Ten Top Tudor People In This Chapter
Getting to know chroniclers of the day
Meeting some feisty ladies
Creating legendary plays and poems
Charting gruesome and mysterious deaths
W e could write a whole book about people of interest from the 118-year
Tudor period � some of them you've heard a lot about; others, little;
and some you haven't heard of at all. But we only have a chapter for this
topic, so here we cover ten of the best � people who made their mark not just
on Tudor society, but in the world at large and in history generally.
Anne Askew (1521�1546)
You meet some feisty women in this book, but none more so than Anne
Askew. She was born to a wealthy landowning family in Lincolnshire, and
with the shadow of the warnings of the Book of Leviticus (see Chapter 5)
hanging over her, she was forced to marry her dead sister's husband,
Thomas Kyme.
Anne was a rarity � an intelligent woman whose family taught her to read and
write. She hated Kyme, and although she had two kids by him she refused
to take his surname and began to appal hubby (and lots of other people) by
learning huge chunks of the Bible and preaching in public throughout the
county.
When Kyme tried to put a stop to his wife's preaching she left him and went
to London, where her radical Protestant ideas were more widely accepted
than in a rural backwater like Lincolnshire. It's possible that Anne met queen
Catherine (Parr) at this time, because when she was first arrested for holding
illegal Protestant prayer meetings Catherine sent food and warm clothing to
the Tower where Anne was being held and then got her released.
The deal agreed for Anne's release was she had to give up preaching and go
back to Kyme. Instead, she demanded a divorce on the Biblical grounds that
she wasn't bound to stay married to an `unbeliever' (a Catholic). Anne's was
a clever argument, but the Court wasn't having any of it. Because Anne didn't
have the wherewithal to set up a new Church to push her divorce through
(which was what Henry VIII had done � see Chapter 6), she meekly obeyed.
Perhaps meekly isn't the right word, because Anne left Kyme twice more,
came back to London, preached and was arrested all over again. This time,
the powers that be used torture on Anne, so vicious that the constable of
the Tower, Anthony Kingston, left in disgust. The lord chancellor, Thomas
Wriothesley, and Richard Rich, the ex-crony of Henry's adviser Thomas
Cromwell, interrogated Anne themselves. Then Kingston came back and put
a stop to it � Anne was a gentle-woman and as such shouldn't be subjected to
being stretched on the rack . Kingston appealed to the king and Henry agreed
to back off as long as Anne recanted. She refused.
Anne was brought to Smithfield just outside London's city wall on 16 July
1546. A huge baying crowd watched as she once again turned down Henry's
offer of mercy. Her legs were so badly twisted by the rack that she couldn't
stand and she had to be tied to the stake on a chair. While the Catholic priest
read out his words for the soon-to-be-dead in Latin, Anne argued with him in
English. Then the executioners sprinkled gunpowder over Anne's body and
set fire to her.
Wriothesley and Rich had been hoping to get Anne Askew to implicate the
queen as a closet Protestant, but she named no one during their interroga-
tions. She richly deserved her place in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs (for more
on Foxe, scan down to the later section devoted to him).
Bess of Hardwick (1527�1608)
It isn't often that you hear about women in the Tudor period who weren't
queens. And it's interesting that Elizabeth Hardwick is better known for her
house than herself!
Bess was the daughter of a well-to-do family who sent her (as was usual) into
the service of a great household � the Zouche family of Derbyshire. At their
town house in London she met and fell in love with Robert Barlow. She was
13 and her husband wasn't much older, but he died of `chronic distemper'
(which could be anything!) and so she married again.
Bess's second husband was William Cavendish, who was one of the com-
missioners of Thomas Cromwell (a top adviser to Henry VIII), and he was
busy getting rid of the monasteries in the 1530s (see Chapter 6 for more) and
making a small fortune buying up Church land cheap. The pair married at 2
a.m. (don't ask!) on 20 August 1547. William was 22 years older than his wife
but the marriage was happy and produced eight children.
As a landowner at the time of the Enclosure Riots (see Chapter 7), Bess was
a hardliner, depopulating villages on behalf of her husband. Cavendish died
in October 1557 and Bess married William St Loe, a wealthy widower with
children of his own. She was now a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth I, owned the
impressive Chatsworth House in Derbyshire and was a very good catch. St
Loe became captain of the queen's bodyguard.
Bess's good fortune nearly came unstuck, however, when she got involved
with Catherine Grey, sister of Jane, the Nine Days Queen (see Chapter 9).
Bess knew of Catherine's secret marriage to the earl of Hertford and didn't
tell the queen. Because Elizabeth hated being kept out of the loop as far as
her ladies were concerned, it was off to the Tower for Bess for six months.
St Loe died in 1565 and Bess married George Talbot, the earl of Shrewsbury.
Talbot was probably the richest nobleman in the country and got the job of
guarding Mary Queen of Scots between 1569 and 1584. She and Bess became
very friendly. Her links with Mary were bound to end in tears, and sure
enough, Bess fell foul of Elizabeth again when she was found out for spread-
ing malicious gossip about the queen. Her husband disowned her.
Bess bought Hardwick Hall in 1583 for �9,500 and rebuilt it for her adopted
daughter, Arabella Stuart, whom she hoped would be the next queen of
England. Bess plotted to get Arabella on the throne when Elizabeth died (see
Chapter 16), but she failed.
The woman was hard-headed, calculating, a serial marrier and quite capable
of bending the truth when it suited her. In that sense, although she had no
links to the royal family, Bess Hardwick was a Tudor through and through.
Christopher Marlowe (1564�1593)
Like Shakespeare (see the later section on Will), Marlowe was a playwright
and poet. The pair were only two months apart in age and both wrote for
the London stage. They must have known each other and the relationship
portrayed in the film Shakespeare in Love is probably right � the Stratford
man was in awe of Marlowe because Marlowe hit theatrical London first and
wowed everybody with his `mighty line', the thumping beat called iambic pen-
tameter that Shakespeare (and everybody else) pinched later. 286 Part V: The Part of Tens
In Shakespeare in Love, Marlowe is played by Rupert Everett in such a mysteri-
ous way that he isn't even listed in the film's credits.
And mystery was what Marlowe was all about. He was born in Canterbury,
the son of a shoemaker, but was a bright boy and went to the King's School
in the city (it's still there, with a Marlowe plaque on the wall). He went up to
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, getting his first degree in 1583 and his
Masters in 1587. Marlowe was probably recruited as an agent by Elizabeth's
spymaster Francis Walsingham between those dates. He was `on the queen's
business' in the Low Countries (today's Netherlands) then, though we don't
know exactly what he was up to.
Most scholars from Cambridge went into the Church but Marlowe went to
London, lodged with fellow playwright Thomas Kyd in Norton Folgate and got
his brilliant plays staged. The Jew of Malta, Edward II, Tamburlaine and the
Tragicall Historie of Dr Faustus were all runaway successes.
Much of Marlowe's short life (he was dead at 29) is lost in the murky
underworld of Elizabethan England. As a projectioner (the Tudor version
of James Bond; see Chapter 14) he worked in a clandestine way, spying for
Walsingham. He had a short temper and fought two duels in broad daylight
for which he was bound over to keep the peace (basically, given a good
behaviour bond). He was probably homosexual, although much of the evi-
dence for this rests on his play Edward II. He was definitely an atheist, deny-
ing the existence of God. Some of the articles he wrote � saying that Jesus
and John the Baptist were lovers � still shock today.
Marlowe may have been a member of the School of Night, an exclusive club
to which Walter Ralegh belonged. The members of this club were actually
wannabe scientists, but in those days science and the black arts of devil wor-
ship went hand in hand (see the later section on John Dee).
Marlowe was killed in a pub brawl in Deptford, London on 30 May 1593 � or
was he? Some people say he didn't die at all, but, on the run from the authori-
ties for his atheism (then a burning offence) he got to Europe and went on
to write the plays of Shakespeare! The actual details of Marlowe's death are
peculiar. He wasn't in a pub but in an eating house belonging to Eleanor Bull,
a cousin of William Cecil (see Part IV). And the men with Marlowe were spies
too. Marlowe may have been murdered by the state, on orders from the
Council.
After 400 years Marlowe finally has a memorial in Poets' Corner in
Westminster Abbey and a society of his own.
Elizabeth Throckmorton (1565�c.1647)
Elizabeth was always known as Bess and was one of the ladies-in-waiting to
Elizabeth I (who was only ever known as Bess by a very select few). These
ladies were titled, clever and often pretty with a lot of social accomplish-
ments, but woe betide anybody who tried to outshine the queen.
Bess was the daughter of a diplomat, Nicholas Throckmorton, and Anne
Carew, so she was brought up in Court circles. She was intelligent and feisty,
but because of her scheming dad's behaviour, she had to tread warily. In
1569 Nicholas was sent to the Tower for pushing a scheme to marry Mary
Queen of Scots to the duke of Norfolk (read all about Mary's adventures in
Chapters 13 and 14).
When Bess met the dashing seadog Walter Ralegh (see Chapter 16) she fell
for him and he seduced her (up against a tree, according to one account).
She came out with all sorts of excuses to explain her thickening waistline but
also insisted on marriage, to which Ralegh happily agreed.
The problem came when Elizabeth found out. Ralegh had been her favourite
(some even said lover) for 12 years and although Bess's boy Damerei had
died in the October of 1591 and Lady Ralegh was back at Court, the rumours
finally reached the queen by May 1592. She was furious and jailed them both
in separate apartments in the Tower for a time.
Elizabeth expected grovelling from the couple, but didn't get it. Ralegh was
out of favour for good, although he attempted suicide in the Tower and was
allowed out to carry on the queen's enterprising privateer business (see
Chapter 12), raiding Spanish territory in the West Indies.
Bess produced a second son, Walter, in 1593 and another, Carew, later. The
pair remained devoted, despite Ralegh's chequered career. After his long
imprisonment and execution in 1618, Bess worked hard to clear her lover's
name and re-establish his reputation.
The story goes that Bess kept her husband's embalmed head. On the block,
the headsman dithered and an astonishingly gutsy Ralegh told him to strike
home. The man had to swing the axe twice. Family stories claim that Carew
Ralegh had the head buried with him when he died.
Bess Throckmorton has appeared many times on screen. Joan Collins played
her in The Virgin Queen when Bette Davis was Elizabeth; Abbi Cornish took
on the role in Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth: The Golden Age; but the greatest
portrayal has to be Marge Simpson in Four Great Women and a Manicure. You
have to be somebody to get on the Simpsons!
We spend a long time in this book looking at the religious beliefs of the
Tudors, but despite their religion, they all had astrologers like John Dee at
Court to give them advice on what was happening in the heavens.
However much science you know and however much you understand the
world, you can't quite shake astrology off even today. Check out the horo-
scopes in any daily newspaper.
Dee had links to the royals from day one. His dad was a gentleman usher
at Henry VIII's Court and he himself claimed to be descended from Rhodri
Mawr (Roderick the Great), the 9th-century Welsh king, so working for the
Welsh Tudors made a kind of sense. Dee got his degree at St John's College,
Cambridge in 1544, and two years later he became one of the first fellows
(tutors) at Trinity College (find out about the brilliant building in Chapter 19).
In the late 1540s, while England was becoming Protestant under Edward
VI (see Chapter 8), Dee was lecturing in various European universities like
Louvain and the Sorbonne in Paris.
Back in England in 1551, England was far behind the Spaniards and
Portuguese when it came to navigation, so Dee used his considerable math-
ematical and astronomical skills to teach English sailors. One of his pupils
was Martin Frobisher (see the later section on him).
Dee's life took a downturn in 1553 when he was arrested on charges of
conspiracy to kill Queen Mary with sorcery. He'd provided a horoscope
for Princess Elizabeth, predicting when Mary would die � that sort of thing
wasn't just wishful thinking in the 16th century, it was treason. Even so, Mary
pardoned him in 1556.
Under Elizabeth Dee did well, even deciding the best time for her coronation.
He was often consulted by the queen and even the Council on all sorts of mat-
ters � out of this came his idea for the extension of the English fleet, paid for
by a fishing tax (see Chapter 15).
But Dee is best remembered today for his occult dabbling. Like many schol-
ars of his time, he was trying to find the Philosophers' Stone, which would
turn scrap iron into gold. He was also looking for the Elixir of Life, which
would create immortality. His neighbours in Mortlake, west of London, were
so sure he was a black magician that they burnt down his house and labora-
tory in 1583.