Dark Side of Elizabeth I

Summary

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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Episode: Dark Side of Elizabeth I

Hosts: Anthony Delaney, Maddy Pelling
Guest: Professor Tracy Borman
Release Date: September 29, 2025

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Overview

This episode delves into the shadowy underbelly of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, focusing on the paranoia, plots, and silences surrounding her refusal to name a successor. While the Elizabethan era is usually remembered as a “golden age,” the hosts and guest historian Professor Tracy Borman explore the darker side: the imprisonments, suppressed debates, and near-misses that shaped the twilight of Elizabeth’s rule. With insights from Tracy's new book, Stolen Crown, the episode unpacks high-stakes power plays, the fate of royal contenders like Arbella Stuart, and the myth-making that enfolded Elizabeth’s final moments.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Forbidden Question: "Who Succeeds Elizabeth?"

• Setting the Scene ([03:18]):

  • Maddy recounts the story of Peter Wentworth, imprisoned in the Tower of London for broaching the topic of succession—a silence that blanketed Elizabethan England and was itself a form of control.
  • Quote (Maddy):
    “In this golden age of Elizabeth, there is a question that must never be asked… Who will take Elizabeth’s throne?” (04:17)

• Tracy Borman on Suppression & Tyranny ([07:10]):

  • Elizabeth made it not just taboo but illegal to discuss her successor, an act that imprisoned many, including Wentworth.
  • “It’s borderline tyranny, really.” (07:58 – Tracy)

• Elizabeth’s Perspective:

  • Despite being revered, Elizabeth's subjects feared civil war if she died without naming an heir, informed by recent memories of Tudor instability.
  • Tracy notes, “Her subjects didn’t know she’d become the longest reigning Tudor—her previous three predecessors only managed eleven years on the throne between them.” (09:47)

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Elizabeth at the End: Majestic or Outstayed?

• Deteriorating Power and Popularity ([10:45]):
  • To some, Elizabeth is still “Gloriana”—majestic, lively, and fit well into her 60s.
  • To others, especially court insiders, she is seen as a weary, possibly declining monarch; misogynistic sentiment resurfaces.
  • Quote (Tracy):
    “There’s very much a sense everyone is looking North to the man who’s hotly tipped… James VI of Scotland.” (11:21)
  • “People are muttering that they are wishing no more queens… whoever is going to be next on the throne, pray God it’s not a woman, because women aren’t supposed to rule.” (12:40)

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Succession Chess: Key Contenders and Court Intrigues

The Enigma of Arbella Stuart ([14:08])

• Background:

  • Arbella Stuart, a powerful candidate born in England with royal Tudor blood, raised under the suffocating control of Bess of Hardwick.
  • Arbella’s combination of pedigree, ambition, and vulnerability made her a “pawn in the international marriage game”—manipulated by both her grandmother and Elizabeth herself.
  • Quote (Tracy):
    “She’s the queen that never was, really… very handy to Elizabeth, and she starts to toot her as a potential bride to various people,” (18:35)

• Personal Struggles:

  • Arbella's life was tightly controlled, leading to mental distress and a failed bid for agency in her own marriage prospects.
  • “There are so many suitors proposed for her… she’s very ambitious, wants to marry well… Elizabeth uses Arbella quite shamelessly as a pawn.” (18:35 – Tracy)
  • After a clandestine marriage attempt, Arbella was effectively imprisoned and denied autonomy.

How Close Was She to the Crown? ([25:10])

• For much of the late 1590s, Arbella was nearly neck-and-neck with James VI as a potential heir, with her English birth counting heavily in her favor.
  • Quote (Tracy):
    “In the race for Elizabeth’s throne, she was pretty much neck and neck with James of Scotland… She was a real contender.” (25:10)

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Plots, Rebellions, and Espionage

The Essex Rebellion ([27:32])

• Led by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex—once a favorite of Elizabeth—this 1601 coup attempt was a “half-baked” farce that nonetheless shook the Queen.

  • Highlights include the rebels stopping for lunch mid-coup (“This is my type of rebellion, okay?” quips Anthony at 28:36).
  • After Essex’s failure, he was executed, and Elizabeth was left shaken—“there’s an account of how Elizabeth keeps a sword by her bed ever after.” (29:12 – Tracy)

• The turbulence underscores anxieties within the court and among the general populace about the lack of a clear successor, and the potential for disorder.

James VI’s Machinations & Cloak-and-Dagger Alliances ([31:53])

• James cultivated allies on both sides of court rivalry—Essex and Robert Cecil—using espionage, secret correspondence, and code names.
  • Quote (Tracy):
    “It’s all very cloak and dagger, very apt for this podcast… the dark world of Elizabethan espionage… a great deal of trouble is gone to in order to keep this correspondence under wraps.” (30:42)

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The Deathbed Myth and Rewriting of History

Camden’s Account, Exposed ([32:23])

• The long-accepted narrative that Elizabeth named James as her heir on her deathbed stems from William Camden’s state-sanctioned history—but new scholarship suggests otherwise.
  • Thanks to new technology, historians discovered that Camden had crossed out and pasted over his notes at the behest of James I, editing the original claim that “Elizabeth died without naming anybody.”
  • Quote (Tracy):
    “We’ve been blinded by that published version of William Camden… it was obvious he had done what can be diplomatically described as a heavy edit of his history.” (34:40)
  • “Camden had to put words in Elizabeth’s mouth.” (35:32)
  • Camden’s guilt is evident in his own apology-laden preface and the timing of the book’s release: “He takes so bloody long over writing it that it doesn’t come out until after James is dead. Camden kind of wins in the end!” (36:40)

Assassination Plots and Scandal: Valentine Thomas Affair ([39:17])

• A Scottish thief claimed James VI had ordered him to assassinate Elizabeth; the Queen dismissed it, but James demanded public absolution, inadvertently drawing more suspicion.
  • Camden subsequently softened this in his “official history,” further underscoring how regime and reputation rewrote the past.

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Coda: What Became of the Main Players?

James VI’s Accession and Mixed Reception ([43:21])

• Official accounts spoke of jubilance at James’s succession, but quietly, some English towns rioted or resisted; “James is soon a profound disappointment.”
• His reign introduced unpopular “male favourites,” drunken court entertainments, and renewed persecution of Catholics—culminating in the Gunpowder Plot (45:18).

Arbella Stuart’s Tragic End ([46:00])

• After a brief period of restored favor, Arbella made a fateful secret marriage to William Seymour, hoping for freedom. She was caught as she tried to escape to Europe, imprisoned in the Tower, and died there after a hunger strike in 1615.

  • Quote (Tracy): “She managed to escape… but delays proved fatal… Arbella and her husband were separated and she never left the Tower. People see her as wronged—the woman who could have been queen.” (46:40)

• Arbella’s fate stands out as a symbol of how women, even at the heart of royal privilege, could be sacrificed in the dynastic games for the English crown.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It’s borderline tyranny, really.” — Tracy Borman on Elizabeth's crackdown on succession debates (07:58)
• “There is a question that must never be asked… Who will take Elizabeth’s throne?” — Maddy Pelling (04:19)
• “She was a pawn in the international marriage game.” — Tracy Borman on Arbella Stuart (18:35)
• “You don’t get any more half baked than the Essex Rebellion… they launched this rebellion in London and they stopped for lunch halfway through.” — Tracy Borman (27:32)
• “Camden had to put words in Elizabeth’s mouth.” — Tracy Borman (35:32)
• “People see [Arbella] as wronged—the woman who could have been queen now that they have this unwanted King of Scots.” — Tracy Borman (47:36)

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Important Timestamps

• [03:18] – The silencing of the succession question: Peter Wentworth in the Tower of London
• [07:10] – How Elizabeth turned succession talk into an act of treason
• [14:08] – Arbella Stuart: her background and claim to the throne
• [25:10] – How close Arbella came to becoming Elizabeth’s successor
• [27:32] – The Essex Rebellion: causes and failures
• [31:53] – James VI’s cloak-and-dagger court politics
• [32:23] – Deathbed myth: unpicking the “official” Elizabeth-James succession story
• [39:17] – The Valentine Thomas plot and rewriting of assassination allegations
• [43:21] – Reception of James I and Arbella Stuart’s final years

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Tone & Takeaways

True to the podcast’s style, the conversation is witty, approachable, and insightful, unafraid to poke fun at historical figures (“This is my type of rebellion… Like lunch, I’m in.” – Anthony, 28:36) while delivering new research and shifting established historical narratives. The tragedy of individuals like Arbella Stuart stands out, reminding listeners that what appears as a golden age may be underpinned by fear, control, misogyny, dynastic sacrifice, and posthumous myth-making.

For further detail, see Professor Tracy Borman’s Stolen Crown (released September 4, 2025, UK; November 4, 2025, US).

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Transcript

[A]

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[A]

Hello there. I'm Anthony.

[B]

And I'm Maddie.

[A]

This is After Dark, and today we're talking about the shadier history of Queen Elizabeth I. But to set the scene, here's Maddy.

[B]

Locked inside the Tower of London is Peter Wentworth. He's been here for years. His hands trace over carvings in the stone left by the prisoners before him. It's the 1590s, the golden years of Elizabeth I. Her nemesis, Mary Queen of Scots, has been removed as a threat. The Spanish Armada has been defeated. All is Gloriana, Shakespeare's plays and halcyon days ruled over by the Virgin Queen. She's in her 60s now, but eternally majestic. Yet there is a darker side to Elizabeth, a suppressive power, if you will. As Peter Wentworth traces the carvings on the tower's walls, he listens. And what he hears scares him. It's not screams of torture, as you might expect, but silence. A silence that is draped across the fortress, across the city, the whole country, even. A silence that he has been imprisoned.

[D]

For daring to break.

[B]

Because in this golden age of Elizabeth, there is a question that must never be asked, a debate fatal to begin. And it is, of course, the only question that matters now. It's that of the succession. Who will take Elizabeth's throne?

[D]

Sam?

[A]

Well, who indeed? We are talking about Queen Elizabeth I, as you've probably realized by now. And this is, as we know, an iconic figure in English history. But we're going to focus on something that's potentially a little bit less known. And it only really occurred to me when we were prepping for this and previously when I had read today's guest's new book, that this was an episode that I didn't really know, that I didn't know if that makes sense. We are always told about the kind of the hidden element of Elizabeth's marriage or lack thereof, and how we mustn't talk about that and how that's very. She protected that an awful lot. But one of the things that's not talked about so much is how the inheritance, or the succession, rather, was also protected in a very, very kind of similar way. So we're going to be looking at the skill of Elizabeth's Game of Thrones in order to maintain power to the end. And joining us for this conversation, of course, is the one and Only Professor Tracy B.R. foreman and Tracy is the best selling author and chief historian at historic royal palaces and of course an all time favorite at After Dark. Guest, We've said this a million times, we'll say it again. And her new book, Stolen Crown, which is all about this topic, is out now. Tracy, welcome back to After Dark.

[D]

Thank you so much for having me back. Now, I'm not just saying it, but this is one of my all time favourite podcasts. It's always a delight to chat to you both.

[B]

We're always happy to have any returning guest, but especially Tracey. We're genuinely very excited. There's so much to talk about here and it's so exciting that this is a new book with new research and putting a different spin on Elizabeth. And so many people are going to be so invested in this story and like Anthony, come to it, feeling that they don't know a lot of the history that you're telling in this particular moment of Elizabeth's life. But I want to start with Peter Wentworth, who we heard about in the opening narrative there in the Tower. And he's in the Tower because he's broken what I suppose is the cardinal rule of Elizabeth's England, isn't it, to speak about this issue of succession. So who is he, first of all, and how has he ended up in this situation?

[D]

Well, actually, Peter Wentworth and his brother Paul had both got into trouble with Elizabeth for speaking out against this refusal of Elizabeth to name her heir. They were both regulars in Parliament, they were both very shrewd men, very well educated men, and they couldn't keep a lid on their opinions about the succession. And they weren't alone in that. Although it'd long been treason to speak of the death of the monarch, it was now newly treasonous to talk about the succession. Elizabeth had got so cheesed off with hearing people debate who is going to be next on the throne that she actually made it illegal. And so in the 1590s, it's not just poor old Peter Wentworth, but there are others who end up on the wrong side of the new law and they become prisoners, which I always think it's quite shocking, a so called golden age. But it's a rather dark sort of underbelly to this sort of age of Gloriana when she's actually throwing people into prison for expressing opinions. It's borderline tyranny, really.

[A]

I'm now also slightly jealous that she has a way to deal with conversations she doesn't want to have because the amount of people that I would just happily go, you know what into Jail for you for a while. I don't want to talk about reordering the dog food, actually. Basically, it would be my husband going to jail quite a lot.

[B]

I feel like you're air some domestic issues here, Anthony.

[A]

It would just be. I don't want to talk about doing okay. I didn't do that wash. Go to jail. It's fine, somebody else will deal with it. She has bigger fish to fry than the washing.

[D]

But, you know, even so, I can't help but admire Elizabeth for this because to be fair to her, she's put up with 40 years of people nagging her to name her heir and she's sick to the back teeth with it. And she sort of evokes this idea that this is one step further from speaking of the monarch's death. Now you're talking about who's going to be on the throne once I am dead. So that's even worse and you deserve to go to the Tower for it. So I'm sort of on Elizabeth's side with this, but it is a little bit tyrannical if you push it too far. People aren't allowed to express opinions, but they do. That's the point in that there is this new law, but people kind of flagrantly ignore it because this is crisis time. Now, people throughout her reign have been worried about the succession, and I think it's easy to underestimate that. And I've been guilty of this because we know that Elizabeth is the longest reigning Tudor, but her subjects didn't know that that was going to happen. And when you look at her three immediate predecessors, they'd only managed 11 years on the throne between them, so nobody thought Elizabeth was going to hang around any longer. And she was unmarried, so therefore, of course, no child to succeed her. And people still spoke about the wars of the Roses as a thing that they didn't want to repeat. And they really feared that England would be torn apart by civil war if Elizabeth died without naming an heir. So you can see it from both sides. I can see why Elizabeth got a bit cheesed off with it all, but also her subjects were quite justified in really pressing her to settle the issue once and for all.

[B]

Tracy we talk about this moment as almost a golden age, really, with a hint of tyranny, a little sprinkling of tyranny on the side. But who is Elizabeth in this moment, towards the end of her life? She's been so many things to so many people throughout what is a long reign. But even before she came to the who is Elizabeth I. In this particular moment, she remains really.

[D]

A chameleon, I think, because to some she is still Gloriana and she still is very physically fit, much to the annoyance of people like James VI of Scotland, who's desperate for her to die so he can make a pitch for the throne. But she's very, very fit and agile and still goes for vigorous walks and out dances, all her ladies. And she can still put on a good show. You know, she's still the stuff of which legends are. And she goes on these glorious progresses and really invests in her court displays. But to others she is an old woman and you see that description quite a lot appearing. And one particularly scathing observer at court said that the people are weary of an old woman's government and there's very much a sense that everyone is looking north to the man who's hotly tipped to be the successor to Elizabeth James Virginia, King of Scots, who is her closest blood relative. But blood isn't necessarily thicker than water at this time. So it's really difficult to get a sense of which of those two perspectives is the most accurate. I guess, you know, to her people, Elizabeth is still revered, she is still Gloriana. And as you said at the beginning, Maddie, you know, England has just emerged victorious from the armada and Elizabeth has seen off her greatest rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, so she has reason to be celebrated. But at the same time, there's a real sense that she's hanging on just a bit too long now and she's in her 60s and although she's physically fit, perhaps she's not quite so sharp witted or people think she's not as she used to be. And this is when the misogyny really comes to the fore. Elizabeth had managed to suppress that, I think for most of her reign very effectively. But now people are muttering that they are wishing no more queens as one courted put it in that, you know, whoever is going to be next on the throne, pray God it's not a woman, because women aren't supposed to rule. So there's a lot of misogyny coming to the fore as well. During the 1590s.

[A]

Let's talk about one of those women that potentially was going to come to the throne. You've painted a really good picture, I think, Tracy, of the idea of why the succession was such an issue. You know, this is an unmarried monarch, a queen, there are no children. Where is this going to go? As you just said, we potentially are at a point where female rule is not looked on with Much favor. We've had a long time of that, including the previous reign. So now what we have is this kind of chess game, I suppose, that starts to unfold quietly, but certainly it's happening amongst the power brokers of the time. I always think it's so interesting to remember that we have this idea of divine right and this godly position in the monarch, but actually it's men, and very often literally men who are divining that right when it comes down to it. So let's take a look at some of the players that are in play here. And the first person I want to come to is. I remember when I was doing my undergrad, this name was everywhere because it was on a book that had just been published and I think it had done really well or something, and whatever else. But that, of course, was Arbella Stewart and I can see the book still now. Tell us a little bit about Arbella Stewart Tracey.

[D]

Yes. And can I just put in a plug for the book that I think you're referring to, because it's Sarah Gristwood, who is a historian I hugely admire. She wrote a biography of Arbella and Arbella, She's a fascinating character. I shouldn't have favourites among the claimants to Elizabeth's throne, who I wrote about, but Arbella is my favourite, actually, and she's the queen that never was, really, because she had a very, very strong claim to the throne, Arbella Stuart, as the name suggests, she's of sort of the Scottish line. And I should explain from the outset, it gets dreadfully complicated with all of these claimants. In fact, there are about 15 or 16 of them, give or take, throughout Elizabeth's reign. But for the most part, the claimants either are descended from Henry VIII's elder sister, Margaret, that's the Scottish line, because she married the King of Scots, or from his younger sister, Mary. So Arbella, like James, is descended from Henry VIII's sister, Margaret, born in 1575. So she's in her 20s at this point, in the 1590s, and she has been raised by a quite formidable matriarch of the Tudor age, Bess of Hardwick. Goodness me. Ar destined to be a woman to be reckoned with, because Bess of Hardwicke was one of her grandmothers, Lady Margaret Douglas, Henry VIII's niece, was her other, and they were both scheming, ambitious women who were desperate for their granddaughter to be on the throne. So on the one hand, she was raised with a keen awareness of her royal blood and her right to the throne. But on the other, she was denied any freedom of action. Growing up in this suffocating atmosphere at Bess of Hardwicke's Derbyshire home. Hardwicke hall of. And she wasn't even able to sleep on her own. She had to sleep in the same room as her grandmother. She wasn't allowed to do anything for herself and when she tried to rebel, she was literally slapped back down. And it didn't have a good impact on Arbella's character, this kind of duality, this contradictory nature of her upbringing. On the one hand, you're really, really important and on the other, you can't do a thing about it. You don't have any freedom. So she grows up very haughty, very arrogant and fatally naive. And when she first comes to Elizabeth's court, she upsets just about everybody because she insists on taking precedence among the other ladies of court. And she behaves in a very haughty manner. That's the word used to describe her demeanour towards the Queen herself. And then she commits a cardinal sin. She flirts with one of Elizabeth's great favourites, the Earl of Essex. Can you imagine how? Like a lead balloon that goes down. So, you know, I think Elizabeth is just horrified by this young woman who I think she had contemplated as a potential successor, but not after that fairly disastrous first meeting. Elizabeth doesn't really want anything to do with Arbella, unless it's to annoy James, which Elizabeth does quite well sometimes. If James of Scotland is getting above himself, she'll suddenly show favour towards Arbella. So it's kind of divide and rule. Is Elizabeth's game.

[B]

Absolutely obsessed with Arbella immediately, from everything that you said about her there, Tracey, not least because I think if anyone grew up in the north, you know, Hardwick hall, you go past it on the motorway. What's the poem, the rhyme about Hardwick Hall? More glass than wall, the incredible Tudor windows. It's such an important sight to me growing up, so I'm instantly team Arbella. But I'm really interested, Tracy, in this duality, this way that Arbella is brought up in this very constricted way. And we know, for example, I think I'm right in saying that Bess of Hardwicke sleeps in the same room as her, well into Arbella's twenties, I think. So, you know, she's. It sort of reminds me a little bit of the early life of Queen Victoria and the Kensington rules and having to hold someone's hand, go down the stairs and, you know, to feel that you are different in some way and that you're being controlled in every single aspect of your life, even in the privacy of your own bedchamber. So we have that on the one hand, but then this great importance that's placed on her and I suppose the struggle to perform that performance a little bit, but not so much that it becomes a danger. But I'm interested in Arbella never marries, is that correct? And Elizabeth controls the situation in terms of who might be eligible to her and who's available to her. Right.

[D]

She certainly does. And this is one of the causes of what I think we would describe as a sort of a mental breakdown almost that Arbella suffers because there are so many su proposed for her and she really likes the idea of marriage and she's very ambitious and she wants to marry well, ideally wants to marry another person perhaps with a claim to the English throne. And Elizabeth uses Arbella quite shamelessly as a pawn in the international marriage game when she herself is no longer considered a viable bride. She's got beyond childbearing years. Arbella, who very handily looks like a mini me when you look at. There's a recently discovered miniature of Arbella Dr. Exactly like Elizabeth, red haired like Elizabeth, even down to the kind of ruff around her neck, you know, you would. In fact, it was originally identified as a portrait of the Virgin Queen herself, but it is Arbella. And so she's very handy to Elizabeth and she starts to sort of tout her as a potential bride to various people, including the Duke of Parma, he of the Armada, los for his side anyway, and others. And it's very useful for Elizabeth to have Arbella as this sort of political tool. And then at the same time you' got her domineering grandmother sort of doing the same and she's scheming to marry her to the bastard son of the Earl of Leicester. So all of these candidates come and go, but none of them come to anything. And Arbella has absolutely no agency in any of this. And this really, as I say, it doesn't have a very good effect on her mental health. I mean, you can imagine that her contemporaries are quite brutal in their descriptions of what Arbella's going through. And I think it was Robert Cecil, Elizabeth's powerful minister, described her as being half mad. And there's a really derogatory attitude towards Arbella and you just can't blame her after this fairly. I was gonna say horrific upbringing, I think it was, I think we can say horrific really. And so eventually Arbella, because she has this sort of fairly fatal ambition and this haughtiness and this naivety. She decides she's going to find a husband for herself, and she makes a fairly disastrous choice in that she fixes on the Seymours. So again, Royal blood. That name should be familiar to Tudor fans. Jane seymour being Henry VIII's third wife, of course, and the Seymours were very much part of that family. So she sort of starts to make negotiations of her own. And then Elizabeth hears about this and she's absolutely furious and so is Bess of Hardwicke. And she and she basically disowns Arbella and says, all right, she's going to be a prisoner now at Hardwick. She's never, ever going to be allowed out, even though she wasn't before. So poor old Arbella, this kind of quest for freedom ends up making her situation so much worse.

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[A]

It is difficult, I think, for us to really get to grips with and this is where the new book is so good. Tracy, again, I alluded to this before, but the machinations that are going on between these people at the end of the day and what they're willing to sacrifice, and Arbella seems to be one of the players that they're all will to sacrifice. I mean, you talk about this position of privilege that she potentially occupies, and of course she does. But she's not allowed access to that privilege in many ways because everybody has taken a stake in her and everybody is playing her for their own ends. And it feels sometimes like it's a futile game to begin with and that she's lost from the very, very beginning because she has such strong power brokers pulling her in so many different directions that I'm not sure what chance she actually stands. But I just wanted to know your opinion before we kind move on to talking about some rebellions that are happening because of all of this uncertainty. How much do you think contemporaries thought of Arbella as a potential successor? How far up the line do you think she was in people's minds?

[D]

I think she was very much at the forefront of people's minds, I think, really in the race for Elizabeth's throne, she was pretty much neck and neck with James of Scotland, and she had the edge over him because even though he took precedence in a number of ways, not least the fact he was a man, Arbella had a huge advantage over James because she'd been born on English soil and that mattered. Today, it's easy to underestimate how much England and Scotland saw each other as foreign countries, and they'd been at loggerheads for centuries, bitter enemies. And Henry VIII had actually disinherited the Stuarts because he didn't want a Scot on the English throne. So that was actually a problem for both James and Arbella. But at least she'd been born in England, so she was a Real contender. And there was a very telling report in the very dying days of Elizabeth. So in March 1603, when the Venetian ambassador Scaramelli writes an assessment of the succession and it's a very, very perceptive one and he lists the various claimants, I should say most of them have died off by now, so it's kind of survival of the fittest. But in his view the only two viable ones are James and Arbella and it's anyone's guess as to who's going to get it. So he doesn't say, I think it'll be the King of Scots actually, he thinks it's just as likely to be Arbella. So we really were within a hair's breadth of having another queen after Elizabeth.

[B]

This is really new information to me. Tracy. I'm absolutely fascinated. We think certainly in England that we know so much about Elizabeth I, she's such a canonical figure in our royal history and in our sort of cultural imagination and the fact that there may have been a queen after her, that that was a possibility is really fascinating to me. But talk to me about the climate of uncertainty that Anthony alluded to there in this moment, towards the end of Elizabeth's life. I'm thinking in particular about 1601 when there's a rebellion and that's just two years before Elizabeth does die. And what I think so interesting is that of course throughout Elizabeth's reign there are so many threats to her throne coming from so many different angles, but some of them, particularly in this moment, seem quite chaos y and a little bit half baked. So talk to us about the Essex Rebellion, please.

[D]

You don't get any more half baked than the Essex Rebellion. Oh my goodness. Let's start at the beginning. So Essex, he is a hot headed favourite of Elizabeth and she'd sent him to command her forces in Ireland and he makes a complete hash of that and concludes a fairly humiliating truce, going against Elizabeth's orders in doing so. And he returns to England and he's in disgrace and in fact he's in prison and he's sort of forgiven for a while, but he's not at all happy with how during his absence, his great rival Robert Cecil has really claimed the first place in the council and he's now running the show effectively Robert Cecil. And so Essex, being the very arrogant, fairly stupid man he was, decides to just seize control, gathers together the worst set of rebels you've probably ever seen. And I love the fact that they launched this rebellion in London and they stopped for lunch halfway through.

[A]

Oh, this is my type of rebellion, okay? I would have been there, I would have failed, but I would have been in this rebellion. Like lunch, I'm in.

[D]

It just makes me chuckle every time. I just think it's just amazing. Yeah, I almost love Essex for it, actually. But needless to say, this half baked rebellion fails miserably, is very quickly crushed by the Queen's forces and then Essex, of course, he's imprisoned, he's thrown into the Tower, but he tries desperately to insist he hadn't been rebelling against the Queen because that's treason. He'd been rebelling against her evil advisors. So, you know, he's wanting to get rid of Cecil. He thinks she's got terrible people around her, but, you know, nobody's buying that, least of all the Queen. And even though he had been her last great favourite, she doesn't hesitate too much in having him executed, but it really rattles her. And there's an account of how Elizabeth keeps a sword by her bed ever after. The Essex rebellion had really shaken her, even though, you know, she didn't have that much to fear because it was such a, you know, farce. But, you know, she couldn't believe that one of her great favorites had actually turned his coat and tried to take power by. For it was a bad moment for Elizabeth and it ushered in a very dark period for her. But quite shockingly, there were more than rumours that some powerful people had been involved, aside from Essex, even a contender for the throne being James of Scotland, because wily old James during the 1590s started to make friends in Elizabeth's court because he realised that if he was gonna claim her throne, he was gonna have to have allies. So he decides to make friends with both sides of the divide, they being, of course, Robert Cecil I mentioned, and the Earl of Essex, bitter enemies. They both have factions at court and James manages to get in the good graces of both of them. And there is a hint, and I think it's worth looking into a bit more, although almost certainly the evidence has been destroyed that James was actually supporting Essex's rebellion, because by 1601, any patience he had had run out. He really, really wanted to take Elizabeth's throne. By then there's talk of his involvement in some of the correspondence of the time, so it's interesting. But then of course, he was very quick to distance himself from Essex and say what a terrible traitor he was. And he really threw in his lot with Cecil from that time forward and it's really this quite sort of powerful alliance between James and Cecil that starts gathering ground. And it's all very cloak and dagger, very apt for this podcast because it's the dark world of Elizabethan espionage and there are spies used in this correspondence and there are code names. And a great deal of trouble is gone to in order to keep this correspondence between the King of Scots and Elizabeth's greatest advisor under wraps because both would be in serious trouble if it was discovered. So it's fascinating reading their letters and just how much Cecil paved the way for James to claim Elizabeth's throne. I think probably James owed his throne to Cecil.

[A]

Well, let's come to James VI then, and let's talk about him a little bit. And before we start to unpack some of the new points of conversation in your book, Tracy, let's talk about what we think we know. So give us an account of Elizabeth's deathbed scene and how it's been told up until this point. Actually, I love this part of the book. It's a really great way to kind of start the conversation off in terms of your, your new book. So it's a lovely account in there. So tell us exactly what we, we have thought we knew about this.

[D]

Yes. So for 400 years. The scene is as follows. Late March 1603, Elizabeth lies dying at Richmond Palace. She's surrounded by her ministers and they are pressing her yet again to name her successor. And still she has resisted. But finally, on about 22 March 1603, we can work out from this source, Elizabeth says, almost with her last breath, I will have none but the King of Scots to succeed me. And then she breathes her last two days later. Now, this account was the work of William Camden. He was Elizabeth's earliest biographer. He actually started his account of her reign while she was still on the throne. He was commissioned to do it by Lord Burden, of course, her closest advisor, Robert Cecil's father, Camden, he gets a bit of a hard press because people say, oh, you know, he's just an apologist for Elizabeth. He was actually a very meticulous historian and a very well respected historian and he didn't want to touch this book with a barge pole. I mean, who would want to write an account of somebody who was still in power? It's a bit of a poison chalice. So he tries to resist, but Burleigh says, no, no, you know, I'm going to give you access to all of these state papers and source material. And so Camden gets to work and he's pretty much writing at the time that things are unfolding now as Elizabeth's dying. And so that's why his account has been seen as sort of the last word on what happened and that at the very end, Elizabeth finally did name James her heir. But two years ago, the British Library published some rather groundbreaking research by their PhD student, Helena Rutofsky, who had been doing lots of work on the original manuscript by Camden. So not the published version, but his manuscript. And there are about sort of several volumes of this original text in the British Library in the Cotton manuscripts. And she had found lots of pages had been sort of pasted over, and with the help of new technology and transmitted light, it's sort of like an X ray of these pages. She was able to see the words underneath. And some of the pages. Camden had used this pasting over technique to correct minor details, but some not so much. And it was quite obvious that he had done what can be diplomatically described as a heavy edit of his history of Elizabeth once James was on the throne. And the page regarding the succession, now that wasn't pasted over, that was lots of crossings out. And he revised his original account, which said that Elizabeth died without naming anybody. And that's actually what all of the other contemporary sources, all of the eyewitnesses, they agree with that version. But we've sort of been blinded by that published version of William Camden. And we know that in 1608, so when James had been king for five years in England, he commissioned Camden to finish that book. I think Camden, when Elizabeth died, he kind of buried his book, hoped it would never see the light of day. Then James comes to the throne and very quickly he's struggling to hold onto that throne. You know, two years after his accession, we have the Gunpowder Plot, where a group of Catholic gentlemen plot to blow the Scottish king to the heavens, as they put it. And so James is quite worried by 1608 that he's not going to be king of England much longer. And he is also aware that there's been this glorification of Elizabeth after her death. The rose tinted specks come on. And Elizabeth can do no wrong. So James literally wants Camden to put words in Elizabeth's mouth. So he instructs Camden to go back and rewrite history effectively. And you can see this in the manuscript. It's quite thrilling how you know that that original text has been crossed out. And then you get this scene that I described where she said, I'll have none but the King of Scots. But Camden, clearly this kills him. He hates having to do this. He's a meticulous historian and he puts many, many in his book. In the final version, he does a Preface to Truth where he basically apologizes for all the mistakes in his book and he begs future authors to find out the truth and to publish that truth. And, you know, really without actually spelling it out. It's obvious he's not happy with this published version. And I love the fact he has the last life because he takes so bloody long over writing it that it doesn't come out until after James is dead. Camden Connor wins in the end, but it's all for very contemporary, isn't it, this idea of those in power controlling the narrative.

[B]

I'm amazed by this, Tracy, because I think as historians, we all are excited to go into the archive, any archive. It's always a tantalizing moment in which history becomes tangible and you feel close to the subjects that you're studying. But I think moments like this, in which you can rewrite established narrative on this scale, happen maybe once in a career. So kudos to the British Library and their PhD student for that discovery. I love an archival detective bit of work that's so amazing. Only Boost Mobile will give you a free year of service. Free year when you buy a new 5G phone.

[C]

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[B]

I suppose what Camden does overall is that he rewrites writes the relationship between James and Elizabeth and makes it seem amicable. Or if not amicable, certainly Elizabeth is seen as validating James in those final moments of her life. But the relationship that he has with her in the years leading up to her death is actually quite different. And am I right in thinking that actually he may have almost succeeded in having her assassinated at one point in the, I think the 1590s?

[D]

That's absolutely right. And this is one of those pages that were pasted in the Camden manuscript. So quite Telling. Because I'll tell you the story from the beginning. There was a wonderfully named, almost certainly falsely named man called Valentine Thomas. He was a Scotsman who was arrested on the Scottish border, on the English side of the border, for stealing horses in 1598. And when he was arrested and he was being interrogated by the English authorities, they were astonished when then, apart from the thieving of horses, he claimed to have had five or six secret late night meetings with the King of Scots at Holyrood. He'd been smuggled into the palace under cover of darkness, and during those meetings, he had agreed with James to ride south and assassinate Elizabeth so that James could claim the throne of England at last. Well, you can imagine how shocked the authorities were. They went straight to Elizabeth with the news. And this is when Elizabeth becomes what my daughter would describe as a boss queen icon, in my opinion, because rather than just panic, kind of throw her toys out the pram, she said, this guy's a loon, he's a fantasist. Clearly there's nothing behind this. He just wants to kind of big up up his role in life and let's just bury this information. She doesn't believe it for a second. And James, this is like face plug moment. Because James hears about it through his spies in Elizabeth's court and he makes the biggest song and dance about the Valentine Thomas controversy that you have ever known. So talk about protesting too much. He's like, no, I didn't have anything to do with this. Didn't have any. And you must publish to the world that I had nothing to do with this. And Elizabeth's saying, no, look, let's just keep it quiet because nobody knows about it. I don't believe it. Let's just bury it. No, no, says James. I want my name publicly cleared. And in the end, he only is satisfied when Elizabeth publishes a written declaration that James had nothing to do with the Valentine Thomas assassination plot. And you can still see that declaration in the National Archives in London. And of course, what this does is to draw everybody's attention to the fact that James is mentioned as a potential assassin by Valentine Thomas. So suddenly, everybody's really suspicious of James. And you can see Elizabeth just shaking her head, saying, look, I told you this would happen, you idiot. We should have kept it quiet. But now, no, everybody suspects James. And then when Camden wrote about this in his original account, he wrote all of this, all of these details, and exactly what Valentine Thomas had said James had ordered him to do. But then, then he pastes over that On James's orders, the whole affair is just mentioned in Camden as, oh, Valentine Thomas made an accusation that the Scottish King bore some ill affection towards the Queen of England. Ill affection. Assassination attempt. Yeah. So the language was kind of softened quite a bit. We don't know. We'll never know whether James really was involved, but he shot himself in the foot big time over that thing.

[A]

I will say it's not impossible that James could have been making any many different types of conversations, of promises to many different types of young men in private rooms at any point in his reign. So who knows? We could have had those conversations and he may well have just been entertaining his fancies on the side. But before we kind of wrap up Tracy, I have two prong approach to the end of this. First of all, we know that James VI becomes James vi. And first, so we know he is the successor in the end, what is the reception to his eventual takeover? And just to bring the other contender back in, what happens to Arabella Stuart?

[D]

So the reception of James is interesting because if you read the official accounts, there is what's called as this peaceable coming in of the King and there's widespread rejoicing on both sides of the border. But it's always really interesting. Difficult to get through to what the ordinary people were saying. And there were reports of riots in some cities when they heard that the King of Scots was now King of England. And Cecil had to put extra guards in some towns across England. Some towns refused to recognise James, but that's almost under the radar. What we hear much more of is all this rejoicing and James making his stately progress south to England, regardless of how much it was celebrated or lamented, he doesn't stay popular for very long because while people had rejoiced about having no more queens, as they put it, and now there was a king on the throne, James is soon a profound disappointment. So you have Gloriana and her great shows of majesty. And then you have James, who arrives in London, very ungracious about everything, English like, he makes it clear despite he wanted this throne for ages. But he seems really annoyed that he's had to leave Scotland and come to London. So he arrives complaining about the English weather. He's from Scotland, for goodness sake. How much worse can it be? But he says, you know, it's always raining in England. He has a heavy cold, he's pretty miserable. And then to the shock of one courtier, he notes that the new king is forever fiddling with his codpiece and they just don't know what to make of James. He's this kind of. Of abhorrence, really, after they were used to the refinement of Gloriana. And James is always getting drunk and he has these kind of debauched evenings at court and it's just not what people expect. There's a real clash of cultures. But more seriously, James shocks people by surrounding himself with his male favourites. And he also shows himself very, very obsessive about witch hunting, which is something that had sort of died a death in England, but now it comes back. And most seriously of all, James persecutes Catholics far more relentlessly than Elizabeth ever did. And that's a huge disappointment to England's Catholics, because James, of course, is the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, a great Catholic figurehead. And even though James makes no secret of his Protestant faith, the Catholics had hoped for better times when he was king. But instead he is relentless in hunting them down. And that's what eventually sparks the Gunpowder Plot. So James, as I mentioned, you know, he has good reason to commission Camden to publish this retrospective justification of his accession, because he desperately needs a bit of good PR by the time Camden sets to work on rewriting history. As for Arbella, I wish I could say it was a happy ending for her, but it really isn't. It's a very tragic ending. So Art Bella and James, they're like frenemies, really. You know, James makes a lot of Art Bella when he arrives in England, and he gives her precedence at court and she's given various court appointments and she's allowed her freedom at last, so she doesn't have to live with her grandmother anymore. And she has her own house, nice house in West London. But James keeps quite a close eye on her cause he's still a bit paranoid about his old rival and he knows that people still talk about her as a potential successor. And Arbella, this is when now she's got a bit of freedom, she gives vent to her ambitions and she plots a secret marriage. Again, she focuses on the Seymour family and she marries in secret the son of Edward Seymour. Edward Seymour was Lady Catherine Grey's son, Lady Catherine Grey being a real strong claimant to the throne. And Edward Seymour's son is William. They marry in secret and I think their wedding takes place at 4am in Greenwich Palace. But there are witnesses because Arbella is clever enough to make sure there are witnesses so it can't be claimed to be invalid. Nothing remains a secret at court for long. James soon hears of it. He has them both Imprisoned. And it's so tragic because Arbella and her husband actually managed to escape. So they've clearly communicated, they managed to escape and they plan to rendezvous in the middle of the English chapter tunnel and make their way over to safety in Flanders. Well, Arbella gets there first in her boat across the English Channel, but there's no sign of William. And rather than just carrying on as her assistants are urging her to do, she insists on waiting until William's boat has appeared. And the delay proves fatal because the English authorities catch up with Arbella and they arrest her and they throw her into the tower. And just probably a few minutes later, William's boat appears and he's able to sail unopposed to Flanders and live out his days in safety. Whereas poor Arbella, she'll never leave the tower. I think she goes on virtual hunger strike, pretty much starving herself to death. And yeah, she does die there in 1615, which, by the way, is the year that the first instalment of William Camden's History of Elizabeth comes out. So there's certain irony in that. So poor Arbella, and she's very much mourned. People see her as wronged and the woman who could have been queen now that they have this unwanted King of Scots on the throne.

[B]

Poor Arbella, indeed. She's the person I'm going to be taking away from this. I mean, it's so incredible that from this reign, this long reign of this extraordinary woman, comes this desperate scrabbling at the end of her life for the crown and that it works out the way that it does. And there's all these plots and subplots and half baked assassination attempts, etc. It's a remarkable story, Tracey. If people want to read more of this and to go into more detail, where can they find your book?

[D]

So my book's available everywhere from the 4th of September in the UK, it's out in the US on the 4th of November. So a couple of months later, all gifts, good bookshops. And of course, I'm going to be doing lots and lots of events as well across the country. So, yeah, I try to keep my website updated so you can find all the details there.

[B]

Well, absolutely. Head to Tracey's website and get those tickets now. If you've enjoyed listening to this episode, you can get in touch with [e-mail] we love to hear your thoughts on the show and also your suggestions for future episodes. See you next time.

[C]

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[B]

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