Paul E. J. Hammer

MYTH-MAKING: POLITICS, PROPAGANDA AND THE CAPTURE OF CADIZ IN 1596

The capture of Cadiz in 1596 was a spectacular but short-lived success in Englands war against Spain. More enduring were the many partisan accounts of the victory, which were prepared and disseminated by various officers from the expedition. This article traces these rival narratives and explores their circulation in manuscript form, including the earl of Essexs notorious ‘True relacion’. Such documents illustrate the increasingly bitter divisions of late Elizabethan politics. The stories of Cadiz gained a fresh currency when England and Spain went to war again in the 1620s, placing a heavy burden of expectation on the government of Charles I.

Elizabeth's wars : war, government, and society in Tudor England, 1544-1604

Acknowledgements List of Maps List of Tables Technical Terms and Conventions Introduction The Glory of War: Operations and Developments, 1544-58 The Burden of War: Operations and Developments, 1559-72 The Spectre of War: Operations and Developments, c.1572-85 The Perils of War: Operations and Developments, 1585-88 The Depths of War: Operations and Developments, 1589-95 The Limits of War: Operations and Developments, 1596-1604 The Reformation of War Abbreviations References Select Bibliography Index

New Light on the Cadiz Expedition of 1596

Using an account which had previously been unrecognized among the Yelverton MSS, in the British Library, this article adds new detail to our understanding of the Cadiz expedition of 1596. Written from aboard the earl of Essex’s flagship, Due Repulse, the new account of the voyage provides a counterpoint to the well-known narrative written by Dr. Marbeck from aboard the lord admiral’s ship, Ark Royal. This article also describes an apparent reconnaissance map of Cadiz and considers some of the intelligence-gathering which paved the way for Anglo-Dutch forces to attack the city.

A Reckoning Reframed: the “Murder” of Christopher Marlowe Revisited

he death of Christopher Marlowe in May 1593 has long been the subject of great controversy. It seems almost universally accepted is that the circumstances of Marlowe’s demise are suspicious and that the coroner’s verdlct ofaccidental killing is dubious. This century has seen a wide variety of theories advanced to explain the “real” cause of Marlowe’s death, many of them claiming that the playwright was deliberately killed.’ Perhaps the most compelling and detailed recent contribution to this debate is Charles Nicholl’s book The Reckoning, subtitled The Murder of Christopher Marlowe.z According to Nicholl, the clues to Marlowe’s murder lie with the evil company he kept on that fatal night in Eleanor Bull’s house at Deptford. Allegedly, each of the men with whom Marlowe caroused on Wednesday, May 30, 1593-Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley-had connections with the shady underworld of Elizabethan espionage, as did Marlowe hmself. Nicholl seeks to explore these links and in the process produces one of the best discussions avadable on spies and spying in late Elizabethan England. Ultimately, Nicholl suggests that Marlowe was consciously fiamed as an atheist and fomenter of sedition by followers of the Earl of Essex, who hoped that the smearing of Marlowe would also implicate Sir Walter Ralegh in the same heinous crimes. In Nicholl’s view, the anti-Dutch libels which circulated in London during April and May 1593 were deliberately intended to implicate Marlowe (one of them was signed “Tamburlaine”) and to

The Earl of Essex and Elizabethan Parliaments

This article challenges the old notion championed by J.E. Neale that Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex (1565–1601), displayed ‘megalomania’ in his parliamentary patronage during the latter years of Elizabeth Is reign. In addition to surveying Essexs influence on the membership of late Elizabethan parliaments, this article addresses the likelihood that the earl was angling for the summoning of a parliament in the spring of 1601. Instead, thanks to the Essex rising of 8 February 1601, Essex himself was executed and posthumously attainted for treason at a parliament summoned in October 1601. Finally, the article speculates about the possible impact of Essexs example and political research on the 12 peers who sought to force Charles I to summon a parliament in 1640.

Elizabeth's Unsettling Succession

was elizabeth i, so famously cautious and penny-pinching in her policies, actually the most reckless sovereign in English history? If a fundamental duty of sovereigns is to guarantee the orderly continuance of royal government after their own deaths, Elizabeth neglected that duty. She was unique among English sovereigns in failing to take any explicit action to produce or recognize an heir who might ensure the future smooth transition of authority into a new reign. In her early years on the throne, when the realm’s men of power repeatedly came to her and demanded some certainty about the succession, she offered only “an answer answerless.” More pointedly, she vowed never to “spread a winding-sheet before her eyes”: according to her calculation, to name an heir would be virtually to consign herself to the grave, no matter how much longer she survived. In light of the open conflict over the succession in 1553 and her own subsequent experience as heir apparent during the final months of Mary’s reign, such caution about proclaiming an heir is understandable. Yet Elizabeth took this wariness to extreme, arguably dangerous, lengths. Although she allegedly gave a sign on her deathbed that she wished her crown to pass to James VI of Scotland, this signal only came after she had lost the power of speech, and its supposed meaning was divined by councillors who had privately already committed themselves to James. By then, the great question of who would succeed the queen after her death had been left unanswered for almost forty-five years. Given the importance of a clear line of succession for guaranteeing the continued stability of any monarchy, Elizabeth’s refusal to resolve this basic question forced two generations of English men and women to live review Elizabeth’s Unsettling Succession