The Shakespeare Code

 

 A TRIXIE SPECIAL

Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code……

Your Cat would like to recount….

 AN  OLD ROMANTIC MYTH THAT DATES FROM THE REIGN OF GOOD QUEEN BESS….

•

Elizabeth I, it is said……

……gave her much younger lover the Earl of Essex……

…….a ring to wear on his finger…..

……..as he went off to fight the wars……

…….along with the promise that if he sent it back to her…..

……she would protect him……

…..UNCONDITIONALLY!!!

No matter what he had done…….

No matter how badly he had behaved…..

SHE WOULD FORGIVE HIM EVERYTHING!!!

As Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know…..

……..Essex later rebelled against his Queen…..

……and led a group of armed men through the streets of London…..

……intending to settle the problem of succession to the English throne……

……by replacing the childless Elizabeth as monarch…..

….. with James VI of Scotland……

Essex, who had earlier abandoned his military post in Ireland…..

…….and had been put under house arrest……

……. was disgraced, penniless, mad and drunk at the time of the rebellion….

……..which had failed hopelessly……

(Elizabeth by then was unpopular…….

…….but not THAT unpopular…..

…….and as William Camden says, the citizens of London were relatively well off so had no intention of rebelling)

Essex was sentenced to death by beheading.

While waiting to be executed in the Tower of London….

….Essex looked at the ring on his finger……

….and decided now was time to cash in the promise Queen Elizabeth had made to him…..

He knew that if he gave the ring to a guard it would end up in the hands of his enemies…..

…..and never reach Elizabeth….

So he threw it through the window of his cell to a likely-looking lad below…….

…….and told  him to take it to his friend, Philadelphia, Lady Scrope…..

……(pronounced SCROOP)….

……..the daughter of the Queen’s cousin, Henry Carey, First Lord Hunsdon……..

Philadelphia was the only person at Court who remained loyal to Essex……

She had worn black ever since he had fallen out of favour…..

But……..

……AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT……

…….the boy, by mistake, took it to her sister, Katherine, the Countess of Nottingham……

She was Elizabeth’s most intimate female friend…..

……but she was married to Essex’s greatest enemy…..

…..Charles Howard, the Lord High Admiral and First Earl of Nottingham…

HE made certain the ring never reached the Queen…..

So, on the eve of his execution……..

………Essex was waiting for a reprieve from Elizabeth…….

……..while Elizabeth was waiting for the ring.

•

Two years later……..

……..when Katherine, Countess of Nottingham, was dying………

……..she asked Elizabeth to visit her……..

She showed Elizabeth the ring……..

….. and confessed what she had done.

Elizabeth struck Katherine……

……even though she was on her death-bed…..

……and cried out in fury…..

God may forgive you but I never can…

The Queen stopped eating and sleeping………

…….and refusing to go to her bed…..

…….once stood, stock still, for fifteen hours…….

She claimed to be in mourning for Katherine…..

But she was really in mourning for Essex…..

When the widowed Lord Admiral remonstrated with Elizabeth, she said….

If you were in the habit of seeing such things in your bed as I do when in mine you would not persuade me to go there.

People began to doubt the Queen’s sanity…..

……..and Elizabeth told Philadelphia, Lady Scrope…..

that she saw one night her own body exceedingly lean and fearful in a light of fire.

Elizabeth wept silently in the dark….

………spoke to few…….

Then died of grief…..

•

Simon Adams…..

……the distinguished Tudor historian and children’s non-fiction editor……

……who has contributed EIGHTEEN chapters to the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography….

……claims there that Lytton Strachey…..

……in his famous 1928 Elizabeth and Essex….

……has….

.….proved….

…..that the ring story is….

…..apocryphal….

 STRACHEY…..

….THE ARCH-CYNIC OF THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP…

…….HAS DONE NO SUCH THING MR. ADAMS!!!

IN HER FOLLOWING POSTS, YOUR CAT WILL….

‘PROVE’

….BEYOND A WHISKER OF A DOUBT….

….THAT THE WHOLE RING STORY IS TRUE…..

SHE WILL EVEN PRODUCE THE RING ITSELF!!!

NOW READ Part Two.

 

‘Bye, now….