Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society Royal Sex: Elizabeth I About this episode Was Elizabeth I really a virgin? When we talk about queens being remembered for their sex lives, we absolutely have to mention the woman so often remembered for her lack of one.
Kate is joined by Professor Anna Whitelock, author of ‘Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen’s Court’ and, more recently, ‘The Sun Rising: James I and the Dawn of a Global Britain’.
This episode was edited by Tomos Delargy. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
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1:19 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are you, I am me, and this is Betwixt the Sheets. But before we can go any further together, before I can let you wander off into this podcast, all vulnerable and prone to attack, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast book about adults to other adults, about adulty things and an adulty way of arranging adult subjects, news being adult too. And in particular, this episode does contain references to child abuse. Right, on with the show.
1:50 Kate Lister? It's the 9th of August, 1588, and England has been sparring for a fight for well over a year. Ships have been built and ports have been armed against the fleet of over a hundred Spanish galleons that have been sent to overthrow our Queen Elizabeth I. I think not. I think not. Now at Tilbury, near the mouth of the river Thames, we await a possible attack. Armor clinks on tired bodies and men mutter to one another, but then a hush falls. Through the ranks comes a small procession. An earl holds the sword of state aloft, a page carries a helmet with white plumes on a gilded cushion, and atop a huge white horse, there she is.
2:34 Kate Lister? It's Elizabeth I herself. She wears a white velvet gown, her torso is corseted in steel, but her head is bare. She addresses the gathered troops and gives the legendary speech. "I have come amongst you as you see it this time, not for my recreation and desport, but being resolved in the midst of heat and the battle to live or die amongst you all, to lay down my life for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour, and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weakened, feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king." Oh, good stuff, isn't it?
3:16 Kate Lister? Elizabeth was a warrior, a fearless leader, and a skilled politician, but her brand was all about virginity, and so we remember her as the Virgin Queen.
3:36 Speaker 02 What do you look for, young man?
3:38 Speaker 03 Oh, money, of course.
3:39 Speaker 04 You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.
3:42 Speaker 03 I make perfect compliments of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button.
3:54 Speaker 04 Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
3:57 Speaker 05 Goodness, what beautiful time! Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derek.
4:05 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheet, the history of sex scandal in society, with me, Kate Lister. With Henry VIII as a dad and Anne Boleyn as a mum, Elizabeth I was off to a slightly rocky start, hm? But despite this, and after losing her mum to the execution of sword when she was just two years old, and being declared illegitimate by her father, and being imprisoned and put under house arrest by her sister, Elizabeth became one of our most famous and successful queens, ruling for a stonking 44 years. She is most definitely a complicated and complex character, but being a virgin was very much at the forefront of Elizabeth's branding. I mean, explorers were even naming lands after that. Thank you very much, Walter Alley.
4:50 Kate Lister? So what was all this virginity stuff about? Today, we are being joined by none other than Anna Whitelock, Professor of the History of Monarchy at City St George's University of London. Have you got your ruffs on, everybody? Let's do this.
5:12 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheet. It's only Anna Whitelock. How are you doing?
5:18 Speaker 06 I am very well. Hello. How are you?
5:20 Kate Lister? I'm so excited to be talking to you. This is one of my most favourite subjects. Elizabeth I, Lizzie. But before we get to her, you are a professor of the history of monarchy, so you're a great person to ask the question, what is it about the Tudors that so fascinates us, seemingly more than any other group of royals, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone else? Why?
5:48 Speaker 06 It's a really good question. I think it's partly because, for the first time, in terms of historical sources, we have stuff about them as people, as well as about all the various sort of politics and wars and events going on around them. We actually know about their sex lives, which of course is something that always captivates people. And then the first Sort of have monarchs becoming something like celebrities. The ubiquity of their image takes off. We think about, you know, the way in which images of like Henry VIII, that big Holbein image where he has his leg standing akimbo with a very prominent codpiece.
6:28 Speaker 06 We have the Virgin Queen picture of Elizabeth, otherwise known as the Armada portrait.
6:34 Kate Lister? Yeah.
6:34 Speaker 06 Where she has a very strategically prominent bow at her groin, making a very deliberate and profound statement about her virginity as being a source of political power. And so I think it's something about they became the kind of pin ups of monarchy in a way. We know something about the personal and the political. And I think it's that that really captivates people. And as you say, I mean, you can't move an inch without coming across a new film or book or dare I say it, podcast on the Tudors. And it never seems to, that demand never seems to dry up.
7:07 Kate Lister? I think that sex does seem to go to the heart of what we think about this particular group of people. I don't know if they saw themselves like that, but yeah, Henry with his big codpiece, Elizabeth with her, uh, no, thank you. I'm not having sex with anybody. Oh, ho, ho, stuff. I wonder if they saw themselves like that as well, that they're a sexy brand.
7:26 Speaker 06 I mean, that's a certainly sexy way of putting it. I mean, in a slightly more unsexy way, I would say that actually monarchy is all about succession.
7:37 Kate Lister? Yes.
7:37 Speaker 06 And of course succession is ultimately about sex.
7:43 Kate Lister? Right.
7:43 Speaker 06 And producing the next generation, the heir, and hopefully monarchs having a spare too. So actually it is really important. And in the Tudor period, it becomes the stuff of politics. Because if we think about the Tudor period that, you know, first of all, Henry VIII marries his brothers, his dead brother's wife.
8:07 Kate Lister? Weird.
8:08 Speaker 06 Yeah. He later then says, you know, the marriage wasn't consummated.
8:13 Kate Lister? Also weird.
8:15 Speaker 06 Yeah. And then he of course has a relationship with Anne Boleyn and then, you know, multiple wives of. Of course, we know infamously. We then have a boy king who isn't of an age to produce an heir. We then have a succession crisis. We then have a woman, Mary, an unmarried woman. And women at the time were believed to be more sexually sort of voracious than men, actually. And so it really was the case that men, or women rather, needed to be married to kind of protect their reputations. And so the absolute expectation was that Mary would marry. She had to politically and sort of in terms of sort of sexual reputation and also to preserve the succession.
8:58 Speaker 06 But she has phantom pregnancies, she doesn't produce an heir. And then, of course, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, her sex life becomes the stuff of politics, quite literally. First of all, whether she is menstruating, her menstrual cycle was the stuff of diplomatic correspondence, quite literally. Because of course, you have an unmarried queen when she became queen in fifteen fifty eight. She's a big marriage prospect, but only if she can essentially produce an heir, because otherwise, you know, her value is far less as a marriage partner. And so all the potential princes of Europe want to know if she is fertile, first of all.
9:39 Speaker 06 And so details about her menstrual cycle form the stuff of correspondence. But then, of course, is she chaste? And again, the issue of reputation, sexual reputation comes at stake. And of course, her enemies, who are Catholics, say, her mother, who had the, Amberlyn, who had the title, you know, the great whore. Here's Elizabeth, she's the little whore. And the argument was like mother, like daughter, just as Amberlyn was accused of adultery, including with her brother. Actually, so Elizabeth is promiscuous, not least with Robert Dudley. And so her reputation is sort of undermined. She's slandered by Catholics who want to suggest
10:21 Speaker 06 that actually she's sort of not chaste and therefore not a good marriage prospect. And so we have this whole kind of discussion across Europe again, is the queen a virgin? And so on. And then, of course, at what point does the queen? Get to an age where she's actually postmenopausal, she's not going to produce a child and therefore is she or is she not actually worth a marriage? And then at that point, you have the creation of this amazing image of a virgin queen, which was a triumph of spin really. And was trying to make a virtue out of the fact that you had a postmenopausal unmarried queen on the throne, which was a dead end in terms of the succession. And so hence you have all this stuff about, yeah, but she's married to the realm.
11:05 Speaker 06 She's, it's an act of great self sacrifice to be a virgin and trying to make that something of a political strength, when in fact, of course, it was in reality at great weakness.
11:16 Kate Lister? So that whole virgin queen married to the country. I'm not interested in, in her husband, just the English. That wasn't part of her game plan from the very early ages. That was something that came in later in life.
11:28 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting, you know, question because obviously did Elizabeth intend to marry? The expectation was that she would marry, not least because she needed to produce an heir. Mary's marriage to Philip of Spain had proved ultimately to be unpopular in that Mary went to war with France on her husband's behalf. Although beyond that and before that, actually Philip was broadly welcomed as the male element in government. So it's not true to say, you know, the Spanish marriage was entirely unpopular. But I think by the end of Mary's reign and given the fact that England had joined Philip's war with France, there was a sense of caution about who she was going to marry.
12:11 Speaker 06 And basically the various candidates, no one person secured the unanimous support of her council. So it was always, well, he's too young, he's too Protestant, he's too Catholic, he's too French, whatever. And then time went on. She was also, I think. Infatuated with Robert Dudley. I mean, one of the great questions, and when I, when my Bookbed Fellows came out, I did a tour in the UK, but also in America. And it was amazing. So I went to some very prestigious places to give talks and after dinner speeches. And they all wanted to know, did they or didn't they? And I guess I ended up maybe because it was America, I ended up with a sort of Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky kind of, you
12:56 Speaker 06 know, defence of maybe, you know, sort of perhaps not full sexual relations, but perhaps something else. Of course, we don't know is the bottom line. But certainly people played much of their relationship, both to slander the Queen, but also I think it was an explanation in part as to why she didn't focus on any one candidate. And then it got too late. And then, yes, to answer your question directly, there was a sense, well, actually, let's make a virtue of the fact that she's really old and postmenopausal. And so it was at that point, not the beginning, as you suggest, that this construction of the Virgin Queen came in as
13:33 Kate Lister? Interesting.
13:34 Speaker 06 It's, yeah, it really is, as a sort of sense of, you know, this is total political spin, making a strength out of a profound weakness.
13:44 Kate Lister? I wouldn't blame Elizabeth at all, though, just listening to that catalogue of sexual disaster that surrounds this woman, from her mother losing her head, to her father philandering, to Mary's, just like, oh, that marriage happened, to everyone obsessing about her menstruation. I wouldn't blame her at all if it was just a decision of like, no, do you know what? Sod this. I don't want to have sex with anybody. This is too, I've seen what can happen here. And it seems to be a bit of a disaster all round. Do you think there was any of that in it? Or do you think like she intended to get married? Or do you think at some point she just thought, no, I'm all right, actually?
14:21 Speaker 06 Well, I think some of that did play a factor. I mean, it's really dangerous to kind of, you know, end up being kind of historical psychologists and try and project back and.
14:30 Kate Lister? It's fun, though.
14:31 Speaker 06 It is fun, but actually, you know, notwithstanding that kind of warning, at the end of the day, you know, whether it be 500 years ago or not, these are people and she, her mother had met a very bloody end on charges of adultery. We know about how things have been with her dad, as you say. We also know about an account of Elizabeth having engaging in or perhaps being abused really by her stepfather, Thomas Seymour. And there's various accounts of this. In David Starkey's book, for example, Elizabeth's apprenticeship years, it opens with this whole discussion of the sort of 12, 13 year old Elizabeth
15:15 Speaker 06 sort of playing these games with Thomas Seymour, with him coming into her bedchamber, slapping her bottom essentially, and then Thomas Seymour Catherine Parr holding down Elizabeth as they sort of cut bits of her night clothes off.
15:31 Kate Lister? It's not good.
15:32 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, really not good. So, you know, that also very possibly had a bit of an effect on her too. So I think there are reasons why she would have found male relationships quite difficult. And then, of course, she was also navigating a very male political world as a woman. And although she wasn't the first queen, she was a unmarried queen and there never had been an unmarried queen before.
15:56 Kate Lister? Let's talk a bit about Thomas Seymour, because this might help us get to the ultimate question that we're all interested in. Was she really a virgin? And now we're going to get into the, well, how do you define it? What counts? Da, da, da. But let's talk about Thomas Seymour and what you think was going on there.
16:12 Speaker 06 Well, I mean, so Thomas Seymour was the husband of Catherine Parr, Henry's final wife, as it were. And there are accounts of Thomas Seymour wanting to marry Elizabeth and, you know, in fact, sort of asking her to marry him when she was sort of 13. And then, as I say, there are these accounts that following Thomas Seymour's marriage to Catherine Parr, Henry VIII's widow, Elizabeth started living with Catherine. Thomas, of course, moved in and joined them. And then Elizabeth would start to receive early morning visits from
16:54 Speaker 06 Thomas Seymour and descriptions talk about he would make as though he would come at her. So he would sort of come at her and she would shrink back. There's an account that the next day she got up early so that he wouldn't find her in bed. But he did arrive and she was there. She was still only dressed in her sort of night dress. And he had arrived in his night gown and accounts described him bare legged in his slippers. And then the account describes her, him striking her on the back or the buttocks familiarly. And another time he climbed into bed with her. I mean, this is, this is by any other, you know, this is an account of abuse, really.
17:31 Kate Lister? Grooming, isn't it?
17:32 Speaker 06 It is, it's grooming. And Catherine Parr, Elizabeth's stepmother, on one occasion joined Seymour to, together to call Elizabeth in bed. So, yeah, I mean, it's very, very unseemly. And I think this can't have, you know, not had an impact on the sort of 13, 14 year old Elizabeth.
17:55 Kate Lister? No, absolutely. No, it's a really unsettling episode in this young girl's life and would absolutely have had an effect. And it kind of comes out and it creates like a little mini scandal, doesn't it? I mean, it's handled and she moved past it, but it's there.
18:10 Speaker 06 Exactly. It's in her hinterland. She's only 13, 14. It's just after her father's death. So, yeah, I think it's really formative. And then, of course, she lives through. The period of her sister, her half sister becoming queen, following her, you know, brother's premature death. She for a time was in the tower, of course, during the reign of her half sister Mary. So she then has a number of years of real stress and risk and danger. I mean, she was the kind of figurehead of opposition during the reign of her sister Mary. And then comes to the throne and, you know, she was attractive, precocious as a young child, accomplished,
18:55 Speaker 06 successful, she could dance, she could play music, she could write, she was smart, she was intelligent, she was attractive.
19:02 Kate Lister? She was crazy smart, like she could do a Sudoku in seconds. She could speak loads of languages, she was interested in sciences and she was a hottie as well.
19:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, she really, really was. She was a twenty something, you know, becoming queen and yes, Mary the first had been queen before and I'm always keen to make that point, you know, she was the first crown queen of England, but Elizabeth then stepped into Mary's shoes as an unmarried queen. Mary, of course, married a year into her reign. Elizabeth doesn't. And Elizabeth, you know, then proceeds to reign for very many decades. And also the challenge for a female monarch, which I really sort of thought a lot about when I was working on Mary, and then becomes the sort of great challenge for Elizabeth is, you know, male monarchs, they have to provide an heir.
19:57 Speaker 06 We all know that that's the job, you know, it's about succession, it's about providing an heir and a spare ideally. What a female monarch has to do is actually not only provide an heir, but they have to produce an heir. In other words, their body actually has to be doing the producing. So their body is at stake and involved in the very real stuff of politics and succession.
20:22 Speaker 06 In a way that male monarchs aren't. And so the level of the degree of scrutiny on, you know, first Mary, and Mary had undertaken this sort of humiliating process of, you know, thinking she was pregnant, withdrawing into a chamber, everybody going hurrah, hurrah, there's a baby, and then going, oh, there's not. And then actually, it was all a false alarm because she had a, you know, a phantom pregnancy. Awful. Elizabeth then comes to the throne. She is susceptible to kind of migraines. She's susceptible to digestive problems. It seems that she has pretty irregular periods. All of these things are written about, and she has to navigate that. And yes, she has clearly an attachment to Robert Dudley, who of course
21:04 Speaker 06 is married, then whose wife is found dead in suspicious circumstances, which in a sense, if it wasn't a no-go option before that, he certainly was then. And I think it was a kind of remarkably sort of full of sexual conspiracy, you know, the court of Elizabeth. Is the queen, isn't she? Who's she gonna marry, isn't she? And all that was at risk, which was a great deal, was of course, her chaste reputation, because as, you know, it was so important, the power of an unmarried woman, especially obviously a queen, only existed as long as they had a reputation for chastity. If that was undermined, in a way that of course it wasn't for a man, because if you're a king who sleeps around, that's a sign of virility,
21:47 Speaker 06 political power, hence Henry's very prominent codpiece, Henry VIII. Absolutely fine, have as many mistresses as you like. Very, very different rules for a woman, which makes, you know, being a queen regnant even harder.
22:06 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Anna after this short break.
22:19 Kate Lister? Hello Betwixters, I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
23:02 Kate Lister? We've got to talk about Robert, Rob, Bob, Bobby.
23:05 Speaker 06 Yeah.
23:06 Kate Lister? A lot has been made about him. Who was he and what is your take on what this relationship was between them?
23:13 Speaker 06 I mean, it is one of the great did they, didn't they of history. He was undoubtedly a favourite of Elizabeth. He, of course, was the Earl of Leicester. His father was the Duke of Northumberland, who had sought to prevent Mary the First coming to the throne. So he was very much sort of involved with that. Robert Dudley had sort of emerged at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign as one of her closest male companions. He was appointed to the role of master of the horse, which if you remember the Queen Victoria Mr Brown film with Billy Connolly. He was her master of the horse.
23:53 Speaker 06 So basically it's a very, it's a close position of sort of male intimacy with a female monarch. So this is somebody who's helping the Queen on off the horse, who's accompanying them. So it's a really, it's a close relationship, one of the closest you can have as a queen regnant to a male courtier. So they had that relationship. He became the Earl of Leicester, he became a significant landowner in the West Midlands. And he was, became one of her sort of leading statesmen and he was attractive and glamorous in a way that her. Other kind of leading men were not like William Cecil, who was just, you know, a very good person, an admin person, as it were.
24:33 Speaker 06 But it was clear that Elizabeth and him had a very flirtatious relationship. They were clearly sort of attracted to each other. When his wife, the Earl of Leicester's wife, Amy Robsart, died and she was found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Just two years after Elizabeth's succession, it all looked a little bit convenient. And of course, suddenly he was, you know, technically free to marry. But immediately rumours kind of suggested that actually, you know, there was foul play at stake and so really.
25:04 Kate Lister? Do you think she was bumped off? Or do you think she just fell down the stairs?
25:08 Speaker 06 I think it's very hard to know. I mean, I don't think there's persuasive evidence to say that she was murdered.
25:16 Kate Lister? It doesn't seem like a good plan. Like, it didn't pan out. If the plan was, we'll shove her down the stairs so we can get married. That just, well, no, you won't now because now it just looks like she's been murdered.
25:24 Speaker 06 Well, exactly. Well, exactly. I mean, it was always a long shot, the prospect of him marrying Elizabeth.
25:29 Kate Lister? Oh, was it?
25:29 Speaker 06 Because, well, because in a way, you generally, marriages, of course, at the time, are ways of brokering foreign alliances.
25:38 Kate Lister? Yes, okay.
25:39 Speaker 06 So, you know, the big alliance that in a way shored up the Tudor dynasty and underwrote the Tudor dynasty right to the point of the Spanish Armada was the Spanish Alliance. And the Spanish Alliance had been established when Henry VII had married his elder son, Prince Arthur, to Catherine of Aragon, who then, of course, was married to Henry VIII. So, foreign alliances are generally what are achieved through marriages. And marrying an English nobleman wouldn't have secured a foreign alliance and therefore sort of foreign recognition. But also would very likely have just created a faction, a court. But that's not to say that lots and lots of people perhaps thought he was vying for the Queen's hand.
26:23 Speaker 06 And this was certainly what ambassadors were talking about. And it seems too that Dudley, you know, Dudley wanted to marry Elizabeth, but really, his efforts got nowhere. And although Elizabeth, when she got very sick with smallpox, did agree to Robert Dudley if she died being protector of the realm.
26:44 Speaker 06 Actually, there was a great deal of relief when she recovered and gradually he's kind of moved out a little bit from the kind of immediate sphere around her. So certainly a male favourite, certainly had apartments next to hers, certainly he had an influence that was unmatched.
27:02 Kate Lister? Yeah.
27:03 Speaker 06 Certainly there was a kind of flirtation, but ultimately the stakes were too high for there to be anything meaningful between them. And certainly not really a prospective marriage being in any way realistic.
27:18 Kate Lister? Given the fact that everything that this woman does, thinks, says, and every aspect of her body is under intense scrutiny, is there any chance, in your opinion, that she could have snuck out from her bed and done the deed with Robert Dudley and then snuck back in again? Or would somebody, somewhere have noticed and said something?
27:36 Speaker 06 I mean, it is possible. Elizabeth would have bedfellows, as was the title of my book, which were literally people who, women, who would sleep either next to the Queen in the same bed, or at the kind of bottom of the bed or side of the bed, on a truckle bed, a small pull-out bed. And they were there to tend to the fire, to help her dress, but they were also there for propriety, basically, to be able to attest to the fact that there was no shenanigans going on. Well, of course, you know, we all know what close female friendships are like.
28:10 Kate Lister? Yeah, I mean, you'd want your best friend to have your back there, wouldn't you? Just go, look, I'll just, I'll just go and make a sandwich in the kitchen.
28:17 Speaker 06 Well, I mean, there is, I mean, although her governess, you know, Cat Ashley was very proper, and she was there at the time of the goings on with Thomas Seymour and made Elizabeth very aware that this really did, this was really problematic for her reputation. Elizabeth was also surrounded by women closer in age to her. And as you say, I mean, one of the things that I've always been really keen to Sort of reintroduce into the the narrative of the reign of queens, both Mary and Elizabeth, is the role of female intimacy as political intimacy. So historians talk a lot, and this was the work of the sort of infamous historian David Starkey, who talked about political intimacy under Henry VIII. And he would say things like, you know, the people that the king went jousting
29:02 Speaker 06 with or played tennis with, who hung out within his privy chamber, you know, they were his mates, and they were people that he really trusted. And they are as important, if not more important, than the privy councillors who would sit around the council table all day. But then the argument used to go, yeah, but when you have a female monarch, well, you can't have relationships of political intimacy, because all the private apartments are filled with women and not men anymore. Well, then women can't be political intimates because women aren't political players. And I think, you know, actually, in truth, women were really important. They had access to so much information, you know, they were bribed by foreign diplomats
29:42 Speaker 06 because they had that access and information. And they saw what went on, and they could defend and protect the queen accordingly. So, yes, I mean, it's possible that she had allies among her women who would allow her to do what she wanted and have some kind of dalliance with Robert Dudley. I think that is possible, if that's what Elizabeth had wanted. I mean, the reality is, well, we'll never know.
30:07 Kate Lister? No.
30:08 Speaker 06 And that's what's so endlessly fascinating about it. And it continues to captivate people. It's kind of quite remarkable.
30:15 Kate Lister? Maybe it wasn't sexual, maybe they couldn't get married, but it sort of doesn't mean that they weren't in a relationship and didn't love each other. We've sort of have this obsession with, well, if you're not having sex, it's not official somehow. But they seem to have had a very strong bond between them.
30:30 Speaker 06 Yeah, I think that's very true. And I think also, I mean, you could argue that because it was a kind of forbidden relationship in terms of any full sexually intimate relationship, that that made it more attractive, that there was something that was kind of exciting about it. Elizabeth was a woman who had a huge amount of men wanting to give her advice. She had so many men around her at court that, like, I, you know, in so many ways, we can't get in the head of somebody 500 years ago, but in some ways, we kind of can. I mean, we can imagine that this is a A young woman who is both, you know, absolutely the centre of power, but is also being manoeuvred
31:12 Speaker 06 in all kinds of directions and who she could trust, who she could have fun with, must have been also part of the stuff of politics. And so I think we have to see the relationship as a key part of her reign, as it was, you know, in terms of her trusting and being attracted to Robert, whatever form that attraction took.
31:35 Kate Lister? So we've got at this point, quite a young Elizabeth. She is very beautiful. She's super smart. She's queen of England. I mean, that, wow. If you want a wife, that, she's a very, very tempting option. She must have had suitors flinging themselves at her. Robert Dudley just sat there having a bit of a sulk to himself. He's a no-go. But who was vying for her hand in marriage? And was there ever any serious contenders?
32:01 Speaker 06 There was. I mean, there was, as you say, I mean, she was a huge prospect. I mean, basically, there was a whole cast of characters, because the bottom line is, as you say, she's the queen of England. She's a big deal. Perhaps the first and perhaps most surprising, but perhaps not suitor for her was Philip of Spain.
32:19 Kate Lister? Oh, him again.
32:20 Speaker 06 Yeah, I know. Just to keep it in the family, he was, of course, her brother-in-law or ex brother-in-law. And he had been married to Mary. And so when Mary died, first of all, Philip, I think probably with his fingers behind his back, because he really didn't, you know, hoping that she'd say no. But because he wanted to preserve the alliance with England and potentially hope that he would persuade Elizabeth from moving back into a Protestant direction, he offered to marry Elizabeth. So he's ex-sister-in-law. So Philip of Spain was one candidate. There was also Eric of Sweden, Eric XIV of Sweden. Sweden was a Protestant country, so that kind of made sense. He negotiated for her hand for the first few
33:04 Speaker 06 years of his reign. But then she wrote to him and has sort of said that she actually didn't reciprocate his feelings. She rejected his advances. So it was kind of quite a personal rejection in a way. And in the end, Eric kind of eventually married one of his mistresses. He actually began to appear to be quite insane and eventually was dethroned by his brother. So he probably wouldn't have been a good, yeah, exactly. Good call.
33:27 Kate Lister? Good call, Elizabeth.
33:28 Speaker 06 Then there was the Archduke Charles of Austria. Religion was an issue there because Elizabeth was Protestant and Charles of Austria Catholic. So although Elizabeth kept him kind of dangling for a while, ultimately she rejected his advances. And then I guess the other one sort of later on in the reign, which was beginning to be at the time when really she was past her best in the sense of being past her childbearing years was Francois, the Duke of Anjou, the French heir to the throne. Could have been very good, you know, an alliance of England, France. It doesn't seem like many people would have wanted her to marry a foreigner. Some of her Elizabeth's advisers believed it was likely to lead to some kind of religious
34:12 Speaker 06 discontent. There had been a big Protestant massacre, the Bartholomew's Day massacre in France. So there was sort of anxiety about that. They did become close. He came over and he actually courted her in person.
34:23 Kate Lister? Oh.
34:24 Speaker 06 And she perhaps rather unoriginally, but rather offensively called him her frog.
34:29 Kate Lister? Nice, Elizabeth. Well done. Okay.
34:30 Speaker 06 Yeah, there was actually a 22 year age gap. So there was a bit of a dalliance. People did for a while think he would, she would marry him. And it was actually at that point that suddenly people started talking about, oh no, let's celebrate virginity. That's actually the most important thing here. And it sort of, it was a kind of intervention going, come on, Elizabeth, why in hell would you be marrying this guy? You're not going to have any children. It's a dead end for the country. And that's when we begin to see, yes, the kind of styling of virginity and the image of the virgin queen coming to the fore.
35:00 Kate Lister? Wasn't Anjou, wasn't he the one that there was lots of rumours about his sexuality?
35:05 Speaker 06 Absolutely. So.
35:06 Kate Lister? Was that just a smear campaign?
35:08 Speaker 06 Well, that was always, yeah, I mean, that was part of it. I mean, there was a lot of opposition to the prospect of this marriage to a French guy, to someone who was 22 years, you know, there was an age gap of 22 years younger, that it was ultimately would have put England in a very vulnerable position to France. So, yeah, I think everything was kind of thrown at him in terms of slander and smear to try and dissuade the Queen. In the end, of course, she didn't go ahead with the marriage. So she wasn't short of suitors. She kept her Parliament and her council, who were constantly begging her to marry, basically on hold for most of her reign, refusing to engage with the question and in fact stop, you know, preventing them or trying to prevent them from raising it with her. And she had all
35:48 Speaker 06 these various suitors that she sort of dallied with for a while, but ultimately dropped them and ended up unmarried.
35:56 Kate Lister? At any point, did she make a big announcement of like, right, I'm not getting married, that's it, stop nagging me? Or did the question just stop being raised eventually?
36:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, I think the question stopped being raised and she really leant into this idea of the Virgin Queen. And one of the things, I mean, I mentioned before, there's this amazing Armada portrait, which of course was a portrait to celebrate the Spanish Armada defeat of 1588. But actually, so much of it is a statement of Elizabeth, attempting to sort of celebrate Elizabeth's power, a time when, sure, the Spanish Armada had been defeated, but actually, England and Elizabeth were pretty weak. I mean, England had a Queen who was, what, in her kind of 50s on the throne, she was unmarried, it was a political
36:43 Speaker 06 dead end. And so this really kind of ambitious refashioning and aligning of the body politic, in other words, the realm, England, that had proved impenetrable and its, you know, its coastline had not been penetrated by the Spanish Armada. A parallel was drawn with that and the Queen's body, quite literally, that the Queen too, had her body was also impermeable and had been also unpenetrated. And that together, you know, there was this kind of sense of virginity being a sign of ultimate Strength and unity of the queen and her realm. And that's why you have this Armada portrait,
37:25 Speaker 06 not just, you know, celebrating the defeat of the Spanish Armada as it does, but actually in the background is the defeat of the Spanish Armada. And in the foreground is this massive image of Elizabeth, in many ways comparable to that Holbein, big legs akimbo, prominent codpiece image of Henry VIII. But actually, the most profound statement is the bow at her groin. And whereas female bodies and sexualized sort of depictions of queens' bodies was absolutely not done, here it was quite deliberately because it was like, look, she's a virgin, just like England's impenetrable boundaries and borders, and that this alignment was drawn. And it was at that point that she really was celebrated as a virgin queen. And of course, there was also
38:07 Speaker 06 this mask of youth whereby images that showed the queen aging were outlawed. And in fact, this kind of face pattern was inserted into portraits, which we think her portraits were, I mean, essentially, her ladies sat for portraits, wearing her clothes, but a face pattern was inserted not to so that she didn't show that she was aging. And that by the end of her reign, then we have this image of a of a virgin, ageless queen, the white face, et cetera, et cetera, which ultimately was a massive cover up because what she really was underneath was actually quite weak, postmenopausal, unmarried, and the realm was going nowhere. There was no
38:50 Speaker 06 heir, and she also refused to name an heir. So it really was trying to make a virtue out of a position of profound weakness.
38:58 Kate Lister? It was a big part of her brand, wasn't it? The virgin thing. It was like, like, sort of like Joan of Arc, I guess, is like, virginity becomes this strength.
39:06 Speaker 06 Yeah, absolutely. And what's really interesting is, of course, you're dead longer than you're alive. And the James the First succeeds Elizabeth. And
39:17 Speaker 06 Just a few years into his reign, so sort of three years after Elizabeth had died. Elizabeth's body that had been buried with her grandparents, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, so the founders of the Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth, at her request, had been buried with them in Westminster Abbey, in the Henry VII Chapel. So she was in a vault with her grandparents. And it was the kind of ultimate top spot because you wanted to be with the founders of the dynasty. James, who of course was establishing the Stuart dynasty when he came to England as King of England, Scotland in 603, he decided that he wanted that spot for when he died.
40:00 Speaker 06 And he also wanted to kind of undermine Elizabeth's reputation. So what he did was, he ordered that her body be dug up and moved. James. And it was, it was crazy, yeah. And it was moved to the far aisle of the chapel where Mary I had been buried. And her coffin was pretty much sort of just dumped there and there was no kind of monument, no tomb. He put Elizabeth's body on top and he then did build a monument and he kind of acknowledged Elizabeth there and did a sort of statement of her achievements. But he also wrote in Latin, "Partners both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters in the, in the hope of one resurrection."
40:41 Speaker 06 So in other words, what he did is actually create a kind of mausoleum of barren Tudor queens. And as if to underscore the point, he moves his mother's body, would you believe? Mary, Queen of Scots, who of course, who was executed by Elizabeth I, buried at Peterborough Cathedral. He moves her body down the A1, as it were. And she is then buried on the other side of the aisle in Westminster Abbey, in a line of fertile women. So in other words, women who have kind of passed on the dynasty, done their deed. And so her position is reinstated. So in fact, it's sort of like he exposes the reality of Elizabeth's virginity that, you know, you can dress.
41:27 Speaker 06 It up as you like, but you know, just like Mary the first was barren, didn't have any children, so too Elizabeth was. And those two women are kind of shunned on the side aisle. And his mother is in a line of fertile women on the other aisle, which I think is pretty scandalous, pretty amazing and a bit of royal tomb raiding there.
41:47 Kate Lister? Elizabeth would have been absolutely fuming, wouldn't she?
41:56 Speaker 06 I'll be back with Anna after this short break.
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43:24 Kate Lister? So the million dollar question then that I've got to ask you, and I know you're going to say, we just don't know. Was she actually a virgin? Did she go to her grave having never experienced sexual contact?
43:36 Speaker 06 Well, of course, we don't know. And she also didn't want her body opened up in depth. She didn't want her body to be, as was the practice, opened up, the organs taken out, filled with preservatives. And some people say, well, actually, was that because she had some kind of physical impediment that meant that she didn't want to be discovered? That she perhaps was the reason why she didn't want to marry and didn't want to have children? Or did she not want there to be evidence of, in fact, that she wasn't a virgin? We don't know. I mean, we just, we don't know. I mean, if I had to bet on it, I would say she was a virgin. But I've got nothing to base that on, other than the stakes were
44:15 Speaker 06 pretty high for her if she had got pregnant or been discovered to have lost her virginity outside of marriage. So, but that's not to say she didn't decide to risk it.
44:29 Kate Lister? I think we can say with some confidence that she had not lovers as in physical lovers, but people that she loved romantically.
44:36 Speaker 06 Yeah, I think that's, I think that's fair to say. And I think, you know, she was a woman, of course, who lived right through to her 60s. So, I mean, you know, she'd lived a pretty long and full life. So for her not to have had sex at any point, perhaps would have been pretty remarkable. But perhaps proved to be the case, we ultimately won't know.
45:00 Kate Lister? We won't, will we? Anna, I have got a quiz for you.
45:04 Speaker 06 Oh, my.
45:06 Kate Lister? I've written one. Don't worry, this, this is insanely easy. What I have done here is I've trawled the deepest, darkest corners of the internet, Reddit forums and history facts, Facebook pages, to find as many claims about the Tudors as I can. And I found 10. And you can just say true or false. Okay?
45:26 Speaker 06 Okay.
45:26 Kate Lister? All right. So like I've got my flashcards and everything. So number one, Elizabeth the first was actually a man.
45:32 Speaker 06 I mean, false but interesting. And there was all kinds of stories about. And do you know what? That is a question that I got asked a lot when I was in America on tour.
45:40 Kate Lister? Really?
45:41 Speaker 06 Yeah, absolutely. There was this whole idea that she'd been swapped.
45:46 Kate Lister? That's it. Yeah.
45:47 Speaker 06 As a sort of child and that she'd grown up in fact as a man, and that's why she didn't marry. And it was all a disguise. So it sounds bonkers, but it's a story that has got a long history.
46:00 Kate Lister? Mm hmm.
46:01 Speaker 06 It was this whole mid 19th century kind of grave that was found in the mid 19th century. And this whole thing about the busily boy legend, that's probably what you came across.
46:10 Kate Lister? Yeah, that's so.
46:11 Speaker 06 So, yeah, really fascinating, but no evidence to say it was true, but I love the idea of it.
46:17 Kate Lister? It was fashionable for rich Tudors to paint their teeth black because Elizabeth had black teeth.
46:23 Speaker 06 Uh, not that I know of.
46:24 Kate Lister? Yeah. Did she actually have black teeth? Is that true? Was that her teeth rotted away?
46:27 Speaker 06 She did like sweet things, kind of sweet things, custards and all of that. So she did have bad teeth.
46:32 Kate Lister? Okay. Mary Boleyn and Boleyn's sister was shagging the King of France before she was shagging Henry the eighth.
46:38 Speaker 06 Very possibly.
46:39 Kate Lister? Possibly, yeah. Marmalade was invented for Mary, Queen of Scots.
46:44 Speaker 06 Oh, I don't know.
46:45 Kate Lister? I don't think that one is true. Most what I saw about that one was people going, no, that's not true.
46:50 Speaker 06 Yeah.
46:50 Kate Lister? Anne of Cleves was ugly.
46:52 Speaker 06 Flanders mare, that's what Henry the eighth was alleged to have said about her. So yes, that's the argument. Anne and Nalb because they never had sex.
47:00 Kate Lister? Elizabeth the first had a bath once a year, whether she needed it or not.
47:05 Speaker 06 Well, that is also said, and certainly people bathed very irregularly and certainly not like we do. So that is probably close to being true. People believe that actually almost wearing cottons was the thing that would absorb the bad odours and stuff. So you didn't need to wash like we do. So very possibly true, or at least something like that.
47:26 Kate Lister? Certainly not a shower a day kind of a girl.
47:28 Speaker 06 No, no, no, no.
47:30 Kate Lister? Henry VIII wrote green sleeves for Anne Boleyn.
47:33 Speaker 06 Yeah, Henry VIII was a great musician and composer. And yeah, green sleeves is linked to him. I mean, there's no evidence that he in fact wrote it, but certainly it was, it's long been attributed to him and Anne Boleyn. So whether he played it for, whether he wrote it, it's very associated with him. So we haven't landed the evidence that, you know, his composition, but certainly it's very much in alive in legend and popular culture that it was one of his compositions.
48:05 Kate Lister? Henry VIII had syphilis.
48:07 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, he had all kinds of things. He had, I mean, he had gout, oozing legs. Yes, I think probably syphilis too.
48:14 Kate Lister? Throw that one in there. You'd be surprised if we didn't. Oh, this is a good one. Anne Boleyn had six fingers on one hand. Is that true?
48:20 Speaker 06 I have not seen evidence of that. I think this is all part of the kind of folklore about her. So I haven't seen evidence. I think we're sort of slightly in the idea of myth territory.
48:34 Kate Lister? And finally, this is a very strange one. There was a spy who worked for Elizabeth the first with the code name 007.
48:40 Speaker 06 Oh, now she did have, people did have spy names. And so very possibly people had different initials. And I think her kind of astrologer advisor, John D, had 007. So
48:53 Kate Lister? That's bonkers.
48:54 Speaker 06 Yes, that is very possible. Yeah. It's great, isn't it?
48:57 Kate Lister? That's incredible. And those were the 10 weirdest claims about the shooters that I could find on the internet. Thank you very much.
49:05 Speaker 06 Great questions. They're hard to disprove one way or the other because they're just kind of out there. Things take on their own life just by being repeated lots and lots of times. And actually, trying to find the evidence to prove or disprove is, is quite difficult, but that doesn't stop them being out there as part of the legend.
49:21 Kate Lister? No. And you have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?
49:28 Speaker 06 So I have a website. I'm on X and I'm also pop up on various podcasts and television programmes and do various bits of commentary on the monarchy. And my latest book is called The Sun Rising, James the First and the Dawn of a Global Britain, and a bit of a kind of global adventure story about the emergence of Britain around the world.
49:51 Kate Lister? Thank you so much for coming to talk to me. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself.
49:54 Speaker 06 Pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
50:01 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you to Anna for joining us. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected] . We have got a whole load more Queen sex coming your way this month, featuring none other than Queen Victoria, Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great. Just what did those fabulous ladies get up to betwixt the sheets? This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets of the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
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