The Earl of Essex and the Gunpowder Plot

The latter years of Elizabeth I's reign were the scene of a great conflict between her last favourite, Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex and her principal secretary William Cecil, Baron Burghley, ending in the former's execution on February 25, 1601.

Essex rose quickly at Court after the death of Elizabeth's long-time favourite, his step-father, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. He was about 21; she was in her early 50s. She granted him many honors and he disobeyed her direct orders many times, but it was his unfortunate performance in Ireland that got him in such trouble that he dared plot against his mentor.

He went to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, charged with putting down the revolt of the Catholic Lords of Ulster in 1599. Essex did not lead his 16,000 forces very well, and seemed more bent on developing his personal popularity by knighting many soldiers. He negotiated a truce with Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone with unfavorable terms for England. Hearing that the Queen was displeased with him Essex left his post and returned to England to make sure she heard his side of the story. He ended up in house arrest for a time and was stripped of his Court offices.

Once he was released, he hoped to be back in her good graces. Because he could not regain one of the lucrative monopolies he had formerly held, Essex panicked and led a poorly designed rebellion against Elizabeth. At his treason trial on February 19, 1601 one of the charges laid against him was that he tolerated religious dissent (i.e. Catholics) but he said that Catholics were making up evidence against him! He was found guilty and sentenced to death.

The Tudor Society provides this description of his execution and his last words:

At just before 8am on the 25th February 1601, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex was brought out of the Tower of London and walked to the scaffold. He was wearing a black velvet gown, black satin doublet and breeches and a black hat, which he took off as he climbed up onto the scaffold so that he could bow to the people gathered. He then made a speech acknowledging "with thankfulness to God, that he was justly spewed out of the realm", and said:

My sins are more in number than the hairs on my head. I have bestowed my youth in wantonness, lust and uncleanness; I have been puffed up with pride, vanity and love of this wicked world’s pleasures. For all which, I humbly beseech my Saviour Christ to be a mediator to the eternal Majesty for my pardon, especially for this my last sin, this great, this bloody, this crying, this infectious sin, whereby so many for love of me have been drawn to offend God, to offend their sovereign, to offend the world. I beseech God to forgive it me – most wretched of all.

After praying that God would preserve the Queen and asking the crowd to join him in prayer, he begged God to forgive his enemies. He then removed his gown and ruff and knelt at the block, looking up at the sky and saying the Lord's Prayer. After forgiving the executioner, who knelt in front of him, Essex repeated the Creed and then took off his doublet, as it was covering his neck, to display a waistcoat of scarlet, the colour of martyrs. He laid himself on the block, stretched out his arms and prayed, "Lord be merciful to Thy prostrate servant… Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." After repeating two verses of Psalm 51, he could take no more and cried out, "Executioner, strike home!". The executioner swung his axe to behead Essex, but, unfortunately, it took three blows to sever his neck. When the deed was finally done, the executioner held the head aloft, shouting, "God save the Queen!"

Re: the charges of favouring Catholics (i.e., being lenient with them): One of the Earl's main conspirators was a Catholic, Sir Christopher Blount, who was educated at Louvain by William, later Cardinal, Allen. He had been a member of the Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester's household--in spite of Leicester's staunch Calvinism--and he married Leicester's widow, the Earl of Essex's mother, Lettice Knollys Devereux Dudley, aka the Countess of Leicester, the title she kept after marrying Blount. Since Elizabeth I had never been pleased with Leicester and Lettice marrying, since he was HER Favourite, she was not happy that Lettice was happily married again. Blount would be executed on March 18, 1601.

As this website points out, however, there were several other Catholics engaged in the plot:

Amount the handful who supported Essex either openly or covertly were the seven Catholics mentioned here: Robert Catesby, Thomas Winter, John and Christopher Wright, Thomas Percy, John Grant and Francis Tresham. Robert Catesby, even though he had been previously arrested on suspicion in 1596 during an illness of Queen Elizabeth - a stomach complaint at first diagnosed as a catholic attempt to poison her - was imprisoned after being wounded during the short battle at Essex house. He was released later on payment of a fine of £3000. Francis Tresham only escaped a charge of treason by a bribe of £1000 to Lady Catherine Howard. In addition, some payment was probably given to Egerton and the Lieutenant of the Tower, Lord Thomas Howard, before the pardon could be procured. Records of Sir Thomas Tresham indicate the reverberation of Francis' incarceration. He was forced to sell a number of properties in order to come up with the £2000 fine. It has also been questioned whether he assisted in paying some of Robert Catesby's fine also. The others were fined lesser amounted depending on the degree of participation with Essex.

Those seven--and others--would then participate in the Gunpowder Plot at the beginning of James I's reign. Had the Earl of Essex promised them leniency with the Recusant Laws if his coup succeeded? 

More on "Anonymous"

Last Saturday's Wall Street Journal featured an article by the screenwriter of Oxfordian movie Anonymous titled "Why I Played With Shakespeare's Story: Juggling truth and emotional needs in a film that posits the plays were written by someone else" proving the truth of Jacobitess' comment on my original post. It's just too bad this particular team produced a movie about the Oxford claims to Shakespeare's works.

The screenwriter of Anonymous, John Orloff, explains why he changed a widely known historical fact about the Earl of Essex's rebellion against Elizabeth I: that the Earl of Essex's supporters paid the Chamberlain's Men theatrical group to perform a certain play on the eve of his rebellion. That play was Richard II. But in Anonymous, Orloff exchanged that play with Richard III:

Anyone who knows Elizabethan history knows that Shakespeare's "Richard II" was performed on the eve of this event, which became known as the Essex Rebellion.

But "Richard II" is a very subtle and complicated play. Why its politics were relevant to London commoners in 1601—and why it would incite them to start an actual rebellion—would be extremely difficult to convey to a modern audience. I could have done it, but it would have required an additional 20 minutes of film time.

And, as I said, the film is not really about the Essex Rebellion. It is about showing that ideas are stronger than brute force. So how to make that point without wasting 20 minutes of the audience's time?

Well, Sir Robert Cecil—our villain—was in real life a hunchback. And so is King Richard III in Shakespeare's play of the same name. By switching the play that precedes the Essex Rebellion from "Richard II" to "Richard III," I was able to let the movie's audience immediately see the political implications of the performance. I didn't have to explain any complicated political metaphors: They only needed to see Richard III's hunched back to understand instantly a point that would have been obvious to London bricklayers and cobblers of the era.

In the end, the Essex Rebellion failed. In "Anonymous," it fails because Robert Cecil uses cannons—brute force—to destroy it.

But, ultimately, Cecil couldn't silence the plays—or the ideas that they contain. The next king, James Stuart, was an immense fan of the theater, and he, too, understood what "Richard II" and "Richard III" were trying to say.

I don't really understand that last line about James I!?! Elizabeth was a certainly a fan of the theatre--she knew what Richard II was 'trying to say' (bad advisors can lead to a king or queen's downfall) and she knew the implications of its performance before Essex's attempted coup d'etat. It woundn't have taken 20 minutes of screen time; just Elizabeth's statement ("Know you not, I am Richard II"). The substitution of Richard III for Richard II means that Orloff has changed the focus of the Essex Rebellion--from Elizabeth I to Robert Cecil. I think that's a mistake.

Also, the Essex Rebellion failed not only because of the (threatened) use of cannons (by the Earl of Nottingham), but because Devereux did not have the support he thought he had, beyond the group of young men he'd been knighting on his military adventures, something for which Elizabeth had scolded him. I wonder if Orloff takes the time to depict the fiduciary aspect of Devereux's discontent (Elizabeth had taken away his patent for sweet wines, his major source of income).

Sounds like sloppy thinking and bad history to me.

Tomorrow we will mark the Fifth of November and another plot, led by some of Essex's co-conspirators: Catesby, Tresham, and Wright. The presence of these Catholics in the Essex Rebellion led to accusations of Popery against the Earl of Essex at his trial.

Donizetti's "Maria Stuarda" and "Roberto Devereux" Plus an Early Tudor Opera

I thought I should complete the survey of Donizetti's Tudor operas with a post on Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux, which both feature Elizabeth I in a leading, though not title, role.

The first opera is based on Schiller's play, Maria Stuart, and like the Vanessa Redgrave/Glenda Jackson movie, commits the wild inaccuracy of having Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I meet. Donizetti's librettist Giuseppe Bardari creates a love/hate quadrangle: Elizabeth loves Leicester; Leicester loves Maria; Maria hates Elizabeth; Elizabeth hates Maria. From that you get three acts of bel canto drama, confrontation, but no mad scene. In the end:

Maria's friends lament her fate, and she, facing death calmly, tries to comfort them and give them strength. As the cannon sounds the signal for her execution, Cecil asks for her last requests. She forgives Elisabetta and prays for a blessing on her and the kingdom. She tries to calm the grief-stricken Leicester and hopes that her innocent blood will placate the wrath of Heaven. She goes resolutely to her death as her friends grieve over her fate.

Roberto Devereux gives us the triangle of Elizabeth and Essex and Sara, the Duchess of Nottingham, whose husband plots the death of Essex. There's a great love duet between Essex and Sara--and a tremendous mad scene for Elizabeth before Essex's offstage execution. She abdicates at the end.

There is really a fourth opera in Donizetti's Tudor series, Il castelo di Kenilworth, but even though it features the really great triangle of Elizabeth, Leicester and his wife Amy (Amelia), it does not get as much attention because it is not a tragedy. Amy survives attempted poisoning and does not fall downstairs. The opera is a comedy (not a funny comedy but a comedy in the classic sense): Elizabeth gives her blessing to Amy and Leicester and everybody is happy--except for the villain, of course.

Donizetti wrote other operas with an English or Scottish setting: Lucia di Lammermoor most famously, but also Rosmunda d'Inghilterra about the Fair Rosamund, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Emilia di Liverpool. English royalty also appear in L'assedio di Calais, with Queen Isabella begging King Edward III to show mercy to the burghers of Calais.

Donizetti was extraordinarily prolific, considering that he died when he was 56 years old, composing nearly 75 operas, 16 symphonies, 19 string quartets, 193 songs, 45 duets, 3 oratorios, 28 cantatas, instrumental concertos, sonatas, and other chamber pieces.

To conclude this operatic post--Rossini also wrote an opera featuring Elizabeth I and Leicester: Elisabetta, regina d'Inghiliterra, which included snippets of music from earlier work--and then Rossini used music from it in later work. Leicester is secretly married to Matilde who is Mary, Queen of Scots' daughter (in this ten-minute survey of the opera, you know she's from Scotland because she's wearing a kilt/plaid!) Elizabeth sends Leicester to prison along with his wife and her brother, Enrico. The Duke of Norfolk is the villain and tries to kill the queen! She frees Leicester, Matilde and Enrico at the end after they save her life.

All four of these operas offer interesting interpretations of history! As this review of a 2010 production of Maria Stuarda comments:

There's a fond belief that Donizetti's Maria Stuarda is about Tudor history. It is, to the extent that its chief characters are Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, and others have recognisable names such as Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and Sir William Cecil. . . .Yet Donizetti himself was none too interested in facts. You can no more rely on his 1834 bel canto opera to untangle the English Reformation crisis for you than expect Hamlet to throw light on the Danish succession.

That's opera, doc!