counsellor and political advisor to the queen, almost constantly at her side from the start of her reign until his death in 1598. It has been calculated that he attended 97 per cent of Privy Council meetings through the 1560s. This dropped off to 80 per cent in the 1570s due to bouts of ill-health, but we can be in no doubt that Cecil retained a close grasp on what was happening, latterly through his son Robert, who took on many of his roles.
It is important to recognise that Cecil never worked fully alone; he collaborated with other key figures including his brother-in-law, Nicholas Bacon, and the financial mastermind Walter Mildmay. He also worked with men who achieved royal favour, including Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The cooperative nature of Elizabethan government was critical to its stability and success, and Cecil’s role in this was imperative. He did not always agree with his colleagues – and his personal relationship with Dudley was awkward – but when it mattered they found a way to work together.
At this time, domestic policy was dominated by religion and the connected issues of marriage and the succession. It seems that Cecil was in favour of Elizabeth marrying one of the candidates for her hand, but never considered Dudley as being suitable. When Elizabeth did not marry, Cecil made plans for an interim government to serve in the event of Elizabeth’s death without a Protestant heir, and he was actively planning for all eventualities.
Cecil also worked closely with Elizabeth’s principal secretary, Francis Walsingham, in monitoring international affairs. The pair maintained an information network designed to manage the threat of foreign involvement in England, notably with regard to the question of Mary, Queen of Scots, whom Cecil saw as the greatest threat to his religion, country and queen.
Remarkably, Cecil was as involved with local government as he was with national affairs, taking on key roles in the communities around his estates in Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. He built two great country houses: Theobalds in Hertfordshire, and Burghley House in Lincolnshire, the latter of which still stands today as a reminder of Cecil’s innovative architectural style. He hosted royal visits and indulged his enjoyment of horticulture and collecting, filling his houses with books and paintings. His interests defy easy categorisation, ranging from cartography to chivalric romance; astronomy to archaeology; military science to agricultural innovation.
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Cecil’s legacy: a reputation deserved?
Hard work is rarely glamorous, and Cecil’s historical reputation has suffered from a severe lack of thrills. He was only in his late thirties by the time Elizabeth became queen, but is generally played on film and stage as an old man engulfed by a greying beard. He is occasionally menacing, particularly when portrayed in the context of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, but almost always sexless.
As we approach his 500th birthday in September 2020 or 2021, perhaps it is time to remember Cecil as a varied and fascinating individual: a man of considerable style and taste, devoted to his family, dedicated to the service of his queen, religion and country, capable of a ruthless pursuit of his ends and altogether much more complicated and interesting than is currently recognised. He was neither the hero nor the villain of the Elizabethan age, but he is as central to its history as the queen and her favourites – and as deserving of our attention.
Janet Dickinson is senior associate tutor in history at the University of Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education, and a member of the steering committee of the Lord Burghley 500 Foundation, celebrating the 500th anniversary of William Cecil, Lord Burghley’s birth in 2020. To find out more, visit: www.lordburghley500.org
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