Queen Elizabeth, Essex and the Ring. Part 5.

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Queen Elizabeth, Essex and the Ring. Part 5.

January 15, 2014 by Stewart Trotter

PROVING AN OLD ROMANTIC MYTH IS TRUE…..

A Trixie Special.

(It’s best to read Parts Parts One , Two, Three and Four first)

…..The German historian….

…….Leopold von Ranke……..

…….in his efforts to disparage the story of Queen Elizabeth, Essex and the Ring….

(For the story itself, see Part One )

…..writes in his History of England:

…..attempts have been made to get rid of the improbabilities of the first [ring story] by fresh fictions in the second.

Von Ranke is claiming that, in the past, a group of mendacious aristocrats has conspired to invent the story of the ring….

……..for reasons best known to itself….

(See: Part Four)

Realising that their FIRST story was a no-hoper….

……the aristocrats went on to invent a SECOND….

In the FIRST story, the Earl of Essex…..

……sends Queen Elizabeth’s ring to Katherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham…..

In the SECOND, Essex intends to send the ring to her sister, Philadelphia Carey, Lady Scrope…..

…..but the likely lad entrusted with the ring gives it to the Countess of Nottingham instead…..

…..whose husband was Essex’s sworn enemy, the Earl of Nottingham.

Von Ranke continues:

Lady Spelman has tried to clear away the improbability involved in it [the FIRST story] that Essex should have applied to the wife of one of his enemies, by making Essex give the ring to a boy passing by, who was to give it, not to the Countess of Nottingham, but to her sister, and then mistook the two ladies.

By using the phrase…

…clear away improbabilities…..

…..von Ranke is implying that Lady Elizabeth Spelman…..

…..along with Sir Dudley Carleton, Prince Maurice of Orange and Chavalier Louis Aubrey de Maurier…..

(See Part: Four )

…..is lying in her teeth….

What von Ranke DOESN’T tell us is that Lady Spelman was herself a…..

…….MEMBER OF THE CAREY FAMILY!!!

The Careys were the nearest Queen Elizabeth came to having a family of her own….

Henry Carey, first Lord Hunsdon….

…the Lord Chamberlain and patron of William Shakespeare’s acting company…

…and the ‘keeper’ of Aemilia Bassano, Shakespeare’s Dark Lady….

(See: How Shakespeare’s Dark Lady found God.)

……was the son of Mary Boleyn……

……sister of Anne Boleyn…..

….the ill-fated second wife of King Henry VIII…..

…..and mother of Queen Elizabeth…..

So Lord Hunsdon was Queen Elizabeth’s cousin…..

He was sometimes critical of the Queen…..

……and often likened her to the vacillating and treacherous King Richard II……

…..(‘I was never one of King Richard’s men,’ he once said)…..

But he was also fiercely loyal to her……

…..and was her personal bodyguard during the Armada crisis…..

Hunsdon had sixteen children…

…..(not counting the illegitimate ones)…..

……including the ‘Ring Sisters’….

……Katherine Carey, married to the Earl of Nottingham……

…….and Philadelphia Carey, married to Thomas, 10th Baron Scrope of Bolton….

Lord Hunsdon’s eldest son, George Carey……

…..inherited his father’s title and position as Lord Chamberlain……

He was a bon viveur and rioter who, The Shakespeare Code believes, was the original for Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night….

……just as Queen Elizabeth was the original for Olivia…..

(See: Sir Toby Belch as George, Lord Hunsdon and Olivia as Queen Elizabeth)

Lord Hunsdon’s youngest son (and consequently Katherine and Philadelphia’s brother) was Robert Carey, later Baron of Leppington and 1st Earl of Monmouth….

…… who was married to Elizabeth Trevannion…..

Robert, famously, was the first person to tell King James of Scotland he was the new King of England……

James had sent Philadelphia, his sister, a sapphire ring with the instructions that, when Queen Elizabeth died, she should send the ring back to him…

Philadelphia dropped the ring through a window to Robert, who was waiting on horseback below….

He galloped north…..

….and got to Scotland three days later…

…exhausted and bloody from a fall from his horse.

As he writes in his Memoirs of the Life of Robert Carey, Baron of Leppington and Earl of Monmouth:

I kneeled by him [King James] and saluted him by his title of England, Scotland, France and Ireland. He gave me his hand to kiss, and bade me welcome. After he had long discoursed of the manner of the Queen’s sickness and of her death, he asked what letters I had rom the Council. I told him, none: and acquainted him how narrowly I escaped from them. And yet I had brought him a blue ring from a fair lady [Robert’s sister, Philadelphia] that I hoped would give him assurance of the truth that I had reported. He took it and looked upon it, and said, ‘It is enough: I know by this you are a true messenger…

Robert had a son, Henry, who can be seen standing at the far left of this Carey family portrait, to the right of his mother, Elizabeth and his father, Robert, the 1st Earl of Monmouth…..

Henry Carey, who became 2nd Earl of Monmouth…..

………married Martha Cranfield….

They had ten children…..

….and one was a daughter, named Martha after her mother…..

She married John, 1st Earl of Middleton……

………and the couple had a daughter called Elizabeth…..

………who in turn married William Spelman of Wickmer, Norfolk, on 20th July 1693…..

………and became Lady Elizabeth Spellman….

…..ROBERT CAREY’S GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER….

She wasn’t – as von Ranke would have it – inventing……

….fresh fictions….

SHE WAS RECOUNTING HER FAMILY HISTORY!!!

She was left the Carey family group portrait shown above…..

…..which she willed to the Rt. Hon. James Hamilton, Lord Viscount Limerick…….

……great-great-grandson of William Hamilton, whose brother James had been King James VI agent in London…

……and had brought James the OFFICIAL notification that he was King of England……

Lady Spelman also possessed a copy of her great-grandfather’s, Robert Carey’s then unpublished Memoirs……

…..which she passed on to John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork and 5th Earl of Orrery….

…..(a publisher and great friend of Alexander Pope)…..

……together with the Carey family’s oral account of the Essex ring story.

Boyle wrote that he…..

…..had the honour of being in some degree of affinity with….Lady Elizabeth Spelman, daughter of the Earl of Middleton….

……..and the common ancestor was Lionel Cranfield, first Earl of Middlesex…..

….whose daughter, Martha, by his first wife, married Robert Carey’s eldest son, Henry…..

…..and so was Lady Elizabeth Spelman’s grandmother…..

Boyle first published the Memoirs in 1759…….

…….but an extract from them – covering the death of Queen Elizabeth – was first published ten years earlier by the antiquarian, priest and Fellow of the Royal Society, Thomas Birch…..

…..in his An Historical View of the Negotiations between the Courts of England France and Brussels From the Year 1592 to 1617 (1749).

In the extract, Robert describes a visit he made to Queen Elizabeth just before she died:

When I came to court, I found the Queen ill-disposed, and she kept her inner lodging; yet she, hearing of my arrival, sent for me. I found her in one of her withdrawing chambers, sitting low upon her cushions. She called me to her: I kissed her hand , and told her it was my chiefest happiness to see her in safety, and in health, which I wished might long continue. She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said, No Robin, I am not well: and then discoursed with me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days…

Birch….

…..who was later to write the scrupulously researched Two Volume Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, from the Year 1581 Till Her Death….

……was fascinated by this melancholy that overwhelmed Queen Elizabeth in the last months of her life.

He writes a lengthy footnote to the Memoirs extract:

Camden [William Camden, the contemporary historian] says that she [Queen Elizabeth] was extremely melancholy, which the friends of the Earl of Essex imputed to her majesty’s concern for the loss of him. With this historian agrees the writer of a letter from London, 3rd of April, 1603, N.S. printed in the third volume of M. de Villeroy’s Memoires d’Estat. [Note: Katherine, Countess of Nottingham, died on 24th February, 1603] The writer, who was probably M. de Beaumont the French ambassador, observes that the common opinion, and that of the physicians, and those who attended the Queen in her chamber, was that her sickness proceeded from a melancholy, which she had fallen into several days before she had made any complaint , and which was ascribed to her regret for the Earl of Essex’s death. But this does not seem a sufficient cause for the Queen’s excessive concern at that time, since his Lordship [Essex] had been executed above two years before [in 1601]

Birch then writes:

I shall add as the best commentary upon the Earl of Monmouth’s [Robert Carey’s] Memoirs a story which was frequently told by his great granddaughter, the late Lady Elizabeth Spelman….

Birch then gives Lady Spelman’s family tree….

……and recounts her story…..

……(which he got from Boyle)….

…… in full…..

When Katherine, Countess of Nottingham, wife of the Lord High Admiral, and sister of the Earl of Monmouth [Robert Carey] was dying (as she did, according to his Lordship’s own account, about a fortnight before the Queen) she sent to her Majesty, to desire that she might see her, in order to reveal something to her Majesty, without the discovery of which she could not die in peace. Upon the Queen’s coming, Lady Nottingham told her, that, while the Earl of Essex lay under the sentence of death, he was desirous of asking her Majesty’s mercy, in the manner prescribed by herself, during the height of his favour; the Queen having given him a ring , which being sent to her as a token of his distress, might entitle him to her protection. But the Earl, jealous of those about him, and not caring to trust any one of them with it, as he was looking out of his window one morning, saw a boy, with whose appearance he was pleased; and engaging him by money and promises, directed him to carry the ring, which he took from his finger, and threw down, to Lady Scrope, a sister of the countess of Nottingham, and a friend of his Lordship [Essex] who attended upon the Queen; and to beg of her, that she would present it to her Majesty. The boy, by mistake, carried it to Lady Nottingham, who showed it to her husband, the Admiral, an enemy of Lord Essex, in order to take his advice. The Admiral forbid [sic] her to carry it, or return any answer to the message; but insisted upon her keeping the ring.

The Countess of Nottingham having made this discovery, begged the Queen’s forgiveness; but her Majesty answered, God may forgive you, but I never can; and left the room with great emotion. Her mind was so struck with this story, that she never went into bed, nor took any sustenance, from that instant: for Camden is of the opinion that her chief reason for suffering the Earl to be executed, was his supposed obstinacy, in not applying to her for mercy…

So here we have it…..

……. the first COMPLETE, PRINTED account of the ring story…..

…….given, in 1749, by a respected historian with no axe to grind……

…….based on observations made by contemporaries of Queen Elizabeth……

……. and a piece of family history preserved by the Careys……

……. handed on by Lady Spelman to the publisher Boyle….

……..just as she handed on the Carey group portrait to Viscount Limerick…

This was nearly 15o years after the original incident……

…..and this fuels von Ranke’s contempt……

They [the ring stories] are both so late and rest so completely on hearsay that they can no longer stand before historical criticism…..

But ANYONE who has ever done ANY historical research will know that it takes AT LEAST a hundred and fifty years for all the information about an event to be revealed….

…..especially if it shows someone in a bad light…..

(Katherine Carey had, after all, indirectly killed the Second Earl of Essex and the Queen of England!)

In Britain it’s taken THIRTY YEARS to discover that, during the Miners’ Strike in the 1980’s, union leader, Arthur Scargill….