I love getting out and meeting with groups of history lovers and people who understand how fascinating and important history is! Right now in 2020 during the pandemic, most of our meetings are online. Although that takes some of the fun out of travel and being with you in person, it is also a great opportunity to share history with a wide audience.
This past weekend, I was honored to be part of Tudorcon, a fun event where Tudor enthusiasts gather to chat and learn all about goings on and cooking and eating and dressing in the sixteenth century. This year, we were online, which meant that people from all over the world were gathered and sharing live across the miles. It was so great!
I bring that up to share appreciation for what is possible right now! And because whenever I speak, one of the questions I’m asked most often is what books I recommend on various history topics. So this month, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite history books! I’ll include some of the publication information in the show notes.
My suggestions are not a comprehensive list—think of this is a starting point. If you have others so share, I would love to hear about your favorites.
So let’s get started. Our topic this week is the Spies in the Court of Queen Elizabeth I. Quick summary: while we all know that Elizabeth ended her reign peacefully, dying in her bed, that outcome was not guaranteed. From the beginning of her reign, Catholics in England and abroad questioned her right to rule. During the very Catholic reign of her half-sister Mary I, England was primed to become a Catholic nation once more. And Catholic nations around the world, as well as the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor, saw Mary’s reign as a chance to reclaim England for Catholicism.
But Mary died without children, and her heir was Elizabeth. The daughter of Anne Boleyn. The reason Henry VIII broke with Rome, defied the Pope, and set up the Church of England with himself as Supreme Head. It was a bitter pill for Catholics to swallow. Within days of Elizabeth’s accession to the English throne in 1558, Mary Stuart, AKA Mary Queen of Scots, claimed the English throne for herself. At the time Mary was wife of the Dauphin of France. The French king backed Mary’s claim to the throne, as did the Pope.
The next few years were busy ones for Mary: in 1559, Henri II of France died, so Francois and Mary became King and Queen of France. Their royal arms included the arms of England, and their coronation coins proclaimed them as King and Queen of France, Scotland, and England. After just 18 months, Francois died and Mary was a widow at 18 years old. The next year she went back to Scotland to resume her reign there.
In 1565, after four years ruling in Scotland, Mary chose Lord Henry Darnley as her next husband. The marriage was unpopular with Mary’s advisors, and Elizabeth I opposed it as both Darnley and Mary (who were cousins!) had a claim to the English throne. Mary got pregnant quickly, and then the marriage fell apart. Darnley was one of the lords to murder Mary’s friend Rizzio right in front of her and capture her. Mary relied on her supporter the Earl of Bothwell to help her escape the lords. Her son James was born in June 1566. The next year, in 1567, Darnley was murdered. Bothwell was implicated. He kidnapped Mary, and they were married. This was the final straw for the Scottish lords, and in July 1567, Mary was forced to abdicate her throne in favor of her baby son. She was imprisoned but escaped and fled to England in 1568.
Now Mary and Elizabeth were both in England. Catholics in England began rebelling against Elizabeth and trying to replace her with the Catholic Mary Stuart. In 1570, the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth and encouraged English Catholics to get the usurper off the throne, telling them if they were true Catholics they could not be loyal to a Protestant Queen. Rebellions continued over the next several years. There were assassinations of Protestant leaders abroad, including as close by as Scotland. There were episodes like the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France, where tens of thousands of Protestant men, women, and children were killed.
Elizabeth’s longest-serving and completely loyal advisor, William Cecil, recruited Francis Walsingham to fight the very real threat that English Catholics, now being trained on the continent and smuggled back in under fake names and identities, would rise up and kill Elizabeth. They set up a vast spy network. Walsingham and his agents intercepted and trapped some of Mary’s agents and “flipped” them to their side.
Writing in ciphers and codes was a common way of disguising communication during the 16th century. After all, the printing press meant communication was more widespread than ever. Whenever communication possibilities increase, so does the desire to control communication. And when that happens, the next step is the growth in ways to hide communication. So codes and ciphers showed up everywhere. Mary Stuart was very fond of codes and used them extensively in her correspondence with her supporters in England, France, Spain, and Rome.
Eventually, Antony Babington wrote to Mary Stuart about an attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth and make Mary the Queen of England. Mary agrees. These letters were intercepted (through bribing a beer seller!) and deciphered. And… I won’t spoil the ending for you! But if you want to learn more, I did a very early podcast, Tudor Spies, that tells the whole story!
This time period, with a focus on both religious turmoil and the beginning of modern espionage, is rich with wonderful stories and a delight to study. So here are a few books that are a great way to immerse yourself in the world of beliefs, hidden messages, disguised priests, specially-created priest holes, martyrs, and cipher breakers!
God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England by Jessie Childs. I have to admit that my own leanings are on the Elizabethan and English side in this debate so it was incredibly enlightening for me to get a glimpse into the other side.
Jessie Childs tells the story of a Catholic family living in England. They are people who are doing their best to take care of the family and survive in dangerous times. Through the eyes and experiences of this family, we are able to see the underground Catholic movement in England. We meet people who struggle with how to maintain a dual allegiance to lifelong beliefs in their Catholic faith and their English Queen. The family has always been very loyal to the crown, but they are forced to make painful choices in the face of increasing anti-Catholic sentiment all around them.
One of the things I really loved about this book was the way it shows us not just the powerful decision makers, but also the people whose lives are so affected by the decisions. Throughout Elizabeth’s reign, and beyond it, English Catholics struggled in their daily lives to reconcile the opposing demands placed upon them. This book is a great read about what happens to ordinary people when they are trying to survive in a time when politics and religion collide.
God’s Traitors was first published in 2014. It’s now available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and Kindle. It got great reviews by all kinds of people, and I cannot recommend it highly enough!
Her Majesty’s Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage by Stephen Budiansky. One of the things I really appreciate about this book is that it starts with the St. Bartholomew Day’s massacre and looks at Walsingham’s work as Elizabeth’s Spymaster through the lens of that experience. I hadn’t really thought about his work in that way, and now I can’t think of any of Walsingham’s actions without remembering his early experience in Paris. I found that such illuminating way of considering his single-minded approach to the rest of the century.
Francis Walsingham’s official title was Principal Secretary, but Spymaster is such a great description of his life’s work. While ambassador to France, Walsingham became intimately familiar with the French court and all its workings, and was able to see Catherine de Medici and her family, as well as other powerful French Catholic families, up close and personal. He knew firsthand sources he could reach out to and how things worked. He had also spent Mary Tudor’s reign travelling all over Europe, establishing contacts throughout various levels of society and government.
All this was put into play when Walsingham returned to England and, under Cecil’s guidance, took on the position of Principal Secretary, shaping the position to suit himself. He built up a network of “watchers” throughout England and the continent, training agents to infiltrate cities, towns, and taverns all over the world. Walsingham set things in motion to make the Babington plot possible, flipping members of Mary Stuart’s team and giving her just enough leeway to make incriminating statements. He recruited exceptional decipherers and code breakers such as Thomas Philippes who were able to decode a series of seemingly random letters and symbols and see what the plotters were plotting.
Budiansky gives us a glimpse into a man whose life’s work was about dark shadows and secret messages. He shows us how Walsingham set up spy schools to teach agents, how he developed contacts around the world, how he identified those supporters of Mary who could be “flipped” to his side, and how he oversaw an ill-defined but extremely potent method of protecting his Queen and his religion. It’s a full description of a fascinating character. It’s easy to imagine how and why Walsingham and his actions inspired modern espionage!
Rival Queens: The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots (also published as The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots: Elizabeth I and Her Greatest Rival) by Kate Williams.
There are many great books about Elizabeth I and about Mary Queen of Scots. There are several very good books about the two of them. I really liked Kate Williams’s book because it offers a fresh perspective that makes it easy to relate to these two queens as women and humans as well as queens.
This book focuses on the more personal side of the queens as women. For example, it considers Elizabeth’s refusal to marry, as she was expected to do, as a failure to sustain the Tudor dynasty. But Williams shows how Elizabeth used this decision to reshape how she was perceived and how this decision became a reflection of her devotion to her country. In the sixteenth century, God’s law required that wives submit to their husbands. Elizabeth had seen what happened when the husband’s desires were not best for England during her sister’s marriage to Philip of Spain. Elizabeth chose England’s interests by not marrying.
Mary Stuart on the other hand chose to marry. After what was undoubtedly her happiest marriage, the short one to Francois of France while they were both children, Mary was mistreated and betrayed by her next two husbands. Men tried to control Mary by controlling her body. Darnley is even casual about Mary’s pregnancy with his child, breaking into her chamber and murdering Rizzio in front of her. Bothwell, in Williams’s telling at least, is not a loyal supporter but a rapist who again controls Mary by controlling her body.
Williams points out that Mary was the one who followed all the “rules” of queenship, at least initially. She kept getting married, and that didn’t work. And Mary’s supposed supporters, like her half-brother the Earl of Moray, undermined her. In an interview, Williams calls Moray the “evil genius” in Mary’s life. Williams also believes that after Darnley’s death, before Bothwell abducts and rapes her, Mary could have kept her throne in Scotland. And even after abdicating the throne, Mary could have had a chance to raise an army of supporters against Moray if she had done that instead of going to England, according to Williams.
Williams sees Elizabeth’s councilors in a less flattering light than some accounts. Cecil was controlling and was interested in taking power from Elizabeth for himself, according to Williams. He is the one who pressed Elizabeth to think of Mary as a threat instead of a sister queen. In Williams’ book, Cecil is controlling Elizabeth—not to the same extent as men controlled Mary, but in terms of pushing her into decisions that she might not want to make. The big decision Elizabeth resists, of course, is executing a fellow queen and anointed monarch. Williams thinks Elizabeth was right about her fear of that and feels the execution of Charles I years later had its inception in the execution of Mary Queen of Scots.
Kate Williams raises the question of what it took to be a Queen in the sixteenth century. She is especially interested in reconsidering the ways women of the time, even queens, were treated by the men around them. For example, Mary Stuart says she was raped by Bothwell. The men around her seem to agree; even Bothwell seems to agree. But she is still considered to have gone along with Bothwell willingly. It’s not so much they don’t believe she was raped; it’s that they don’t believe it mattered. Bothwell had the power.
These two women, united by family and divided by religion, could not untangle their lives or their destinies. Their stories continue to resonate today.
Those are by no means all the books about this fascinating moment in time, nor are they the only ones I love. I’ll add a longer reading list, and some great websites, to the show notes and transcript. And I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading about Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth I, and the world of Renaissance spies!
More mini book reviews next time!
And here's a larger reading list:
Alford, Stephen. Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I. New Haven: Yale Univ Press. 2011.
Ibid. The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I. London: Penguin Books. 2012.
Brigden, Susan. New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors 1485-1603. London: Penguin. 2000.
Budiansky, Stephen. Her Majesty’s Spymaster. New York: Plume. 2006
Childs, Jessie. God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England. London: Penguin Random House. 2014.
Dunn, Jane. Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens. New York: Knopf. 2004.
Fraser, Antonia. Mary, Queen of Scots. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969.
Levine, Carole. The Reign of Elizabeth I. New York: Palgrave. 2002.
Marcus, Leah, et al., Eds. Elizabeth I Collected Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2002.
Pryor, Felix. Elizabeth I: Her Life in Letters. University of California Press. 2003.
Somerset, Anne. Elizabeth I. New York: Knopf, 1991.
Swain, Margaret. The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots. New York: VNR. 1973.
Watkins, Susan. Mary Queen of Scots. London: Thames and Watson. 2001.
Williams, Kate. Rival Queens: The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots. London: Hutchison. 2018
Wilson, Derek. Sir Francis Walsingham. London: Basic Books. 2007.
Wormald, Jenny. Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure. London: Collins & Brown. 1991.
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