In Episode 151 of the Renaissance English History Podcast we did a deep dive into the year 1580.
The 1580 Dover Earthquake:
Richard Tarlton and the Earthquake of 1580, by Lily B. Campbell; The Huntington Library Quarterly Vol. 4 No. 3 (April 1941),
Greensleeves:
John M. Ward, “‘And Who But Ladie Greensleeues?'”, in The Well Enchanting Skill: Music, Poetry, and Drama in the Culture of the Renaissance: Essays in Honour of F. W. Sternfeld, edited by John Caldwell, Edward Olleson, and Susan Wollenberg, 181–211 (Oxford:Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990):
More on the marriage negotations
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/elizabeth-monarchy/elizabeth-i-to-the-duke-of-alencon/
Rough Transcript for Episode 151 – A Year in the Life – 1580
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 151, and it’s another episode where we look at one specific year during the long 16th century. We’ve done episodes on 1527 and 1601 already, and I chose this year for a few reasons. First of all, there was a big earthquake. Some of the earliest performances of history plays. I’ve done episodes about how the English saw their history, and how history was becoming much more popular during this period. Yay history. It’s also the year of the first appearance of the song Greensleeves. So let’s dive in, shall we? One note, you can get show notes at Englandcast.com/1580
But first, I just want to tell you about Tudorcon. Yes, Tudorcon is still happening – sort of. Back in May when things were still so up in the air, and it seemed like a second wave of the virus might be coming, I decided to postpone Tudorcon this year, and move everyone’s tickets to 2021. I rented the venue, and moved all the reservations, and I thought that was that. But I wanted to do something for people who had already signed up to come this year. So I thought I’d do a digital version, with the same speakers who were lined up to talk. So as I was beginning to plan that, I thought, “you know what? What the world needs right now is Tudorcon.” I mean, think about it. Politics are insane right now. There’s a pandemic which may be worse in October than it is now. What we all need is to take a weekend, stay in our jammies, meet new friends, enjoy Tudor themed entertainment, and just chill out. At least, that’s what I need. So the point is, I decided to open it up to a broader audience, and make it available. So it’s October 2-4, and it’s all online. It’s $29, and it will start with a party on Friday night where we will have a virtual costume contest. Then there will be period entertainment and performances from Renaissance Faire performers from around the country. Saturday and Sunday the talks start at 11am – so it’s not sooo early for West Coasters. There will be talks from your favorite Tudor authors and historians, including people like Tony Riches, Sarah Morris the Tudor Travel Guide, and more. We’re even going to have a fun rumble between a very pro-Tom Seymour blogger, and one who sees Tom as more of a scoundrel – they will both plead thier cases, and we will decide who wins. The case is: Did Tom Shoot Edward VI’s dog. Yay or Nay. Saturday evening we will do a Tudor cookalong – the fabulous Brigitte Webster from the Tudor and 17th century experience is making a cooking video that we can follow along with – and we can all share our creations and see how it turned out. Sunday we’ll have more talks all day with more performances and entertainment thrown in.
So seriously, this is what we all need right now. We need to focus on the things that matter in life. Like friendships with people you don’t even know are your new best friends. And learning about things that make us happy. So go to englandcast.com/tudorcon2020 to sign up and reserve your spot.
Okay, I’m done. Let’s talk about 1580. (Seriously, come to Tudorcon. It’s going to be awesome).
At the start of the new decade in England, Relations between Catholics and Protestants were deteriorating – In 1579 the English College for training English catholic priests was founded in Rome. The Age of Discovery was heating up – 1579 saw Drake claim New Albion – the Pacific coast of America – for England. It’s also the year the Eastland Company was chartered to trade with Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea states.
But Christmas and New Year, 1579 to 1580 were spent feasting and enjoying the holidays as any other year. That year Elizabeth received some lovely edible gifts – Among the Queen’s edible goodies were ‘eighteen caged larks’ in 1579, and a quince pie which she was given by John Dudley, her Sergeant of the Pastry. She also received a satin nightgown from Francis Walsingham that year. They watched plays, like on January 1 whenThe Four Sons of Fabius, was performed by Earl of Warwick’s Men. On the 12th, Elizabeth would enjoy watching tumblers from Lord Strange’s men.
Elizabeth – nearing 50 now – was still playing the marriage game, and in November 1579 we saw a preliminary marriage treaty with the French Duke of Alencon, the last serious contender for her hand. He was a Catholic, she called him her “frog,” and nothing would come of it in the end, but on January 1 the Spanish ambassador Mendoza wrote to Philip II, Edward Stafford – on a special embassy to France, arrived here, having been sent by Alençon with a letter to the Queen, in the sealing-wax of which was embedded an emerald worth 400 crowns…Stafford said that Alençon would soon be here; two persons of rank however would precede him. Alençon gave him a chain of a 1000 crowns, and as much more in jewels and buttons. The Queen sent a post to Alençon on the night Stafford arrived, and told the latter to make ready for his speedy return to France’.
The Spanish Ambassador was none too happy when in mid January he tried to corner Elizabeth about certain robberies that were happening on the high seas, and she apparently put him off, telling him to go enjoy the entertainments that had been provided for her – “This was one of those which are customary here, in which bears are baited by dogs.”
One of Elizabeth’s most famous quotes – about not being a morning person – comes from this year. On January 27, the Earl of Hertford and Earl of Oxford were at Whitehall. Hertford’s journal says: At 11 in the morning ‘I went into the orchard where her Majesty was walking with my Lord of Oxford. She sat down and then, calling me, told me how she had ordered her Council to report my cause to her, and said “My Lord, you know I am no morning woman, but in the afternoon tomorrow or the next day I will be ready to hear and determine”.
February started off with a history play: Portio and Demorantes, by Earl of Sussex’s Men. History plays were becoming increasingly popular during this period. Thomas Legge wrote the first known history plays in England. In March his Richardus Tertius, written in Latin about King Richard III was acted by the students of St. John’s College, Cambridge. It was possibly seen by two of the University students in Cambridge at the time: Christopher Marlowe and Robert Greene. It would, of course, influence Shakespeare’s Richard III 15 years later. This was a period when England was learning more about its history and separating out the myth from the truth. Old stories of Brutus were dying out while there was a renewed interest in learning about the Vikings, Alfred the Great, and earlier periods in history. History plays would become increasingly popular throughout the Elizabethan period.
In February Lettice Knollys went into confinement waiting for her child with Robert Dudley to be born. He had married her two years earlier in secret, when he realized that Elziabeth I was never going to marry him, and the marriage had so enraged Elizabaeth that she banished Lettice from court. That month Robert Dudley was caught up in some other court drama. For almost a decade – from 1568 until just before he married in 1578 he had had a passionate love affair with Douglas Sheffield, though he never married her. In the 1560’s, he wrote her an extraordinary letter: “You must think it is some marvellous cause, and toucheth my present state very near, that forceth me thus to be cause almost of the ruin of mine own house … my brother you see long married and not like to have children, it resteth so now in myself; and yet such occasions is there … as if I should marry I am sure never to have [the queen’s] favour.[6]”
So then Douglas married Sir Edward Stafford – the aforementioned Stafford who had been in France, and the two married in secret. In a deposition made in 1604 Stafford told how on his return in February 1580 he was summoned by the Queen for an interview. She forced him to admit that he had married Douglas, then claimed to have evidence that Douglas was already married (1573) to the Earl of Leicester (which would have made both her marriage to Stafford and Leicester’s marriage to Lettice bigamous). She tried to force him to ‘importune his wife whether there were a contract between her and the Earl of Leicester, which if it were, then she would make him make up her honour with a marriage or rot in the Tower, and would better the estate of Stafford. She [Douglas] answered with great vows, grief and passion that she had trusted the said Earl too much to have anything to show to constrain him to marry her…She had told Stafford the truth before she married him’. In her own deposition in 1604 Douglas testified that she had married the Earl of Leicester, and that their son Robert Dudley was thus his legitimate heir. The matter was left unresolved. Douglas had a child with Stafford born in 1581, and Elizabeth was the godmother.
February and March were filled with marriage negotiations for Elizabeth. Mendoza wrote back to Spain: On the 10th ‘in the morning whilst she was in her barge on the river accompanied by two or three lords and ladies, she visited the (French) Ambassador at his house and was talking with him for an hour in the presence of Alençon’s gentleman. On the same night the Ambassador hurriedly sent off a courier. It was considered a great innovation for the Queen to go to his house, and it is looked upon by some as a sure indication that the marriage will take place’.
That drama continued throughout March, but on April 6 – right in the middle of Easter week, things got shaken up – literally. The Dover Straits Earthquake made everyone incredibly nervous: Dr John Dee noted: ‘Earthquake towards 6 in the afternoon. It lasted for two minutes. It began at exactly 10 minutes before 6 or thereabouts’. Reports were that it killed two children in London, but the entire country was fascinated with reports about the Easter Earthquake. On the English coast, sections of wall fell in Dover and a landslip opened a raw new piece of the White Cliffs. At Sandwich a loud noise emanated from the Channel, as church arches cracked and the gable end of a transept fell at St Peter’s Church.
In London, half a dozen chimney stacks and a pinnacle on Westminster Abbey came down; two children were killed by stones falling from the roof of Christ’s Church Hospital. Indeed, many Puritans blamed the emerging theatre scene of the time in London, which was seen as the work of the Devil, as a cause of the quake. There was damage far inland, in Cambridgeshire, where stones fell from Ely Cathedral. Part of Stratford Castle in Essex collapsed.
In Scotland, a local report of the quake disturbed the adolescent James VI, who was informed that it was the work of the Devil.
It fell during Easter week, an omen-filled connection that was not lost on the servant-poet James Yates, who wrote ten stanzas on the topic:
Oh sudden motion, and shaking of the earth,
No blustering blastes, the weather calme and milde:
Good Lord the sudden rarenesse of the thing
A sudden feare did bring, to man and childe,
They verely thought, as well in field as Towne,
The earth should sinke, and the houses all fall downe.
Well let vs print this present in our heartes,
And call to God, for neuer neede we more:
Crauing of him mercy for our misdeedes,
Our sinfull liues from heart for to deplore,
For let vs thinke this token doth portend,
If scourge nere hand, if we do still offend.
Yates’ poem was printed in 1582 in The Castell of Courtesy
By June it seemed as if the marriage to Alencon was off, except then Mendoza wrote this back to Spain: June 11: ‘The negotiations for the Queen’s marriage, which had been almost dropped, have been again revived’. A Council was held on the 5th ‘in which it was decided that the Queen should send word to Alençon that Commissioners might come…They were unanimous in this’… ‘I was told that Alençon had written to the Queen that it was desirable to him that people should not think that the marriage negotiations had quite fallen through, and he begged her to allow them to continue, which she did’.
That summer and early autumn would see big events with trade and exploration. Following a decline in trade with the Levant over a number of decades, several London merchants petitioned Queen Elizabeth I in 1580 for a charter to guarantee exclusivity when trading in that region. In 1580 a treaty was signed between England and the Ottoman Empire, giving English merchants trading rights similar to those enjoyed by French merchants. This was all part of Elizabeth’s growing desire to have friendly relations with the Turks, since both of them seemed to be at odds with the Pope. In 1570 Elizabeth was excommunicated by Pope Pius V, with the Papal Bull saying that “Elizabeth, the Pretended Queen of England” had “seized on the kingdom and monstrously usurped the place of Supreme Head of the Church in all England.” She had left the said kingdom in a miserable and ruinous condition, which was so lately reclaimed to the Catholic faith under Mary and Philip. Elizabeth was officially cut off from the Body of Christ. Catholicism suddenly became even more suspect throughout England. The Bishop of Winchester wrote in 1566 that “the Pope is a more perilous enemy unto Christ than the Turk: and Popery more idolatrous than Turkery.” This would actually be a point where the Elizabethans and Ottomans could agree. They would often mention their shared dislike of idolatry, with Muslims and Protestants both disliking Popery.
The Papal Bull encouraged Elizabeth to seek trading partners elsewhere outside of Christendom, and she largely stayed out of the Holy League with the Battle of Lepanto. By March 1577 Ottoman Abd al-Malik captured the Moroccan city of Fez, and proclaimed himself the Sultan of Morocco. He wanted to do a deal with Elizabeth, “being desirous of the honor I hear of your queen of England, and the good liking I have of the English nation.” He was going to offer access to the markets beyond Morocco, and this particular trading relationship angered the Catholics like none before it, as it dealt with the trade of arms and weapons. English tin went to the Muslim world, which would be used against Catholic Spain.
But beyond that, September 1580 was when Francis Drake came back from his journey around the world. Everyone had thought he clearly had died, and yet his voyage was still alive – barely. Description by John Drake, Francis’s cousin: ‘On reaching Plymouth they enquired from some fishermen “How was the Queen?” and learnt that “She was in health, but that there was much pestilence in Plymouth”. So they did not land, but Captain Drake’s wife and the Mayor of the port came to see him on the ship. He dispatched a messenger to the Queen…sixty leagues distant, apprising her of his arrival, and he wrote to other persons at court who informed him that he was in her Majesty’s bad graces because she had already heard, by way of Peru and Spain, of the robberies that he had committed. They also told him that the Spanish Ambassador was there at court, and it was said that he was making a claim for what Francis Drake had taken. Thereupon the latter left the port of Plymouth with the ship and, lying behind an island, waited until the Queen sent him word “that he was to go to court and take her some samples of his labours and that he was to fear nothing”. The island is now ‘Drake’s Island’.
Also in September, big music news: A broadside ballad by this name was registered at the London Stationer’s Company in September 1580,[1] by Richard Jones, as “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves”.[2] Six more ballads followed in less than a year, one on the same day, 3 September 1580 (“Ye Ladie Greene Sleeves answere to Donkyn hir frende” by Edward White), then on 15 and 18 September (by Henry Carr and again by White), 14 December (Richard Jones again), 13 February 1581 (Wiliam Elderton), and August 1581 (White’s third contribution, “Greene Sleeves is worne awaie, Yellow Sleeves Comme to decaie, Blacke Sleeves I holde in despite, But White Sleeves is my delighte”).[4] It then appears in the surviving A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584) as A New Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Green Sleeves. To the new tune of Green Sleeves.
There is a persistent belief that Greensleeves was composed by Henry VIII for his lover and future queen consort Anne Boleyn.[5] Boleyn allegedly rejected King Henry’s attempts to seduce her and this rejection may be referred to in the song when the writer’s love “cast me off discourteously”. However, the piece is based on an Italian style of composition that did not reach England until after Henry’s death, making it more likely to be Elizabethan in origin.[6]
A possible interpretation of the lyrics is that Lady Green Sleeves was a promiscuous young woman, perhaps even a prostitute.[7] At the time, the word “green” had sexual connotations, most notably in the phrase “a green gown”, a reference to the grass stains on a woman’s dress from engaging in sexual intercourse outdoors.[8]
An alternative explanation is that Lady Green Sleeves was, through her costume, incorrectly assumed to be sexually promiscuous. Her “discourteous” rejection of the singer’s advances supports the contention that she is not.[8]
Alternative lyrics
Christmas and New Year texts were associated with the tune from as early as 1686, and by the 19th century almost every printed collection of Christmas carols included some version of words and music together, most of them ending with the refrain “On Christmas Day in the morning”. One of the most popular of these is “What Child Is This?”, written in 1865 by William Chatterton Dix.
By the end of the year, Elizabeth’s marriage negotiations were off, and Drake was bringing his treasure to Whitehall to show it off to Elizabeth. Dec 24,Sat Francis Drake’s ‘treasure’ brought to the Tower. The Golden Hind was sailed from Plymouth to London in December, and the remaining treasure was placed in a vault beneath the Jewel-house in the Tower. John Pigeon, Jewel-house Officer, ‘for his boathire betwixt the court at Westminster and the Tower of London for the keys of the said Office within the said Tower for the receiving of such treasure as Mr Drake brought at sundry times and for his attendance seven days while the said treasure was weighing and drawing the assays’
So there we go.
So that’s it for this week. You can get the show notes at englandcast.com/1580. Remember to grab your Tudorcon tickets, and I’ll see you online on October 2! 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 join the free. Tudor Learning Circle at TudorLearningCircle.com
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