Every once in a while I like to do a deep dive into one year in the 16th century. This episode I chose 1601. Lots of good stuff happening! Secret correspondence between Scotland and England. The Essex Rebellion. Elizabeth’s Golden Speech. And more!
Related Renaissance English History podcasts to 1601
England in Ireland: https://www.englandcast.com/2019/01/episode-117-the-english-in-ireland/
The Gunpowder Plot: https://www.englandcast.com/2018/11/episode-113-remember-remember/
Being Poor in Tudor England: https://www.englandcast.com/2019/07/pood/
Book Recommendation:
Shakespeare and the Resistance: The Earl of Southampton, the Essex Rebellion, and the Poems that Challenged Tudor Tyranny by Clare Asquith. Order on Amazon here using my affiliate link. You pay the same price, and the podcast gets a commission – hooray!
Transcript for Episode 148: A Year in the Life – 1601
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave a rating or review on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity. This is Episode 148, and it’s another episode where we look at one specific year during the long 16th century. A couple of months ago I did this with the year 1527, and the feedback was really positive, so I’m back at it with the year…. 1601. Why did I choose this year? Well, in many ways it is the culmination of Elizabeth’s time as Queen, even though she would live for another two years. This is the year of the Essex Rebellion. Also, the year that one of the finest social programs ever created – the English Poor Laws – were passed. It’s also the year when Elizabeth gave her final speech to Parliament. So let’s dive in, shall we? One note, you can get show notes at Englandcast.com/1601.
The 17th century began with intrigue and posturing over who the next monarch would be after Queen Elizabeth’s inevitable death. Gloriana had been on the throne for over 40 years, during which she stabilized the currency, found a compromise in religion that no one was truly happy with, and beat off the Spanish Armada. But she would eventually pass – though it was still treason to discuss the death of a monarch – and who would be her heir? The myth around Elizabeth was starting to grow, and a very famous painting of her dates from around 1601 – the Procession Portrait showing her in a procession, being carried in a litter, led by the knights of the garter. She is in full queenly regalia, and also looks to be about 25 with clear skin and zero wrinkles or pox scars. Another portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, the famous Rainbow Portrait, also flatters her – she was in her late 60’s, and yet she looked not a day older than 35. The only contemporary description that survives is from 1597 by André Hurault de Maisse, Ambassador Extraordinary from Henry IV of France, after an audience with the sixty-five year-old queen, during which he noticed, “her teeth are very yellow and unequal … and on the left side less than on the right. Many of them are missing, so that one cannot understand her easily when she speaks quickly.” Yet he added, “her figure is fair and tall and graceful in whatever she does; so far as may be she keeps her dignity, yet humbly and graciously withal.
There was the sense that time was waiting to change. In 1598 Elizabeth’s godson sir John Harington – also famous for having invented the flushing toilet – said that the feeling in both Oxford and Cambridge was a kind of weariness of the time – mundus senescit – that the world waxed old. The world’s decay and the queen’s decay were one in the same, and there was a sense of waiting for the next upheaval, which was both exciting, and also terrifying. For Elizabeth, her dearest friends had left the world before her, and after the betrayal of her final favorite, which happened in January 1601, she increasingly seemed to struggle with what we would term depression today.
This is also, though, the height of the golden age of Shakespeare. In 1600 Shakespeare’s history plays, Henry IV Part 2, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Much Ado about Nothing were published in London.
And it was just a few years off from the first English colony in Jamestown, and England was building up a scientific and trading empire. On 31 December 1600 The East India Company was granted their Royal Charter, the culmination of several years of work and lobbying. For a period of fifteen years, the charter awarded the newly formed company a monopoly on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan. In 1601 the first voyage left England – A ship called The Red Dragon – built in Deptford in 1595 – captained by Sir James Lancaster, left London with four smaller ships in February, though it would take them until April just to leave the English Channel because of the winds. They were gone for two years, and captured a 1200 ton Portuguese carrack, and Lancaster would be knighted by James I on their return. Interestingly, several years later, the first confirmed recorded performance of Hamlet was on The Red Dragon, though it was likely first performed in London in 1601.
Also in 1600, William Gilbert had published De Magnete, which was the beginning of England leading the Scientific Revolution that would happen with the 17th century. The official name in English was On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on That Great Magnet the Earth, and it was one of the first successful scientific books published in England. It was all about the earth’s magnetic field. Gilbert also made the claim that gravity was due to the same force of magnetism, and he believed that this held the Moon in orbit around the Earth. While incorrect by modern standards, this claim was still far closer to what we believe than the ancient Aristotelian theory that they had believed at that time, which stated that the heavenly bodies consist of a special fifth element which naturally moves in circles, while the earthly elements naturally move downward. Johannes Kepler accepted Gilbert’s theory and used it as a working basis for his famous laws of planetary motion.
So we enter 1601 with this feeling of a general malaise when it comes to Elizabeth herself, but lots of good things happening in the world. Catholics were busy being persecuted, and recusants were trying to defend themselves. The famous composer William Byrd was dealing with the English legal system in 1601 when he was dealing with an indictment that he and his family hadn’t been to church, in fact, according to the 1601 complaint, had “utterly refused” to come to church.
Also speaking of Catholics, the bonds that would lead to the planners of the Gunpowder Plot just a few years later were already active and building their relationships and friendships. A Jesuit Priest named Edward Oldcorne was conducting illegal masses around Worcestershire, but in 1601 he was dealing with a health issue – likely throat cancer.
But the new year at court started out with great drama – and it was real life drama, not the Shakespearean kind. Robert Devereaux, the Queen’s last great favorite, was up to some plotting. So let’s talk about the Essex Rebellion.
Robert Devereaux was the son of Lettice Knollys, making him the stepson to Robert Dudley, Elizabeth’s true love. Essex performed military service under his stepfather in the Netherlands, before making an impact at court and winning the Queen’s favour. Essex first came to court in 1584, and by 1587 had become a favourite of the Queen, who found him witty and intelligent, and admired his skills as a showman and in courtly love. In June 1587 he replaced his stepfather the Earl of Leicester as Master of the Horse. After Leicester’s death in 1588, the Queen transferred the late Earl’s royal monopoly on sweet wines to Essex, providing him with revenue from taxes. In 1593, he was made a member of her Privy Council.
But he seemed to think that he was invincible, and got above his station, as it were. Once during a heated Privy Council debate on the problems in Ireland, the Queen reportedly cuffed him on the ear, and he responded by half drawing his sword on her.
His military career was a series of ups and downs. In 1589, despite the Queen ordering him to not take part, he was in Francis Drake’s English Armada, that sailed to Spain in an unsuccessful attempt to finish the job in Spain after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. In 1591, he was given command of a force sent to the assistance of King Henry IV of France. In 1596, he distinguished himself by the capture of Cádiz in partnership with Dutch forces. On campaign in the Azores in 1597, with Walter Raleigh as his second-in-command, he defied the Queen’s orders, pursuing the Spanish treasure fleet without first defeating the Spanish battle fleet.
His biggest failure, though, had been in Ireland, where the Spanish and Scots were supporting the Irish in their fight against England. He took 16,000 troops to Ireland to put down the rebellion. Instead of face the leader in battle as he had promised to do, he ran around the countryside wasting his money, fighting small battles with minor leaders, and allowing the Irish to win two other major battles in other parts of Ireland. Eventually England had to sign a peace with the leaders, and the Queen told him that if she had wished to abandon Ireland it would scarcely have been necessary to send him there.
Then he came back to England without permission, famously barging into the Queen’s bedchamber before she was fully dressed and catching her without her make up. The Council declared that he had been negligent in his handling of Ireland, and he had been confined to York House under the custody of one Richard Berkeley. He also lost some of his income, including that monopoly on sweet wines.
Which leads us to 1601. In January he decided he had had enough, and the Queen was being poisoned with lies about him. In early 1601, he began to fortify Essex House, his town mansion on the Strand, and gathered his followers. On the morning of 8 February, he marched out of Essex House with a party of nobles and gentlemen (some later involved in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot) and entered the city of London in an attempt to force an audience with the Queen. Cecil immediately had him proclaimed a traitor. A force under Sir John Leveson placed a barrier across the street at Ludgate Hill. When Essex’s men tried to force their way through, Essex’s stepfather, Sir Christopher Blount, was injured in the resulting skirmish, and Essex withdrew with his men to Essex House. Essex surrendered after Crown forces besieged Essex House.
He was, of course, tried for treason, which must have been incredibly painful for Elizabeth. But it was clear that he was guilty of it, and so the trial began. Essex was found guilty and, on 25 February 1601, was beheaded on Tower Green, becoming the last person to be beheaded in the Tower of London. It was reported to have taken three strokes by the executioner Thomas Derrick to complete the beheading. The Queen reportedly grieved for him greatly, and who could blame her?
Several of Essex’s poems were set to music. English composer John Dowland set a poem called “Can she excuse my wrongs with virtue’s cloak?” in his 1597 publication First Booke of Songs: these lyrics have been attributed to Essex, largely on the basis of the dedication of “The Earl of Essex’s Galliard”, an instrumental version of the same song.
Let’s talk poor laws, shall we? Again, harkening back to previous episodes, episode 125 was all about the poor laws of the 16th century, so I won’t go into much detail here. During the 16th century, England had to deal with how to care for the poor once the monasteries had been dissolved, since they had traditionally taken on the role of caring for the poor and providing education and healthcare for poor people.
The whole episode I did on being poor in that show, number 125, led up to the 1601 Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1601 – the 1601 Poor Law, which was the basis of dealing with English poverty for 200 years, and formed the American legislation around poverty as well. 170 years later, no less a statesman than Ben Franklin would comment that the 1601 law took away the incentive for people to work, for it made their lives too easy in poverty.
Here’s what it did:
- The impotent poor (people who can’t work – the old, sick, orphans, blind, and otherwise disabled) were to be cared for in almshouse or a poorhouse. The law offered relief to people who were unable to work: mainly those who were “lame, impotent, old, blind”.
- The able-bodied poor were to be set to work in a House of Industry. Materials were to be provided for the poor to be set to work.
- The idle poor and vagrants – what we would consider basic homeless people today were to be sent to a House of Correction or even prison.
- Pauper children would become apprentices.
The 1601 Act was administered by the parish – there were about 1500 parishes in England based on the area around a parish church. This meant that those who were overseers would likely know each of the poor people individually, know their circumstances, and be able to divide them into the deserving or undeserving poor. Those who paid the tax to help with the poor included the landowners, and some tenants. The other issue with a reliance only on the parish is that if there was a local problem, like a bad harvest, it meant that a lot more strain was put on that particular parish that year, rather than possibly having a national pool to handle the relief.
There were no national standards in place, and so there was a lot of variation in how relief was given out. Parishes were left to interpret the law on their own, and each parish was legally responsible for their own poor, which meant that some cities gave out much more poor relief. Some poor did try to leave and go to more generous parishes, so by the mid 1600’s it was amended so that you had to be a resident of the parish through birth, marriage, or apprenticeship. If they couldn’t prove that they were a resident of that parish they were moved to another parish where they could prove that they had a connection.
While there was plenty to criticize in the Tudor and Elizabethan Poor Laws, they are the basis for the social welfare systems in America, Australia, and many other places, and it was the first time that a law was passed nationally to try to deal holistically with the problem of the poor, and recognize that society had a legal duty to care for its most vulnerable citizens. So for that, there is much to praise about the poor laws.
It’s also interesting to think about this shift in thinking where relief for the poor went from being something handled by the church, and the government implemented punitive measures, to poor relief being a secular duty.
In May of 1601 a secret correspondence began with Elizabeth’s counsellors and James VI in Scotland. Back in February James had sent ambassadors to negotiate to be named the official heir, thinking he would be negotiating with Essex, who was by this point being executed. James VI then gave his ambassadors new instructions that they should “walk surely between the precipices of the Queen and the people”, and encouraged them to go forward in private negotiation and secure the individual support of key towns and ports. Although his ambassadors gained the confidence of Robert Cecil and an understanding on the succession was reached, their success was kept secret
At a meeting at the Duchy of Lancaster House on the Strand, Robert Cecil requested James would not seek an English parliamentary recognition of his claim to the throne, and that future correspondence with the Scottish ambassadors should be a secret from Elizabeth herself. Until the death of Elizabeth I two exchanges of letters between England and Scotland were kept up, the usual communication and the “secret correspondence”
The English diplomat Henry Wotton later gave an anecdote that Elizabeth had once noticed mail arriving from Scotland. She demanded to see it, Cecil made to open the satchel (which Wotton calls a ‘budget’) but told the Queen it was filthy and smelled bad, and she could have the letters after they were aired. It remains unclear if Elizabeth was actually unaware of any detail of Cecil’s negotiations, as the historian Geoffrey Elton assumed.
But perhaps the most important event in this very busy year was Elizabeths’ speech to Parliament in November. Her Golden Speech was to be the last speech she gave to Parliament. Events with this, her 10th Parliament, went wrong at first as an official blunder excluded many members of the Commons from the Parliament Chamber, so that they missed the opening ceremony. Once grumpily gathered together, they settled down to a fierce attack on monopolies, though uneasily aware that they were challenging the royal prerogative. When her councillors failed to calm the storm, the Queen sent word that she would address the wrong immediately by proclamation. This by-passed the prerogative issue and the mood in the Commons changed from rage to joy. The members asked if they could send a deputation to wait on Her Majesty and express their thanks. A message came back that the Queen would receive their love with their gratitude when she had kept her promise. Three days later the promised proclamation was issued and when the Commons discussed which of them should go to the Queen there were cries of ‘All! All!’ At this the Queen invited all of them to come to her at Whitehall.
On November 30th the Speaker and 140 members of the Commons crowded into the council chamber at the palace and kneeled respectfully. The Queen was a highly accomplished speaker and she welcomed them in ravishing Elizabethan English. ‘Mr Speaker, we perceive your coming is to present thanks to us. Know I accept them with no less joy than your loves can have desire to offer such a present, and do more esteem it than any treasure or riches; for those we know how to prize, but loyalty, love and thanks, I account them invaluable. And though God hath raised me high, yet this I account the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves. This makes me that I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a people, and to be the means under God to conserve you in safety and to preserve you from danger…’
Telling them all to stand, she proceeded to a magnificent peroration. ‘It is not my desire to live or reign longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. And though you have had, and may have, many mightier and wiser princes sitting in this seat, yet you never had, nor shall have, any that will love you better.’ Everyone knew that she was speaking to them almost certainly for the last time, and she knew they knew, and asked every one of them to kiss her hand before they left. The members went out transfigured, many of them in tears.
This is seen as the symbolic end of Elizabeth’s reign, though she would still reign for another 18 months until James I would inherit the throne.
On 3 November 1601, Edward Oldcorne, who started out this episode with us preaching to recusant Catholics, went on a pilgrimage to St Winefride’s Well at Holywell in north Wales to obtain a cure for a cancer of the throat. It did clear up, and he lived long enough to potentially plot with Gunpowder conspirators, though that will have to wait for another year.
So that’s it for this week. There are a lot of so I’ll list them all in the show notes at englandcast.com/1601. And do let me know what you thought about this episode -You can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 801 6TEYSKO or through twitter @teysko or facebook.com/englandcast. Thanks so much for listening.
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave a rating or review on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]