PROVING AN OLD ROMANTIC MYTH IS TRUE…
A TRIXIE SPECIAL
(It’s best to read Parts One and Two first)
Lytton Strachey….
……attempting to show that the story of Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex and the Ring is untrue…….
(For the full story, click: HERE)
…..writes in his Elizabeth and Essex that the story…..
……is explicitly contradicted by Clarendon, who, writing in the succeeding generation, was in a position to know the facts……
Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon…..
…….1609 to 1674……
…….was born EIGHT YEARS after the execution of Essex……
…..how did that put him in a……
…..position to know the facts?
Your Cat has to look up HISTORY BOOKS…….
…..or watch The World at War…..
……to discover what was going on eight years before she was born…..
Indeed Clarendon himself admits that….
……it may be I have been at my distance too bold an undertaker of these actions [of the Earl of Essex] which were performed so many years before my cradle….
Clarendon wrote his The Difference and Disparity between the Estates and Conditions of George Duke of Buckingham and Robert Earl of Essex
….in his younger days……
It was a reply to Sir Henry Wotton’s essay Of Robert Devereux Earl of Essex and George Villiers Duke of Buckingham Some Observations by way of PARALLEL in the time of their estates of favour…
We don’t know the exact date of Clarendon’s The Difference and Disparity: but it must have been after Buckingham’s murder in 1628.
Wotton died in 1639 and his essay, it seems, was first posthumously published in 1641.
Scholars think it was shortly after this that the ‘younger’ Clarendon wrote his reply to Wotton.
Clarendon was then in his early thirties…….
……but had already married twice……..
(1) Anne Aycliffe in 1629 (who died the same year)…….
……and……
(2)…..Frances Aylesbury in 1639.
He also enjoyed a…..
……passionate friendship….
…..with his first wife’s cousin, Anne Villiers, Countess of Morton…..
Clarendon’s marriages and ‘passionate friendship’ brought him into the heart of the Villiers family……
…..so he wrote The Difference and Disparity to vindicate the memory of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham……
Clarendon wanted to show that Buckingham, far from being ‘PARALLEL’ with Essex……
……was SUPERIOR to him.
Not only would this delight the Villiers family……….
……. it would also delight the reigning monarch, King Charles I…….
The Duke of Buckingham had been the lover of Charles’s father, King James I……
…and Charles inherited Buckingham as his OWN lover when King James died….
Indeed, Buckingham and Charles were rumoured to have slept together on Charles’s coronation night….
Adored by James and Charles, Buckingham was hated by everyone else……
Parliament tried to impeach him, mobs howled for his blood……..
…..and then in, 1628, he was stabbed to death in a tavern in Portsmouth……
King Charles, in Clarendon’s own words…..
………threw himself upon his bed, lamenting with much passion and with abundance of tears…..
……and refused to leave his bedroom for two days…..
Meanwhile his subjects were celebrating Buckingham’s murder in the streets of London….
So, when Clarendon wrote his hagiography of Buckingham, it was clearly a political act.
By flattering Buckingham, he was also flattering Charles….
Clarendon even ends his essay with heavy hints that Charles should commission him to write the full Life of Buckingham…
He that shall continue this argument further may haply begin his Parallel after their deaths and not unfitly….he may say that both their memories shall have a reverend with all posterity and all nations. He may tell you many more particulars, which I dare not do….
According to Clarendon’s friend, Sir John Bramston, the ploy worked…..
…..Charles asked Clarendon to write Buckingham’s official biography.
The Difference and Disparity, then, is a pitch for a job…..
IT IS NOT A SERIOUS WORK OF HISTORY!!!
To raise up Buckingham, Clarendon HAS to put Essex down…..
To do this he tries to show that the relationship between Charles and Buckingham……
……and between Elizabeth and Essex…
……differed in one vital aspect…..
CHARLES LOVED BUCKINGHAM…..
……BUT ELIZABETH HATED ESSEX!!!
Of the deaths of Buckingham and Essex, Clarendon writes…..
…one [Buckingham’s] had the Royal Sacrifice of his sovereign’s sorrow, which the other [Essex’s] wanted [lacked]….
Clarendon claims that Essex……
….had a spirit all too great for a subject….
….and…..
…..endeavoured rather to master than win…the Queen’s affections….
The Queen, Clarendon writes, suspected that as well as being…..
…..the darling of [her subjects’] eyes…..
…..Essex also wanted to be……
…..the darling of their hearts……
In his final summing up, Clarendon writes:
…..lastly if ever that uncouth speech fell from him to the Queen, which is delivered to us by one that was much conversant then in the secrets of the court, that she was as crooked in her disposition as her carcase (when haply there was a little unevenness in her shoulders) all my wonder at his destruction is taken from me…..
Clarendon is using this incident to ‘prove’ that Elizabeth hated Essex……
……so he HAS to go on to dismiss the ring story…..
…..and I must needs confess I am nothing satisfied with that loose report which hath crept into our discourse, that shortly after his miserable end (which indeed deserved compassion from all hearts) I know not upon what unseasonable delivery of a ring or jewel by some lady of the court, the queen expressed much reluctancy for his death…
BUT CLARENDON IS TRYING TO DISCREDIT A STORY WHICH HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW…
……..OR PRETENDS HE DOESN’T KNOW….
He claims not to know whether it was ‘a ring or jewel’ that Essex sent…..
…..nor the identity of the Countess of Nottingham….
To ‘prove’ his point Clarendon continues…..
I am sure no discovery , no expression, either to his memory, friendship or dependants, can weigh down the indignity of the sermon at Pauls Cross, and set out by command, or that discourse that was so carefully commended abroad of his treasons, which were two of the most pestilent libels against his fame, that any age hath seen published against any malefactor, and could not with that deliberation have been contrived, and justified by authority, had there not been some sparks of indignation in the Queen that were unquench’d even with his blood.
Essex was executed on 25th February, 1601…..
….Dr. William Barlowe delivered his sermon at St. Pauls Cross on the ‘first Sunday in Lent’, i.e. 1st March, 1601 ……
FOUR DAYS LATER!!!
Of course the Queen was still in a fury!
She didn’t know then that Essex had implored her forgiveness by sending the ring….
She wasn’t to learn that till 1603…..
Your Cat will show that there is NO DOUBT that Elizabeth loved Essex….
…..and in her next post will make short shrift of Strachey’s last Witness for the Prosecution….
……the German historian, Leopold von Ranke…….
(NOW READ: Part Four.)
‘Bye, now…
The Shakespeare Code 
The celebrated ring was mentioned in Hume’s History of England and retold in ‘Antigua and the Antiguans: Full Account of the Colony and Its Inhabitants from the Time of the Caribs to the Present Day, Interspersed with Anecdotes and LegendsAlso, an Impartial View of Slavery and the Free Labour Systems; the Statistics of the Island, and Biographical Notices of the Principal Families’ by Mrs. Flannigan (pub.1844) page 311 Appendix.
After the death of the Queen, the ring passed with other jewels to her successor James I., from whom it was handed down to his unfortunate son, Charles I., and who at the instigation of his Queen, Henrietta Maria (de Bourbon of France), presented it to Sir Thomas Warner. (father in law of Henrietta Ashley)
From Sir Thomas Warner, it passed (in a direct line) to his great-grandson, Col. Edward Warner, who bequeathed it by will (dated 27th Dec, 1732, proved in the P.C. of Canterbury 21st Feb. following) to his brother Ashton Warner, as
“a diamond ring, in the shape of a heart, given by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Essex.”
From the Hon. Ashton Warner it descended, as an heirloom, to his son, Joseph Warner, and was then passed to Charles Warner Esq., solicitor-general of Trinidad.
Thank you for this.