The Shakespeare Code

 

A TRIXIE SPECIAL

PROVING THAT AN OLD ROMANTIC MYTH IS TRUE

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

In her Last Post,  Your Cat reported what Sir Walter Raleigh……

…. had said to the Duke of Buckingham……

……a favourite of King James….

…..about his own life as a favourite of Queen Elizabeth……

…..viz, that…

Minions were not so happy as vulgar judgements thought them , being frequently commanded to uncomely and sometimes unnatural employments.

This quotation was taken from Francis Osborn’s Memoires of the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James……

…..published in 1658…..

What makes this anecdote……

……and indeed this whole book…….

…….so fascinating is that……

OSBORN WASN’T REPEATING SOMETHING HE’D READ…

HE WAS REPORTING A CONVERSATION HE’D OVERHEARD HIMSELF!!!

Osborn states he hasn’t used any……

….. common Chronicles……

…..for his sources

…..which he…..

…..shuns….

…..because he believes these writers of official histories…..

…..had some fear or hope at their elbows ready to jog them towards the interest of the present or future Governors…..

He cites William Camden’s history of the life of Queen Elizabeth…..

…..and astutely observes that it was written to meet the eyes of King James……

…..and consequently favours James’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots…..

…..above Camden’s own patron, Queen Elizabeth, who created him a King of Arms at the age of 17.

Osborn claims that Camden…..

…..feeds his pen rather with such scraps as I have picked out of letters and discourse, the storehouse of ‘Tradition’, not so likely to flatter or to lie as the writings of those mean contemporaries that for the most part have embarked their pens in our English affairs….

In this, Osborn is our contemporary.  He constructs history in exactly the way the great Jeremy Isaacs…..

….constructed…..

…..using interviews and anecdotes.

Osborn was born on 26th September, 1593……

…..so was four years old when Elizabeth gave Essex the Ring…..

……eight years old when Essex was executed…….

…..and ten years old when Elizabeth died…..

He was educated privately; but came to London in his ‘riper years’…..

….. and attracted the notice of William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke……..

……..who made him his Master of Horse.

In this position…….

……..as an upmarket ‘chauffeur’ to the Earl of Pembroke…..

……..Osborn would have learnt all there was to know about court gossip…….

……in the reigns of BOTH Elizabeth and James….

On 29^th November, 1599, Elizabeth had granted William Herbert a private, HOUR-LONG audience, even though he was only nineteen…..

And when James came to the throne in 1603, William…….

…..and his younger brother Philip….

…..rushed to York to seduce the bisexual King as he journeyed from Scotland……

…..leaving the Earl of Southampton……..

…..(who also longed to be James’s favourite)….

…..locked in the Tower of London…..

…..with an ancestor of mine……

 

See: The Earl of Southampton and Trixie the Cat.

James instantly made the Herbert Brothers Grooms of the Privy Chamber…..

……and the following year, The Venetian Ambassador reported that William……..

……at James’s Coronation Service…..

…….kissed the King full on the lips.

The Ambassador, though, may have mistaken William for Philip………

…….who, in the words of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon……

…….had the good fortune, by the comeliness of his person, his skill and indefatigable industry in hunting to be the first to draw the King’s eyes towards him with affection…He pretended no other qualifications than to understand horses and dogs very well, which his master loved him the better for……

But James was fond enough of William to put a live frog down his neck……

William retaliated by putting a live pig in James’s…..

…. close stool…

Even when William got married, the King, dressed only in his night-shirt, joined the couple for a romp in their bridal bed…..

So William was an excellent source for Osborn’s memoires…..

……with an intimate knowledge of how monarchs behave with favourites…..

……and how Elizabeth behaved with Essex.

Osborn described Elizabeth’s….

……infinite indulgence that appeared so long in favour of Essex, who becoming wanton from his late success [the Cadiz Expedition] though after moderated by some less happy, he grew into such heats and insolences towards any his jealousy had marked for enemies , that the Queen , to keep even the scales between him and those of the Cecililian [Robert Cecil’s] party, not only forbore to pamper him with new favours , but did not seldom frown upon him ; though he had yet so true a friend of her affection, that upon the least semblance of submission and promiseof return to a better temper , it did mediate for him : Love, like a bone, becoming more strong by breaches, he being certain upon every re conciliation to receive from her double the value of that her anger had cost him, till these frequent repetitions of his faults and her forgiveness had swelled him into such a confidence of his own mediation that he looked up on all as enemies, that in their words or actions acknowledged not his friendship….

Osborn names another source for information about the Queen ……

…….Sir Edmund Carey……

……the son of Lord Hunsdon….

……the cousin of Elizabeth herself……

[Osborn’s memory here play tricks…..

…….he claims that Edmund was Lord Hunsdon’s brother.

…….But he was writing his Memoires in his sixties…..

…….and at one point openly admits he has forgotten the source of one of his stories]

Osborn, by then, was already famous for his Advice to his Son…….

…….which was said to be among the three most popular books of the day…..

…….even though it was attacked, by some, for its misogyny.

For us the important thing is that Osborn…..

……steeped in court gossip……

…..NEVER DOUBTS THAT THE RING STORY IS TRUE!!!

He became a Parliamentarian…….

……and even uses the Ring Story to PROVE how stupid a monarch could be……

……especially a female monarch……

….Her [Elizabeth’s] death [was] reported to proceed from an occasion that would have been thought ridiculous in an ordinary lady, much more in a person of her magnitude: but such as take Princes for other than men, show they never saw them in true light: who, like the Gods of the Heathen, cannot in their actions or speeches during life be discerned from ordinary mortals but by the worship given them, being so remote from owning any real Divinity, as with the crown, they put on greater frailties than they do devest….

Osborn then goes on to begin to explain what that ‘occasion’ was…..

For during the critical minute of the Queens strongest affection (which was upon Essex his return from Cales) he had importuned her for some signal token which might assure him , that in his absence (to which his own Genius, no less than the respect he bare to the promotion of her honour , and obedience to her commands did daily prompt him) his enemies ( of whom he had many about the Chair of State ) should not through their malice or subtlety distress him, or render him less or worse deserving in her esteem: upon this , in a great deal of familiarity , she presented a ring to him ; which after she had by oaths indued with a power of freeing him from any danger or distress his future miscarriage, her anger , or enemies’ malice, could cast him into, she gave it him , with a promise , that at the first sight of it, all this and more if possible should be granted….

The vital detail here is the mention of…..

…..Essex his return from Cales….

…..which we now call…..

….Cadiz….

OSBORN’S DATE FOR THE GIFT OF THE RING TIES IN EXACTLY WITH THE DATE OF ESSEX’S ‘ANGEL’ LETTER

See Part Eight. The Essex Letters.

How did Osborn know this?

It is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that he would have seen Essex’s letter to the Queen when he wrote his Memoires…..

…..which leaves us only one conclusion…..

OSBORN KNEW THAT QUEEN ELIZABETH HAD SENT ESSEX THE RING……

…. AFTER THE CADIZ EXPEDITION…..

….. BECAUSE THE STORY IS TRUE!!!

 

Osborn goes on to cover Essex’s fatal Irish expedition……

…..and his even more fatal return to England…..

…..engineered, Osborn believes, by the cunning of Robert Cecil…….

….. who persuaded Essex that the Queen was dying.

Osborn writes:

In case he [Essex] took the wiser counsel of his friends to land in Wales with all the power he could raise , the English militia were put in a posture of defence : of which no use was made, for the Earl’s composition having always participated more of truth and loyalty to his Sovereign , with zeal to the Protestant Religion , than prudence or Reason of State, he, not only contrary to the will of his friends, but beyond the highest hopes of his enemies , came over attended with some few Gentlemen and in this naked condition he cast himself habited as a traveller at the feet of his mistress whom after he never met (unless since in heaven)……

On this last point, Osborn was wrong….

We now know from a letter from William Trew to his wife, that the Queen, Lady Warwick and the Earl of Worcester went privately to York House to visit Essexwho was….

….in extremity…..

….and suffering from…..

…..the Irish looseness….

But this was a top secret meeting, known only to a few…..

The rest of Osborn’s account is true or……

…..in the case of Cecil’s deception about the Queen’s illness……

….certainly possible.

Osborn goes on to describe how Essex was….

……presently confined; yet to no stricter prison than his chamber, and under no other guard but the obedience he owed to his Sovereign’s commands, who though daily importuned, could not be brought to sign a warrant for any severer commitment , till after hit passage through the City……

 ….that is, the Essex rebellion….

…in which he did not only exceed the extent of his own ordinary rashness, but the highest and most extraordinary plots of his enemies. And thus was the Earl snatched out of the arms of his Mistress, and torn from the hearts of the people that were his Servants, by the subtlety of his enemies , and in the sight of both brought to an untimely death.

Osborn then describes how Elizabeth, after she had beheaded Essex…..

….fell into a deep melancholy whereof she died not long after….

Osborn then tells why……

……AND TELLS THE STORY OF THE RING!!!

After his commitment to the Tower he [Essex] sent this jewel to Her Majesty , by the then Countess of Nottingham whom Sir Robert Cecil kept from delivering it: this made the Queen think her self scorned, a treason against her honour, and therefore not unlikely to be voted by the pride of so great a Lady more capital than that pretended against her person, which power doth rarely suffer to scape unpunished : besides, he had been tempted through passion to say, or his enemies to devise, that she now doted, and owned a mind no less crooked than her body; a high blasphemy against such a divine beauty , as flatterers, the idolizers of Princes , had enshrined her in.

And from these his misfortunes , led on by the weakness jealousy and age had bred in her , his maligners took advantage , so as his head was off before discretion , love or pity had leisure to dictate , the ring might be miscarried and the former relation false. But the Lady of Nottingham, coming to her death bed , and finding , by the daily sorrow the Queen expressed for the loss of Essex her self a principal agent in his destruction, could not be at rest till she had discovered all , and humbly implored mercy from God and forgiveness from her earthly Sovereign: who did not only refuse to give it, but having shook her as she lay in her bed , sent her accompanied with most fearful curses to a higher tribunal.

Not long after the Queens weakness did appear mortal , hastened by the wishes of many, that could not in reason expect pardon for a fault they found she had so severely punished in her self, as to take comfort in nothing after. But upon all occasions of signing pardons would upbraid the movers for them with the hasty anticipation of that brave mans end , not to be expiated in relation to the Nation’s loss by any future endeavour, much less so unseasonable an uncharitableness to a dying Lady.

In Osborn’s account, it’s Robert Cecil who convinces Lady Nottingham not to deliver the ring…….

……..but Cecil could well have worked in concert with the Earl of Nottingham.

And Osborn’s grasp of Elizabeth’s psychology is profound…..

…..if misogynistic….

OF CORSE she would find a sleight to her honour and beauty more insulting than a political coup…..

…..and her physical violence, even to a dying lady, rings completely true…..

She was, after all, in the habit of breaking the fingers of her ladies-in-waiting.

So, we have the first account of the Ring Story…….

…. from a philosopher, writer and historian…….

…. in 1658…….

…..not, as Lytton Strachey…..

……and Alison Weir…….

…..assert….

……a romantic novelist….

……in 1695….

1658 was only FIFTY FIVE YEARS after the death of Elizabeth….

This is ALMOST……

….(give a year or two)….

…….like an historian NOW…….

……writing about the assassination of President Kennedy!!!

But there is even more CONTEMPORARY evidence to back the RING STORY!!!

STAY TUNED TO YOUR CAT’S NEXT BREATH-TAKING POST….

….when she promises…..

TO REVEAL ALL!!!

‘Bye now……