Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Hey, plus romance. I'm Diana, I'm Eli. How
Speaker 1: are you today? How am I today? Well, it's a
Speaker 1: rainy day here in Atlanta, UM, which is whatever. I mean.
Speaker 1: You know, we've been have a nice weather. Weather small talk,
Speaker 1: you know what, I like it? You know what I'm
Speaker 1: conditioned to think. Weather small talk is bad because we
Speaker 1: always kind of laugh about it. But it's a universal
Speaker 1: experience that we can all relate to well, and if
Speaker 1: you think about it, yeah I will. In history, it
Speaker 1: was like the number one most important thing to know. True.
Speaker 1: It's like if you think about like farmers in the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, the weather was actually incredibly important topic. And
Speaker 1: so you come in and be like, m how long
Speaker 1: you think this snow is gonna last? Don't like to
Speaker 1: look at that sky. I hope this sun keeps coming up.
Speaker 1: We could use some rain. I mean, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. We need the r now. It seems silly
Speaker 1: because we have climate control, climate control. The climate has
Speaker 1: never been more out of the climate. I just mean,
Speaker 1: I know, but but I hope we're moving away from it.
Speaker 1: You know what else we should move away from? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this conversation, that's right, So we can move towards our
Speaker 1: episode today. Yeah, we told y'all in part one all
Speaker 1: about Robert Dudley, Lord Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth the
Speaker 1: first long history together and the murder mystery surrounding Robert's
Speaker 1: wife Amy robs Heart, which of course we decided was
Speaker 1: obviously the fault of the ghost of Bloody Mary the
Speaker 1: first Amy clearly went into the bathroom in the dark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a fool, Yes has met the same fate. Was
Speaker 1: very happy. We got a review, a new review where
Speaker 1: someone was telling me that they also are very scared
Speaker 1: of Bloody marries Yill even years years later. That mays
Speaker 1: me feel a little bit better about my silly paranoia. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: the aftermath of all that Amy Rob's Heart stuff is
Speaker 1: just as interesting. There's really clearly never a dull day
Speaker 1: in Queen Elizabeth's court. Robert had several interesting lady love
Speaker 1: and legal troubles in his future, Elizabeth had some fun
Speaker 1: suitors herself. It's basically tutor tender around there. Wow. Um. Plus,
Speaker 1: there's so many wild theories about the Virgin Queens to
Speaker 1: cover as well, So let's find out how it all
Speaker 1: played out with our star Cross lovers yeah, let's go. Hey,
Speaker 1: their friends come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some
Speaker 1: stories to tell. There's no matchmaking a romantic tips. It's
Speaker 1: just about ridiculous relationships. A lover might be any type
Speaker 1: of person at all, and abstract cons at our concrete wall.
Speaker 1: But if there's a story with the Second Clans ridiculous
Speaker 1: role mass a production of iHeartRadio. Okay, So, as we
Speaker 1: said at the end of part one, with the death
Speaker 1: of Amy robs Hard, Lord Robert and Queen Elizabeth were
Speaker 1: free to marry. Finally, my wife is dead. Now I'm happy, happy,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. But they could not get married without
Speaker 1: destabilizing Elizabeth rained too much and possibly fomenting a rebellion
Speaker 1: against her because of all the scandal about whether or
Speaker 1: not they had murdered this lady and stuff. Right, it
Speaker 1: basically would have looked like they absolutely did if they
Speaker 1: went and got married immediately after admitting to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but even so, they simply could not stop flirting and
Speaker 1: causing gossip because they just were so into each other. Right,
Speaker 1: And in fifteen sixty one, Elizabeth was bedridden with a
Speaker 1: swelling sickness as they called it, made her body swell
Speaker 1: so conspiracy theories immediately sprang up, saying that she's not sick,
Speaker 1: she's actually pregnant with Robert's child. Oh my goodness. And
Speaker 1: we're going to get more into that later. So don't
Speaker 1: forget that. Yeah, I mean like swelling sickness. Come on,
Speaker 1: I mean I get that every time we go out
Speaker 1: from Mexican food. I mean it could have been dropsy
Speaker 1: or something, sure, or maybe she ate too much. People
Speaker 1: gets Wait, did people get dropsy? I've only ever dealt
Speaker 1: with it in the fish tank. People do, and then
Speaker 1: you see the if you see pictures, it's insane how
Speaker 1: big they swell up. Their feet look insane or their
Speaker 1: hands or whatever. It looks really crazy, really sad when
Speaker 1: it happens to fish. I didn't know what happened to people.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty Yeah. Well the more you know, the more
Speaker 1: you know, the less you want to know, well, the
Speaker 1: less so true. So yeah, at any rate, all of
Speaker 1: this scandal around them just refused to die. It does
Speaker 1: not matter how many years went by, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. People were just always willing to believe that
Speaker 1: the two of them were up to something. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: as a result, matchmaking started anew for both Elizabeth and
Speaker 1: Lord Roberts. Okay, For years, the Royal Council kept encouraging
Speaker 1: Robert to give up on marrying Elizabeth by suggesting various
Speaker 1: foreign princesses as his bride as like a consolation prize
Speaker 1: for the Queen. I guess, so, like just marry the
Speaker 1: Swedish Light or whatever. Yeah. In fact, Elizabeth herself proposed
Speaker 1: that Robert Mary Mary, Queen of Scotts. She went to Mary,
Speaker 1: Queen of Scott's, and was like, hey, if you marry Roberts,
Speaker 1: I'll make you my air. And this would of course
Speaker 1: unify Scotland and England, and it would neutralize one of
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's greatest rivals. Sure, so she said absolutely, and she
Speaker 1: said she could do this on just one condition. Mary
Speaker 1: would have to come live in Elizabeth's court so that
Speaker 1: she could keep Robert, her favorite courts Air, by her side,
Speaker 1: as she always liked to have. I love it. She's like,
Speaker 1: marry this guy and then come live with me so
Speaker 1: I can keep flirting with your husband. It's like when
Speaker 1: I see an adorable dog that needs an adoption, and
Speaker 1: I try to go get my best friend to adopt
Speaker 1: the dogs that I can still hang out with the dog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't have to take care of total same energy.
Speaker 1: Perfect Mary, Queen of Scott's, please come adopt sweet little Robert.
Speaker 1: Look at his little tail wagging. He's so cute and
Speaker 1: I just want to scratch his head, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to have to feed him. So Elizabeth went ahead
Speaker 1: and made Robert the Earl of Leicester and gave him
Speaker 1: a bunch of land in fifteen sixty three so that
Speaker 1: he would be a more acceptable husband to Mary. And
Speaker 1: Mary actually seemed like she might kind of go for it.
Speaker 1: But there was one little hiccup in this plan, and
Speaker 1: that's that Robert was like, no, and no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not marrying Mary, Queen of Scott's. He unequivocally refused to
Speaker 1: marry this woman. He was dead set against it, at
Speaker 1: least partly because he was still holding on to hope
Speaker 1: that he might one day get to marry Queen Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: So instead of going along with her plan, he went
Speaker 1: and helped a guy named Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, win Mary,
Speaker 1: Queen of Scott's hand, which eventually Lord Darnley did, which
Speaker 1: I mean would be It sounds like a classic rom
Speaker 1: com set up yes, like, oh, I, oh, you're going
Speaker 1: to have to marry this woman. Oh yeah, not if
Speaker 1: she falls in love with my friend who just came
Speaker 1: to town first. That's right, except this turned out to
Speaker 1: be a really ill fated man. Well yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 1: rom com with a really dark sequel. Yeah. But you know,
Speaker 1: Robert was not just like pining away in his celibate
Speaker 1: bedroom or anything like that waiting for the queen. Okay,
Speaker 1: hey's a real handsome women loved him, sure, So he's
Speaker 1: flirting with several ladies in the court, including Elizabeth's cousin,
Speaker 1: Latise Knowles, who was the Countess of Essex, and she
Speaker 1: was Her name is spelled l E t Tice, so
Speaker 1: it's Lettuce, let us, let us and I could not
Speaker 1: stop reading it as let us the whole time we're
Speaker 1: going through this. So but anyway, it's Latise apparently knows
Speaker 1: she was the Countess of Essex, and she was Elizabeth's
Speaker 1: most beautiful lady in waiting. But in fifteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: Robert Dudley started having an affair with a different lady
Speaker 1: in waiting. Her name was Douglas Sheffield and she was
Speaker 1: newly widowed. Okay, Douglas Douglas Douglass, Douglass the last Douglass.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Robert and Douglas were together for several years.
Speaker 1: Douglas even gave birth to Robert's illegitimate son, who was
Speaker 1: also named Robert, in fifteen seventy four. They only had
Speaker 1: five names to choose from, serious she had to like
Speaker 1: spin the wheel something. Now, Douglas was getting a lot
Speaker 1: of marriage proposals, but she was waiting for one from
Speaker 1: Robert Sure, like, all these dudes want to marry me,
Speaker 1: but I only want one man. I only had a
Speaker 1: son with one of them. But this proposal never came,
Speaker 1: and Robert explained to her in a letter he wrote
Speaker 1: her where he was. Basically, he was just encouraging her
Speaker 1: to marry someone else. And he told her, you know,
Speaker 1: I know it's really strange of me to threaten my
Speaker 1: own family name and household by not getting married and
Speaker 1: having legitimate children and heirs, you know, for my property
Speaker 1: and everything. But he said he could not do it
Speaker 1: because quote, if I should marry, I am sure never
Speaker 1: to have the Queen's favor. So he just knew that
Speaker 1: the jealousy of Elizabeth was going to be real crazy
Speaker 1: for him, right, because Elizabeth was not she would not
Speaker 1: marry him, but she was kind of not happy about
Speaker 1: him flirting with anybody else. A bit of a trap.
Speaker 1: But Robert was also getting a little tired of waiting
Speaker 1: for Elizabeth to make up her mind about whether or
Speaker 1: not she'd take him or not. As he said, he
Speaker 1: had no opportunity to build up his own family while
Speaker 1: he was waiting in the wings for the queens. So
Speaker 1: in fifteen seventy five, Robert decided to go for it.
Speaker 1: He threw a huge nineteen day long festival at his castle, Kennilworth,
Speaker 1: which he was building up as a quote wonder house
Speaker 1: for her majesty and I love a historical party, so
Speaker 1: Christian had include all these details. Yeah, this party had
Speaker 1: a Lady of the Lake like some I guess, some
Speaker 1: woman dressed up holding a sword in the water swimming around.
Speaker 1: They had a swimming paper mache dolphin that had a
Speaker 1: little orchestra and its belly plan. They had fireworks that
Speaker 1: were said to be heard twenty miles away. Of course,
Speaker 1: they were holding hunts. We're all going to get together,
Speaker 1: go out and find some foxes. And then they had
Speaker 1: entertainment that was popular at the time, like bear baiting. Good.
Speaker 1: It always makes for a fun party. Oh so fun.
Speaker 1: I love to make a bear really mad. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I like. And then, of course the scenery was spectacular.
Speaker 1: Brought all the best decorators out. He had a artificial
Speaker 1: lake and castle. He also had a Renaissance garden, and
Speaker 1: English Heritage dot Com says that when Queen Elizabeth complained
Speaker 1: that she could not see this garden from her lodgings
Speaker 1: in the estate, Robert's gardeners worked all night to create
Speaker 1: a little pop up version of it right under her window. Wow,
Speaker 1: pulled out all the stops. Now, this was the longest
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth had ever stayed at one of her courtier's houses.
Speaker 1: And the final entertainment was to be this masquerade where
Speaker 1: actors would have been commissioned to urge Elizabeth to marry
Speaker 1: their generous host, Lord Robert Dudley, but the mask was
Speaker 1: rained out. And even though one of these actors was like,
Speaker 1: I got a job, I'm gonna do it, and he
Speaker 1: ran after Elizabeth in the rain, pleading for her to
Speaker 1: wait and stay and talk to Robert, but she refused
Speaker 1: to do it, and she wrote off parties over I'm
Speaker 1: out of here. I've been here nineteen days. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you heard, but I'm a queen and I
Speaker 1: got work to do. It's true. So this had been
Speaker 1: Robert's most ostentatious proposal and it came to nothing. Now,
Speaker 1: some historians believe that as much as this party was
Speaker 1: a proposal to Elizabeth, it was also kind of a
Speaker 1: request to let Robert marry somebody else. All right, He's
Speaker 1: kind of like, this is my final thing, it's your
Speaker 1: final answer, and yeah, we're good, right, like we know
Speaker 1: it's all good. Yeah, And that might be because Robert
Speaker 1: had a certain lady in mind to be the next
Speaker 1: Missus Dudley, because ten years before, as we mentioned, he
Speaker 1: had flirted with Latise knows let us. You know, I've
Speaker 1: flirted with let us a few times myself too, but
Speaker 1: I end up going for French fries. And Latisse was
Speaker 1: married to the Earl of Essex at the time. And now,
Speaker 1: of course, since it's Robert Dudley, he could not do
Speaker 1: anything without the rumor mill kicking into gear, and they
Speaker 1: started saying that Latise had two children with Robert, but
Speaker 1: had aborted one of them to prevent her husband finding
Speaker 1: out about the affair, just one, yeah, the other one.
Speaker 1: They're like, she's just lying to him. You've had one
Speaker 1: child that I don't know how you had him about
Speaker 1: a second one and I'm going to start to get suspicious.
Speaker 1: Must now again, zero evidence for any of this. Okay,
Speaker 1: he just flirted with her and everybody ran with it.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they had nothing to do back then.
Speaker 1: But gossip true, very true. Then. When Latis's husband, the
Speaker 1: Earl of Essex, died in fifteen seventy six, the rumor
Speaker 1: mill said that Robert deadly had poisoned him so he
Speaker 1: could marry Latise. Never mind that the Earl of Essex
Speaker 1: was in Ireland at the time trying to colonize it
Speaker 1: and definitely died of dysenterry during an epidemic. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's like no way that Robert had anything to
Speaker 1: do with his right. But one thing that the gossips
Speaker 1: did get right was that Robert and Latise were in love.
Speaker 1: History extra dot com says that Robert had flirted with
Speaker 1: Latise back in fifteen sixty five, deliberately to fan the
Speaker 1: Queen's jealousy and get her to finally marry him. So
Speaker 1: you know, don't you hate it seeing me hang out
Speaker 1: with this girl while you got You can lock it
Speaker 1: down if you want. She's so beautiful and she's into me.
Speaker 1: But when the widowed Latis visited Kenilworth in fifteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: her and Robert's feelings for each other grew so intense that,
Speaker 1: even knowing how much the Queen would dislike it, they
Speaker 1: went ahead and started planning their wedding, and that meant
Speaker 1: that Robert would have to formally end things with his
Speaker 1: baby mama Douglas Sheffield. So you know, I've been telling
Speaker 1: you and I'm not going to marry you, but we
Speaker 1: actually really I'm trying to get serious with somebody else.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna marry someone else. Right, It is a
Speaker 1: little I do imagine that Douglas had a bit of
Speaker 1: a moment of huh, because he's like, I can't marry
Speaker 1: you or else the Queen will get marrit me. But
Speaker 1: I am going to marry this other lady even if
Speaker 1: the Queen gets mad at me. So I feel like
Speaker 1: there's no way to read that other than you didn't
Speaker 1: want to marry me specifically. Yeah, Well, they did come
Speaker 1: to an amicable agreement about the young little Robert Sheffield
Speaker 1: Junior his custody. He stayed in Robert Dudley's houses. He
Speaker 1: was extremely well educated, and he had permission to go
Speaker 1: see his mother whenever she wanted to see him. And
Speaker 1: Douglas herself remarried in fifteen seventy nine to Sir Edward Stafford.
Speaker 1: So everything turned out all right for Lady Douglas, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it was all clear for Robert and Latisse's wedding,
Speaker 1: which took place in September fifteen seventy eight. Some accounts
Speaker 1: say that Latise was pregnant with Robert's child at the time,
Speaker 1: but kind of the only proof for this is that
Speaker 1: she wore a loose fitting gown to get married in. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: there's no historical evidence for a child at all. It's
Speaker 1: historical evidence to me that she wanted to be comfortable,
Speaker 1: That's what I said. Also, there wedding date coincided with
Speaker 1: the end of the traditional two year morning period for widows,
Speaker 1: and they had planned it for over a year. So
Speaker 1: this is like no shotgun affair when he knocked her
Speaker 1: up and he had to get married or something. But
Speaker 1: only the bride's parents and the groom's brother Ambrose were
Speaker 1: present at the ceremony, and everybody was sworn to secrecy
Speaker 1: because they were all just so afraid of what the
Speaker 1: Queen would do when she found out that her boy
Speaker 1: toy was married, which unfortunately did not take very long.
Speaker 1: Of course, a French ambassador reported on their marriage only
Speaker 1: two months after it, and then Elizabeth was told a
Speaker 1: few months after that, and her reaction was immediate. She
Speaker 1: was like incandescent with rage. Right, she even ordered Robert
Speaker 1: thrown into the Tower of London. She's not going to
Speaker 1: imprison him, but the new Earl of Essex, who is
Speaker 1: Latisse's son and Robert's stepson, Robert Devereaux another Robert, Sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: he intervened and he convinced Elizabeth that that was a
Speaker 1: bad move. Probably's like, honey, you can't just be thrown
Speaker 1: people into jail. Were getting married. That's kind of crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to mention, I think it says something publicly about
Speaker 1: y'all's relationship. If you're this reactive, that's right what I see.
Speaker 1: You know, I could see her upset, you know, more
Speaker 1: than just being in love with him, but like he
Speaker 1: also like is her best friend since they were kids,
Speaker 1: and he didn't tell her he got married. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know that's probably a factor as well. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying it's part of it. It's not like that's why
Speaker 1: she got married instead of her love for him. But
Speaker 1: I just think that that didn't help. No, I agree.
Speaker 1: I would just say she needs to look inward because
Speaker 1: it's her he's not. He probably did want to tell
Speaker 1: Harry what I mean, right, but she's too crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Robert did not get thrown in prison, but he
Speaker 1: did have to leave court in disgrace. Sam Meanwhile, Latise
Speaker 1: was called to court to bear the brunt of Elizabeth's wreath.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth raged at her, calling her a she wolf and
Speaker 1: a flouting wench she boxtra years before finally banishing her
Speaker 1: from court for life. Jez, Yeah, just cruel. And Latisse
Speaker 1: had to retire to the Dudley's country house, and she
Speaker 1: stayed there for years, and she still called herself the
Speaker 1: Countess of Essex, and she lived as discreetly as she could.
Speaker 1: But in fifteen eighty one she gave birth to Robert's son,
Speaker 1: another Robert, called Lord Denby, and they moved permanently to
Speaker 1: the Dudley's house in London and that made the Queen
Speaker 1: mad all over again. I guess it was like, you're
Speaker 1: flaunter in my face now, Yeah, you know, I got
Speaker 1: to look at her sometimes now. Latis's social life was
Speaker 1: severely curtailed because everyone knew the Queen hated her guts,
Speaker 1: so you didn't want to get seen hanging out with
Speaker 1: the Queen's number one enemy. Every time she did anything,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth would get angry. One time, Queen Elizabeth became furious
Speaker 1: because she heard Latise was planning to join Robert in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands with a procession of people and carriages even
Speaker 1: bigger than the Queen's. And it turns out none of
Speaker 1: that was true. Latise wasn't planning to go to the
Speaker 1: Netherlands at all. But this poor girl really could not
Speaker 1: lift a finger without pissing off the Queen, and this
Speaker 1: lasted for the rest of Elizabeth's life. Sucks. Not the
Speaker 1: kind of person you want to be, constantly looking at
Speaker 1: everything you do and easily mad about it. Not really.
Speaker 1: It's like I think I'll just make a sandwich today,
Speaker 1: and then a royal proclamation just announced from the Queen.
Speaker 1: All women who make sandwiches suck. Stupid and ugly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but she sacrificed a lot to be
Speaker 1: with Robert. You know, I don't know that she expected this,
Speaker 1: but they definitely expected to not be her favorite. I mean,
Speaker 1: even the thing with the Netherlands, Like, even stuff that
Speaker 1: she doesn't do, she's encouraging the wrath about right, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was some like you know, shenanigans where
Speaker 1: some courtiers like, I want her to be mad at Robert,
Speaker 1: so let me tell her about let us doing something
Speaker 1: or Latise doing something. Yeah. It's like it's like when
Speaker 1: someone has a dream about you and they're mad at you,
Speaker 1: but I didn't do it. You're like, well, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I need a minute before I'm okay with you. But
Speaker 1: even though Queen Liz was equally pissed off at Robert
Speaker 1: for getting married, she only showed him a cold shoulder
Speaker 1: for a few months before welcoming him back to the
Speaker 1: fold and all his responsibilities at court. Sure's best, that's
Speaker 1: bestie exactly. She's like, I'm just gonna put all my
Speaker 1: anger on the wife. But this was actually pretty important
Speaker 1: because Elizabeth was in serious negotiations to finally marry somebody
Speaker 1: in fifteen seventy five, and that was Francois, the Duke
Speaker 1: of Angou, and we will tell you all about that
Speaker 1: right after these royal proclamations. Here you hear you, welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. That guy's strong, and that guy's
Speaker 1: done with this job as the royal crier. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to retire. Yeah, So Queen Elizabeth and Francis
Speaker 1: the Duke of Anjou. We're actually a whole episode suggestion
Speaker 1: from a listener named Daniel Fields through emails, So thank you, Dan,
Speaker 1: will be since we're doing all this Queen Elizabeth stuff,
Speaker 1: we decided to throw it into this episode. But I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you told us about him. Now we already
Speaker 1: know we were talking in part one and this episode
Speaker 1: that Elizabeth, you know, is being courted from near and far.
Speaker 1: She's a queen, okay, people want to marry her. When
Speaker 1: she ascended the throne, she had publicly declared that she
Speaker 1: would never marry and that she would remain a virgin
Speaker 1: for her whole life. But no one really believed her.
Speaker 1: You know. They're like, you're a young woman, your Queen
Speaker 1: of England. We're gonna get married and have some babies,
Speaker 1: But as she got older, the people of England revered
Speaker 1: her more and more for her virginity, which to me
Speaker 1: makes it a lot harder for her to choose to
Speaker 1: get married. I feel like, if you have this whole
Speaker 1: cult of personality about something about you, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to like not have that thing anymore. But honestly, really
Speaker 1: the main thing was that Elizabeth knew if she got married,
Speaker 1: her husband was in charge. Queen or no queen. You know,
Speaker 1: he would own all her money, all her stuff, all
Speaker 1: her children, and all her body. And she knew what
Speaker 1: that meant. He could cut her damn head off if
Speaker 1: he wanted to. She's like, yeah, daddy did it several times. Okay,
Speaker 1: She's like fully traumatized growing up in King Henry's house. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: if Henry the Eight's your dad, you just you have
Speaker 1: a different outlook on marriage than the rest of us,
Speaker 1: all of it. You're like, I don't know, but this guy,
Speaker 1: Francois was a serious contender, largely because his name was Francois.
Speaker 1: That's the most romantic man ugandad. Elizabeth was forty six
Speaker 1: years old at this point, and she knew her time
Speaker 1: to get married was running out Francois might be her
Speaker 1: last suitor. Some of her favorite courtiers, including Robert Dudley
Speaker 1: and Sir Francis Walsingham, opposed the marriage to Francois because
Speaker 1: Francois was French, I believe it or not. And Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: of course wasn't very likely to have any children at
Speaker 1: this point, so if she died while married to him,
Speaker 1: which was definitely possible because Sis was nearly half her
Speaker 1: age at twenty four, England would fall under French control.
Speaker 1: Just whoops, all of somewhere in different country now too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Francois also was Catholic, and if you remember part one,
Speaker 1: getting Elizabeth on the throne to begin with, was this
Speaker 1: whole Catholic Protestant mess. Now Walsingham was able to point
Speaker 1: out to Elizabeth that the French Catholics, under the orders
Speaker 1: of Francois's own mother, Catherine de Medici, had just murdered
Speaker 1: a bunch of Protestant hugueen nuts in the Saint Bartholomew's
Speaker 1: Day massacre after the French king's Catholic sister married a
Speaker 1: Protestant in fifteen seventy two. So he's like, that's what
Speaker 1: happened if the French king's sister married a Protestant. If
Speaker 1: Francis here marries a Protestant, I eat you, Queen Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: They're gonna pop off. They're gonna act real crazy and
Speaker 1: do something nuts. Yeah, you know, he might be worried
Speaker 1: too about English Protestants like Catholics. He's like, either way,
Speaker 1: it's a bad situation. Nobody's happy when the Catholics and
Speaker 1: the Protestants get together in sixteenth century England. But Elizabeth
Speaker 1: seems to have been truly fond of Francois. He had
Speaker 1: been scarred by smallpox as a young child. He was
Speaker 1: also short, with kind of a curved spine, so you know,
Speaker 1: he was described to her as being quote amazingly ugly. Oh,
Speaker 1: which is so rude. Heads up, girl, you're about to
Speaker 1: meet a guy, and I don't want you to flinch,
Speaker 1: so freak out. But he's fucking crazy looking. But she
Speaker 1: said that he appeared handsome to her. But mainly I
Speaker 1: think the attraction seems to be that he was just
Speaker 1: very witty and intelligent, and he was really capable of
Speaker 1: keeping up with her in conversation. He didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of pretension about him right, So they really got along,
Speaker 1: you know, on a personality level. He gave her a
Speaker 1: frog shaped earring that she wore all the time, and
Speaker 1: she called him affectionate nicknames, either Monsieur or her frog.
Speaker 1: Oh no, one is sure if the frog one is
Speaker 1: because of the earring or because frog was a derogatory
Speaker 1: term for French people at the time. Okay, And like,
Speaker 1: I guess she was like trying to be funny because
Speaker 1: because now I'm like, what him? Why is I don't
Speaker 1: know where that came from anyway, And it must be
Speaker 1: said that Elizabeth did like a little play acting. She
Speaker 1: loved to get melodramatic, and she was very contradictory. She
Speaker 1: loved to fuck with people also, so sometimes she would
Speaker 1: like one day, you know, they'd be like, don't marry Francois,
Speaker 1: and she'd be like, oh, it is my one true love,
Speaker 1: you know, and like run off. And then another day
Speaker 1: they'd be like, fine, you can marry him. She'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I would never you know. She was just always, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, the world. And of course we already know
Speaker 1: that she was, you know, kind of messing with all
Speaker 1: her pass suitors as well the other foreign princes she
Speaker 1: was kind of playing around, pretending to be interested in them,
Speaker 1: but she sort of used it as like foreign policy stuff.
Speaker 1: And this is pretty similar because over the six years
Speaker 1: that she and Francois recording, Elizabeth was able to create
Speaker 1: a strong alliance with France and make friends with the
Speaker 1: Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici. And then when she decided
Speaker 1: not to marry Francois, it was partly due to how
Speaker 1: much the English people would really hate having a French
Speaker 1: Catholic king, but it was also because the French were
Speaker 1: about to get into it with the Dutch, and by
Speaker 1: adroitly kind of extricating herself from an engagement, Elizabeth managed
Speaker 1: to avoid England getting involved with this Dutch French problem
Speaker 1: those war's back then, it was just drive me so crazy.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, honey, I'm off to fight in a war
Speaker 1: against the Dutch. Oh no, why are we at war
Speaker 1: with the Dutch? I don't know. Some lady married a guy,
Speaker 1: and now where all I have to go die in battle?
Speaker 1: Now we all have spears through our eyes. So anyway,
Speaker 1: she might have just been kind of using this engagement
Speaker 1: for foreign policy reason. Yeah, but she did have enough
Speaker 1: affection for Francois to write him a poem when their
Speaker 1: courtship officially ended in fifteen eighty one. So let's go
Speaker 1: down to poetry corner and hear Queen Elizabeth the first
Speaker 1: poem on Monsieur's departure. I grieve, and dare not show
Speaker 1: my discontent. I love, and yet am forced to seem
Speaker 1: to hate. I do, yet dare not say I ever meant.
Speaker 1: I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate. I am
Speaker 1: and not I freeze, and yet am burned. Since from
Speaker 1: myself another self I turned. My care is like my
Speaker 1: shadow in the sun, follows me, flying flies when I pursue,
Speaker 1: it stands and lies by me. Doth what I have done?
Speaker 1: His too familiar care doth make me ru it? No
Speaker 1: means I mind to rid him from my breast, till
Speaker 1: by the end of things it be suppressed. Some gentler
Speaker 1: passions slide into my mind, for I am soft and
Speaker 1: made of melting snow. Or be more cruel love, and
Speaker 1: so be kind, let me float or sink, be high
Speaker 1: or low, or let me live with some more sweet content,
Speaker 1: or die, And so forget what love er meant. No,
Speaker 1: she's really stuck in the middle here. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: this poem. Yeah, it kind of shows her sort of
Speaker 1: contradictory nature, Like she clearly feels an internal thing. It's
Speaker 1: not just external forces. Why she has internal contradictions, right,
Speaker 1: also external contradictions. So it's kind of a cool like
Speaker 1: tug of war poems. Yeah, exactly why am I? Why
Speaker 1: am I so stuck feeling you know this way and
Speaker 1: that way? Why can't I just either get what I
Speaker 1: want or not have it? Yeah? I also love I
Speaker 1: seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate. She's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying a word, but inside right, I know. Right.
Speaker 1: So Elizabeth stayed single and Robert was married to Latise,
Speaker 1: who Elizabeth still paid it, and even when Robert and
Speaker 1: Latise's three year old son died suddenly in fifteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth could not bring herself to forgive Latise, right, but
Speaker 1: she was still very close with Robert himself, and in fact,
Speaker 1: he became Lord Stewart in fifteen eighty seven, which meant
Speaker 1: he was basically in charge of the palace, like all
Speaker 1: the food, all the sanitization, just everything, like you know,
Speaker 1: non judicial, right, yeah, not legislative. He is in charge
Speaker 1: of the maintaining the whole palace. Yeah. Fun fact, this
Speaker 1: sanitization issue actually in the palace was so bad that
Speaker 1: Robert Dudley sat down and had a conversation about it
Speaker 1: with Elizabeth's godson, John Harrington, who was then inspired to
Speaker 1: invent the first flush toilet. I had no idea dated
Speaker 1: back that far. Um. Is that why we call him
Speaker 1: John's Some people say that, but there's no evidence for that,
Speaker 1: But I think it is. John apparently is like Americans,
Speaker 1: so they're like, they're Americans. Didn't know anything about John here.
Speaker 1: Maybe Americans learned that. We're like, O, why aren't we
Speaker 1: naming it after that guy? He did a great job.
Speaker 1: What's funny too, is that he invented the flush toilet,
Speaker 1: but what he didn't have was the U bend and
Speaker 1: the pipes. Oh yes, we have now, so you couldn't
Speaker 1: avoid the odor. So that was what. But it's so
Speaker 1: interesting that the dates back that far, they had no idea.
Speaker 1: I guess a flush in a stink is better than
Speaker 1: no flush. No flush. That was that was one of
Speaker 1: Asop's fables. I think right, a flush in a stink
Speaker 1: is better than no flush. That's the moral of the
Speaker 1: story today, okay, but the real headline here is about
Speaker 1: a whole other guy, entirely someone who was shipwrecked and
Speaker 1: rescued by the Spanish. They detained him because they thought
Speaker 1: he was an English bye, so they took him to Madrid,
Speaker 1: where he claimed that he was none other than Arthur Dudley,
Speaker 1: the secret love child of Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth
Speaker 1: the First What he told King Philip's secretary who interrogated
Speaker 1: him that Elizabeth's governess kat Ashley, had given him as
Speaker 1: a baby to her servant, who raised him sixty miles
Speaker 1: outside of London as a gentleman. But on the servant's deathbed,
Speaker 1: he confessed to Arthur about his royal origins. My boy,
Speaker 1: your whole life. I never told you you're the heir
Speaker 1: to the throne of England. Gotta go have fun with that. Arthur,
Speaker 1: of course, was terrified for his life if that secret
Speaker 1: came out. A real um, a real uh? Who is
Speaker 1: the kid in Game of Thrones? Barrathian? Yeah, one of them?
Speaker 1: But wait us not friend Lee Richard Boris, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Craig Philip, I'm gonna say every name. Just let me
Speaker 1: know when I hit it. I don't know, Samuel, Jennifer
Speaker 1: yep is Jennifer all right, Jennifer Barrafi, thank you. So
Speaker 1: Arthur is scared for his life obviously this if the
Speaker 1: secret comes out, they would definitely like lock him up
Speaker 1: or something worse. So he traveled to Spain, but then
Speaker 1: there he got shipwreck, captured, etc. Etc. Here we are,
Speaker 1: which this is a very simplified version of his story.
Speaker 1: His story was incredibly convoluted. He talked about several people
Speaker 1: that he could name that were in the court that
Speaker 1: were Sir Robert Dudley, that were Lord Robert Dudley's like
Speaker 1: members of his household or his servants or whatever. And
Speaker 1: his birthday, he did say, was fifteen sixty one, which
Speaker 1: would have coincided when Elizabeth had her swelling sickness. Oh
Speaker 1: my good. So there was something, you know, there was
Speaker 1: some details that seemed very plausible, and then some other
Speaker 1: things were like huh, you know, it's a little convoluted.
Speaker 1: So it's a real, very convoluted story he gave them.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of seeing the opening of thor Ragnarok sort of,
Speaker 1: but like it's this guy, it's this Arthur Dudley character.
Speaker 1: In the chair being interrogated by the Spanish. Right now,
Speaker 1: he turns with the camera and he's like, I bet
Speaker 1: you're wondering how I got here. Let me take you back. Well,
Speaker 1: Arthur's story, despite some of these exciting details or whatever,
Speaker 1: did not really impress King Philip's secretary or anyone else
Speaker 1: in Spain. The King's secretary who examined him, he told Philip,
Speaker 1: you know, I think Arthur's a spy, or if he's
Speaker 1: not a spy, the Queen and her quarter are using
Speaker 1: him in some type of way to benefit them, Like
Speaker 1: they're just super paranoid about what Elizabeth's up to. So
Speaker 1: he's like, let's just keep this guy under lock and
Speaker 1: key and prevent him from escaping, just in case he's
Speaker 1: a spy. Sure, And after that, Arthur was never heard
Speaker 1: from again. We still don't know what happened to him.
Speaker 1: He either he could have perished in a Spanish prison,
Speaker 1: or maybe he really was a spy working for Sir
Speaker 1: Francis Walsingham and eventually escaped and resumed his real identity.
Speaker 1: And so there never was on Arthur Dudley to trade. Okay, Now, again,
Speaker 1: historians are also extremely skeptical that he was Elizabeth's illegitimate child.
Speaker 1: They largely agree that she was just too closely watched
Speaker 1: to hide a whole pregnancy, and once she went into labor,
Speaker 1: there's just no way that all the ladies in waiting, courtiers, doctors, servants, midwives,
Speaker 1: whatever that would have been called to help her out
Speaker 1: would have been able to keep that secret to themselves
Speaker 1: for very long. This would have been the most sellable
Speaker 1: secret in the land. They're like, look, we all know
Speaker 1: that the downstairs workers are the most gossipy people in
Speaker 1: the ballast, okay, and if someone offered them the right
Speaker 1: amount of money, you know, so it's pretty unlikely. And
Speaker 1: I kind of agree. I think it at all points
Speaker 1: to Arthur being a spy because his story was so
Speaker 1: convoluted and had some real details and some not real
Speaker 1: so it felt like he was trying to send them
Speaker 1: on a little bit of a wild goose tape, giving
Speaker 1: himself time to gaborbet that's that's what it looked like him.
Speaker 1: I like it. I like it. Speculation station Arthur Dudley
Speaker 1: was his by okay, and his real name. Meanwhile, Robert
Speaker 1: Dudley was off all wrapped up with some complicated history
Speaker 1: with the Dutch, and then he was named Lieutenant and
Speaker 1: Captain General of the Queen's Armies and Companies in fifteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight when the Spanish Armada was threatening. But in
Speaker 1: September of that year, Robert Dudley died unexpectedly at the
Speaker 1: age of fifty five. Historians have alternately said that it
Speaker 1: might have been stomach cancer or malaria that killed him.
Speaker 1: Latise Dudley, his wife, was devastated, and of course, his
Speaker 1: side piece, Queen Elizabeth the First, was inconsolable. She actually
Speaker 1: locked herself in her room for several days until William
Speaker 1: Cecil had the door broken down. Yike. Even though she
Speaker 1: never did marry him, historians said, including Sue and Dorian,
Speaker 1: in her book Elizabeth the First and Her Circle, that
Speaker 1: he quote remained at the center of Elizabeth's emotional life
Speaker 1: and that he was likely the one true love of
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's life. When Queen Elizabeth herself died, it was discovered
Speaker 1: that she had saved Robert's final handwritten letter to her.
Speaker 1: On the outside she had written his last letter and
Speaker 1: she kept it inside a silver casket by her bedside. Wow,
Speaker 1: she really did love him, she really did. But did
Speaker 1: she ever physically love him and they ever got on.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into that sexy story right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show, everybody. Okay, So is this
Speaker 1: a will they won't they never did, or is this
Speaker 1: a Monica Chandler secret sex situation? Of course, we can't
Speaker 1: really know unless we go back in time and drill
Speaker 1: ape pole in the Queen's bedroom, which the super creepy
Speaker 1: of us. Yes, so we won't do it. But on
Speaker 1: her deathbed, according to English heritage dot com, the Queen
Speaker 1: solemnly swore the quote. Though she loved him dearly, nothing
Speaker 1: unseemly had ever passed between them. Okay, and many scholars
Speaker 1: say that she was at most a shameless flirt but
Speaker 1: really never did anything else, really actually did stay a
Speaker 1: virgin her in her life. Okay. But despite the total
Speaker 1: lack of evidence that she ever did anything sexual with anyone,
Speaker 1: there are tons of conspiracy theories about her illegitimate children
Speaker 1: with a variety of men. Some people thought that every
Speaker 1: time the Queen did a progress, anytime she left the
Speaker 1: palace and went anywhere else, it was covered for her
Speaker 1: to have to give birth to some wow other kids.
Speaker 1: I was like, she's just littering children all over England's
Speaker 1: for something she couldn't walk out the doors people be
Speaker 1: like last week, Yeah, well that's so much she's she's
Speaker 1: a really good baby maker. So there's just tons of
Speaker 1: you know, theories about all these illegitimate children she had
Speaker 1: with a variety of men, including Robert Dudley, but also
Speaker 1: her stepfather and her son with her stepfather. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: hold on what now? Yeah, so first let's talk about
Speaker 1: the stepfather. Remember Queen Elizabeth's fathers King Henry the eighth,
Speaker 1: and when he died, Thomas Seymour, who was the brother
Speaker 1: of one of Henry's other wives and Elizabeth's stepmother, Jane Seymour,
Speaker 1: wrote to Elizabeth and asked her to marry him, and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Tudor politely declined, saying that, oh, I'll be mourning
Speaker 1: my father for two years, and also I'm only thirteen,
Speaker 1: so I'm probably too young for you anyway. So a
Speaker 1: month later, Thomas married Catherine Parr, another one of Henry
Speaker 1: the Eighth's ex wives, his sixth wife. They had been
Speaker 1: old flames and they were actually planning to get married
Speaker 1: before King Henry the eighth snatched her up. Yeah, Catherine
Speaker 1: was like, I guess it's God's will that I marry
Speaker 1: the king. Right. So Katherine Parr was close with her
Speaker 1: stepdaughter Elizabeth, and she invited the then fourteen year old
Speaker 1: girl to come live with her and Thomas. And then,
Speaker 1: according to testimonies from fifteen forty nine from Elizabeth's governess
Speaker 1: kat Ashley, a few days after Elizabeth got there, Thomas
Speaker 1: visited the girl in the early morning while she was
Speaker 1: still in her bed, and he would quote make as
Speaker 1: though he would come at her, and she would shrink
Speaker 1: back from him. And the next day she woke up
Speaker 1: earlier to avoid being in bed when Thomas came by,
Speaker 1: but she was still in her nightgown, so he showed
Speaker 1: up bare legged in his nightclothes and slapped Elizabeth on
Speaker 1: her butt. Another time, he actually climbed right into bed
Speaker 1: with Elizabeth. So she continued to wake up earlier and
Speaker 1: earlier each day to avoid him, and if she was
Speaker 1: already dressed, he would just say good morning and go
Speaker 1: on with his day. Super creepy, very weird behavior, very
Speaker 1: weird behavior, and Catherine Parr did not put a stop
Speaker 1: to any of this. In fact, she would sometimes tickle
Speaker 1: Elizabeth alongside Thomas Seymour, and one time she even held
Speaker 1: her down while Thomas cut a gown off her body
Speaker 1: quote in a hundred pieces. It's not clear how she
Speaker 1: held her down, like if she was like it was
Speaker 1: like a friendly hug, or if she's like holding her
Speaker 1: down like this forceful thing. Right, but it's something weird
Speaker 1: like that was she's sort of participating with Thomas in
Speaker 1: this behavior. But then another time she comes into this
Speaker 1: empty room where Thomas and Elizabeth are embracing in some way.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were kissing or hugging or what,
Speaker 1: but they were in an embrace, and Catherine Parr was
Speaker 1: heavily pregnant at the time with Thomas's kid, and she
Speaker 1: became very furious at seeing him and Elizabeth together. Okay,
Speaker 1: after that, Elizabeth went to live somewhere else, and history
Speaker 1: extra dot com says it's not clear if she was
Speaker 1: sent away or if she chose to leave. So now,
Speaker 1: with all of this story, some scholars think that Thomas
Speaker 1: Seymour was sexually harassing, if not abusing, Elizabeth sounds like it,
Speaker 1: and that it turned her off from sex forever. That's
Speaker 1: what kind of made her go fuck this, Yeah, sounds
Speaker 1: like it. I would believe that, But Smithsonian Magazine points
Speaker 1: out that there was no concept of adolescence in the
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds, and that at fourteen years old, Elizabeth would
Speaker 1: have been perceived as a grown woman, not just by
Speaker 1: other people, but also by herself. Sure, okay. She also
Speaker 1: did have some affection for Thomas. He apparently was an
Speaker 1: incredibly popular guy, like, he's very charming and handsome. Everybody
Speaker 1: liked him. So it's been suggested that she did not
Speaker 1: mind his treatment, that she laughed it off, that she
Speaker 1: even liked it, or that she had a bit of
Speaker 1: a crush on him. I have a hard time with
Speaker 1: this sort of thing because I think women laugh when
Speaker 1: they're uncomfortable all the time as a way to kind
Speaker 1: of be like, oh you please stop. You know, the
Speaker 1: fact that she had a crush on him, people said
Speaker 1: it because she would blush when his name was mentioned,
Speaker 1: I mean, which could mean she had a crush on him.
Speaker 1: It could mean that she was embarrassed to think about
Speaker 1: her stepfather coming into her room with her dick hanging
Speaker 1: out of nightgown. I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ways to interpret that uncomfortable. Yeah, and you. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've heard many times women say, you know how much
Speaker 1: easier it is to just kind of roll with it,
Speaker 1: even though you hate what's happening, than it is to
Speaker 1: try and protest or say not. It's dangerous to say no. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: Thomas's ambition ended up getting him killed. He was always
Speaker 1: trying to get the young King Edward to name him
Speaker 1: Lord Protector instead of Thomas's own older brother, the Duke
Speaker 1: of Somerset, and one night Thomas tried to sneak into
Speaker 1: the King's room and in the process he woke up
Speaker 1: one of King edwards pet spaniels, who started barking. Thomas
Speaker 1: had with him either a pistol or a knife, and
Speaker 1: he used it to kill the dog. So already he's
Speaker 1: like villain of the week. Hate him, But it was
Speaker 1: too late. The dog had woken up the King and
Speaker 1: his various attendants, who were all like, uh, what are
Speaker 1: you doing in the King's bedchambers with a weapon? Okay,
Speaker 1: So the courtiers decided that he had planned to murder
Speaker 1: young King Edward and then mary his stepdaughter Elizabeth and
Speaker 1: put her on the throne. Now that is supposedly why
Speaker 1: they were asking Elizabeth's governess about her relationship with Thomas,
Speaker 1: because both of them, Thomas and Elizabeth, were under suspicion
Speaker 1: of conspiring together to kill King Edward. So that was
Speaker 1: when kat Ashley gave them all these dirty stories about
Speaker 1: Thomas and how he treated Elizabeth when she was young.
Speaker 1: But it's ben said that kat Ashley, this governess, was
Speaker 1: just trying to make Elizabeth look as innocent as possible
Speaker 1: with her testimony, So she might have overblown Tom his
Speaker 1: inappropriate behavior couldn't look bad to make him look bad,
Speaker 1: So it could just be, you know, these stories that
Speaker 1: we're hearing about the creepy things he did were just that,
Speaker 1: like stories that were kind of inflated a little bit
Speaker 1: to sort of separate Elizabeth from his crimes. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's another thing where it's like you're trying to throw
Speaker 1: dirt on a good man's name. Yea, there's it's a
Speaker 1: total it's impossible to know for sure. Yeah, but according
Speaker 1: to the Prince Tutor theory, Elizabeth did have an affair
Speaker 1: with her stepfather, Thomas Seymour, had a teen pregnancy and
Speaker 1: gave birth to his child, who was then placed in
Speaker 1: John Devere's home and grew up to become Edward Devere,
Speaker 1: the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, who is purported to be
Speaker 1: the real Shakespeare, this guy who you played one. I
Speaker 1: played Edward Devere in a show. Yeah. We'll get into
Speaker 1: that in a second. Yeah. So there are a ton
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare scholars out there who think there was no
Speaker 1: William Shakespeare, there's no one guy named William Shakespeare, that
Speaker 1: that was actually just the pen name of one or
Speaker 1: more other guys, other authors. They posit that it could
Speaker 1: be Edward de Vere who we're talking about right now,
Speaker 1: also Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spencer, or Sir Francis Bacon, who
Speaker 1: was also supposedly the Queen's illegitimate son with Robert Dudley
Speaker 1: and the true heir to the throne. And the truth
Speaker 1: is all hidden within the plays and sonnets if you
Speaker 1: just read them right. We did a show with our
Speaker 1: theater company years back called Shake and Bake, and it
Speaker 1: was where we just mashed up a bunch of different
Speaker 1: Shakespeare characters and plot lines together to kind of do
Speaker 1: sort of this Shakespearean sketch show. And it was narrated
Speaker 1: by these four characters, Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere,
Speaker 1: Christopher Marlowe, and this stoner version of a guy named
Speaker 1: Bill Shakespeare, whose name they were all using, yeah to
Speaker 1: write wrote the Weed. Yeah. We did a bunch of
Speaker 1: research for that show where we came up with those characters,
Speaker 1: and there's not a lot of sturdy evidence to support
Speaker 1: that any of them were the real Shakespeare. No, and
Speaker 1: even crazier the theory, the Prince Tudor theory further says
Speaker 1: that Edward de Vere grew up to have an incestuous
Speaker 1: affair with his own mother, Queen Elizabeth, and that she
Speaker 1: gave birth to his kid, Henry Rothsley, the third Earl
Speaker 1: of Southampton, which would be a really gross thing for
Speaker 1: her to do. Well. As Eli said, there's just not
Speaker 1: much evidence for any of this, except for again just
Speaker 1: reading Shakespeare's works with a certain lens, like it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: He's wrote this play that takes place in this area,
Speaker 1: and there's these names in it that Sir Francis Bacon
Speaker 1: was also in that place and knew some of those people,
Speaker 1: so it must be really Sir Francis talking about his
Speaker 1: own life or whatever. There was one guy named Percy
Speaker 1: Allen who did confirm his findings, thank you very much,
Speaker 1: by using a medium to contact the spirits of Edward
Speaker 1: de Vere, Queen Elizabeth the First, Sir Francis Bacon, and
Speaker 1: William Shakespeare, who all said that he totally nailed it
Speaker 1: and got it all completely right. But I'm so confused
Speaker 1: because if his whole thing is that there is no Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: so how did he contact the spirit of Shakespeare? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe he's like, no, I contacted the stoner and his name,
Speaker 1: but like he ain't no writing, right, I'm William Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: but I never wrote a word a day in my life,
Speaker 1: that's right. I don't even know how to read it.
Speaker 1: But Elizabeth's, to some inexplicable determination to remain a virgin
Speaker 1: has led to so many insane theories too. Some people
Speaker 1: believe that Elizabeth actually died as a child and was
Speaker 1: replaced by a young boy, and they didn't want the
Speaker 1: secret to get out. So this kid never married or
Speaker 1: had a love affair, all right, listen, Like King Henry
Speaker 1: the Eighth wind it been like, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: We'll just figure it out. I need a son, so
Speaker 1: we'll figure it out. Put a boy in there. We'll
Speaker 1: just tell everybody we were wrong. There's no way that
Speaker 1: some people think that Elizabeth actually was having sex and
Speaker 1: leaving illegitimate children all around the nation. Like we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: the poet Ben Johnson theorized that she had quote a
Speaker 1: membrana on her that made her incapable of having sex,
Speaker 1: so literally, like her vagina was sealed up. He's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm speculation station vagina didn'tata. Nobody had
Speaker 1: said this, but what if Queen Elizabeth's like, look, there's
Speaker 1: teeth down, there's a big chomping mom. I can't I
Speaker 1: can't be heaven mind of its own. King Phillips did
Speaker 1: come off in my vagina. They're like, I'm traveling to
Speaker 1: Japan for a steel dildo. Well, finally break that demon's teeth. Well,
Speaker 1: most of the more down to earth theories simply point
Speaker 1: to her childhood. Right, It's clear why she wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to get married and give up her power to a
Speaker 1: man when you know her dad was King Henry the Yight,
Speaker 1: and there's all these bettings, and you know she lost
Speaker 1: grandmother and two stepmothers to childbirth as well, so she
Speaker 1: might have also just seen sex as too risky. Right,
Speaker 1: So she's like even if I didn't want to get
Speaker 1: married and just took a bunch of lovers, I don't
Speaker 1: want to get pregnant. I'm very scared to get pregnant.
Speaker 1: I could see that. There's also, again this sort of
Speaker 1: cult of personality that she built around this virgin queen
Speaker 1: title right from the very beginning of her reign, all
Speaker 1: the way until she died in sixteen oh three. So
Speaker 1: she might have just been working to maintain that image
Speaker 1: because it was working for her. She also knew that
Speaker 1: an air could be used against her. That happened with
Speaker 1: her as the center of plots quite a few times. Right,
Speaker 1: she was young, right, Look, she even said the quote
Speaker 1: is something about, like I know how a second person
Speaker 1: as I have been can be used against somebody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean to me. I think that she just had
Speaker 1: a negative relationship with sex. She had a very confusing
Speaker 1: emotional relationship with Robert Dudley, and kind of I wonder if,
Speaker 1: like the way he kind of didn't want to marry,
Speaker 1: he didn't want to marry for a while until he
Speaker 1: finally went with Lettuce. If you know, Queen Elizabeth just
Speaker 1: had a stronger version of that of like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to get involved because I might get to marry
Speaker 1: Robert one day. You know. I also wonder if she's
Speaker 1: seen so many women kind of I don't know. I
Speaker 1: wonder if she's like, if I have sex, I might
Speaker 1: really like it, and that means I'll make bad decisions,
Speaker 1: oh you know, from men around me, and they'll end
Speaker 1: up turning on me. Because there's so many women who
Speaker 1: did you know they've were into King Henry and they
Speaker 1: did you know, or any other men in the court.
Speaker 1: Sure it happened. There were tons of relationships happening all
Speaker 1: around her. Mary Queen of Scott's is a really great
Speaker 1: example because she married Henry and then didn't like him
Speaker 1: and there was this whole scandal about it. She ends
Speaker 1: up getting executed ultimately, and that was because she was
Speaker 1: trying to rebel. But it still didn't help, Like the
Speaker 1: whole marriage thing did not help. So I think she
Speaker 1: just sees a lot of examples of this inn't working out.
Speaker 1: And I like being the Queen of England. So that's
Speaker 1: my goal is just hey, the Queen of England. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was the whole thing. She was like country before
Speaker 1: all right, I want to see a beam of Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's portrait if this country before kunt see, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you say the C word with a British accent, it's
Speaker 1: okay because it's not a big deal over there. They
Speaker 1: love it over there. In the US. This episode is
Speaker 1: now like NC seventeen, the worst thing we could say. Well,
Speaker 1: I think speculation Station, I do believe that she may
Speaker 1: remained a virgin. I think she had a ton of
Speaker 1: good reasons to not have sex or get married, and
Speaker 1: she definitely did not, And she just loved flirting and
Speaker 1: being thought of. It is very beautiful and and messing
Speaker 1: with these men all the time, but never really wanted
Speaker 1: to pull the trigger. That's my feeling. Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: know about you. Uh, since we're in Speculation Station, I
Speaker 1: gotta go with the demon. Oh oh yeah, the demon
Speaker 1: in her vagina. Yeah. I like that she had vagina dentata.
Speaker 1: She had to go get a steel dildo from Japan.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's the problem. Yeah, nobody Goldo from van Yeah,
Speaker 1: She's like, honestly, I'd rather have the demon. Maybe that
Speaker 1: demon was her best friend after Robert Dudley. You know,
Speaker 1: you gave her some really good advice and helped her
Speaker 1: bring England into a brighter era. I don't know, yes, yes, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth are dead now in our
Speaker 1: story and also in real life, there's still some loose
Speaker 1: ends to tie up. Oh sure, because first of all,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you about Latisnoles Dudley, the Countess
Speaker 1: of Leicester. Now, after Robert Dudley died, she was left
Speaker 1: well provided for because again, good guy, right, But less
Speaker 1: than a year later she married his servant and friend,
Speaker 1: Sir Christopher Blunt. Now, some people, I'm sorry, are you
Speaker 1: telling me that there was a Lettuce Blunt out there somewhere?
Speaker 1: Let us blood, sign me up. Love it. Now. People
Speaker 1: do not think much of her doing this, but Latis said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just a defenseless widow. I gotta have
Speaker 1: some man around. You know. That's how she felt, Okay whatever.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, they had a pretty happy marriage. But
Speaker 1: I don't think they were having anything going on before
Speaker 1: Robert died or anything like that. I think she really
Speaker 1: loved Robert a lot. Yeah, but even though Robert is
Speaker 1: dead now, Queen Elizabeth still refused to speak to her
Speaker 1: or like forgive her or let her come back, like
Speaker 1: she was just like you're iced out still for life. However,
Speaker 1: Latisa's son from her first marriage, Robert Devereaux, the second
Speaker 1: Earl of Essex, was Elizabeth's new favorite courtier. Even though
Speaker 1: they were thirty years apart in age, they flirted pretty shamelessly,
Speaker 1: and of course people immediately had all the speculation that
Speaker 1: they were fucking too oh wow, which Elizabeth probably loved.
Speaker 1: Oh she should be like, oh, boy, your son and
Speaker 1: I are getting along great fastically. Oh there's rumors that
Speaker 1: I'm sleeping with your son. How funny. Wow, she really
Speaker 1: went for this lady. Yeah, I know. But whatever love
Speaker 1: Elizabeth had for young Robert Devereaux, it didn't save him
Speaker 1: when he fell out of favor for his own secret
Speaker 1: marriage to Sir Francis Walsingham's daughter, or when he abandoned
Speaker 1: his military post without permission. He was disgraced, and then
Speaker 1: he got all sulky and decided to rebel against Elizabeth
Speaker 1: in sixteen oh one, so she had him imprisoned and
Speaker 1: Latise stayed nearby, which might have been dumb, because Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: of course got really angry when she heard reports that
Speaker 1: Latise and young Robert were waving to each other from
Speaker 1: their windows, she wouldn't even let this lady wave at
Speaker 1: her sponn Yeah. So finally both Robert Devereaux and Sir
Speaker 1: Christopher Blunt were executed. So poor Latise lost both her
Speaker 1: son and her third husband or has she called him
Speaker 1: quote my best friend on the same day. That is
Speaker 1: so petty. Clearly got a really strong personality and a
Speaker 1: very strong will. Yeah, but I feel sorry for her.
Speaker 1: That's worry. She just gets short straw. So poor Latise,
Speaker 1: you know, she's left with no one now. But she
Speaker 1: did outlive every other character in this story. And she
Speaker 1: died at the ripe old age of ninety one. And
Speaker 1: then she was buried next to Robert Dudley with the
Speaker 1: epitaph that she commissioned, reading quote the best and dearest
Speaker 1: of husbands. Oh oh, that's really nice, and who knew
Speaker 1: ninety one? I thought let us will did a lot
Speaker 1: faster than that. She stayed crispy? Did you stay crispy? Baby?
Speaker 1: She gave me that healthy crunch every sandwich needs. I
Speaker 1: wish she'd married the Earl of sandwich. Let us sandwich amazing?
Speaker 1: All right? Now, finally, remember Robert Dudley's baby Mama Douglas
Speaker 1: sheffields you have not talked about her in a while, Yeah, Douglass,
Speaker 1: but just as a quick refresher. She had married Sir
Speaker 1: Stafford back in fifteen seventy nine, and she and Robert
Speaker 1: Dudley had been totally cool co parenting their kid, Sir
Speaker 1: Robert dud Right. It was a no m a situation
Speaker 1: until after the Queen died and Sir Robert Dudley decided
Speaker 1: to sue to get his father's now defunct Earls of
Speaker 1: Leicester and Warwick titles, because since Sir Robert Dudley was illegitimate,
Speaker 1: he could not inherit them or the property that they
Speaker 1: came with, So he told the courts that Robert Dudley
Speaker 1: and Douglas Sheffield were secretly married in fifteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: which makes his marriage to Latise and her subsequent inheritance
Speaker 1: of all his property upon his death null and the void.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, so Douglas got into this. She sent a
Speaker 1: letter to the court detailing her supposed marriage to Robert Dudley,
Speaker 1: but she said the ten plus witnesses to it were
Speaker 1: all dead and just worked around a test. Sorry, they
Speaker 1: all died. She also, you know, she just couldn't remember
Speaker 1: the name of the efficient or the exact date of
Speaker 1: the ceremony. She just said, it was, you know, in
Speaker 1: winter time, the best day of my life, the most
Speaker 1: important day of my life, when I married my love,
Speaker 1: Sir Robert Lord, Robert Dudley, right on a some day
Speaker 1: by some guy. I don't say. It was a Tuesday,
Speaker 1: and I remember it was cold. It was the tenth,
Speaker 1: maybe the eleventh, who knows, October or November something like that.
Speaker 1: She tried to explain her own big miss marriage in
Speaker 1: fifteen seventy nine, because of course she was married somebody
Speaker 1: else too, by saying that Robert was going to poison her,
Speaker 1: and she got married for her personal safety. So poor
Speaker 1: Robert Dudley here, he's dead and he's still getting accused
Speaker 1: of murder for real. Oh my god. She also said
Speaker 1: that Robert offered her money and she initially refused, but
Speaker 1: then he got mad and said he could cut her
Speaker 1: off without a penny, so she decided, fine, I'll take
Speaker 1: the money. Okay, But I mean, the court did not
Speaker 1: believe this story, and I mean, do any of us
Speaker 1: believe the story? Robert Dudley is not that kind of guy.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's no. And also a lot of
Speaker 1: this evidence I stretched to even call it evidence, it's
Speaker 1: not evidence. A crazy story. It seems to me like
Speaker 1: she's like I can say anything I want about Robert
Speaker 1: Dudley and people will believe me. I'm gonna say he
Speaker 1: tried to poison me. They'll be like, sure he did,
Speaker 1: because he tried to poison all these other people. Like
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they have you know what I mean something
Speaker 1: on that rumor mill about Yes, it really feels like
Speaker 1: that just a shameless cash grab. True. Well, of course
Speaker 1: Latis won this case, and she walked out of the courtroom,
Speaker 1: probably bent down over Sir Robert's ear, and said, I
Speaker 1: wish you well the group of her time, of her time, Latis,
Speaker 1: let us scoop, let us scoop. Well, let us get
Speaker 1: out of this episode. Where right? So yeah, that's the story.
Speaker 1: So that's the two part story of Queen Elizabeth and
Speaker 1: her one true love Robert Dudley. Yeah, and I will say,
Speaker 1: if Elizabeth really did love attention and fucking with people,
Speaker 1: which it seems she did, she really won at life.
Speaker 1: Because not many people can say that. There are a
Speaker 1: bunch of scholars still trying to figure out if they
Speaker 1: got laid four hundred plus years after they died. That's true.
Speaker 1: We should all hope for such a few Yeah, in
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred, I hope they're still, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: I wonder what Diana's sex life is like. Well, I'll
Speaker 1: have to be more specific in my journals, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would help. Yeah, the scholars of tomorrow, the scholars
Speaker 1: of tomorrow helping them today. Well, if they dig out
Speaker 1: this episode, they'll have a lot more information about Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth the First, that's for sure. Well, I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode. I'm looking into it. It was so interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm just feeling sorry for Robert
Speaker 1: Dudley because he's a possible ancestor of mine, but I'm
Speaker 1: oway here thinking he has not been treated right. He
Speaker 1: was a super cool guy. I'm glad to know that
Speaker 1: he was one of your ancestors, because I mean, again,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of the bad things people
Speaker 1: said about him, we're we're slander. Yeah, and he's sure
Speaker 1: he had his flaws like any man. Sure, but he
Speaker 1: was supposed to be an excellent husband right to the
Speaker 1: people who married him. A great stepfather, dad of an
Speaker 1: illegitimate A good friend to people who are friends with him.
Speaker 1: He was always very loyal, throwing parties right, being fun,
Speaker 1: and probably didn't poison any of his lovers. Probably not.
Speaker 1: And if he didn't, he's great. And if he did,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll reevaluate him. Think about that later. I
Speaker 1: also was thinking, I wonder if he didn't get a
Speaker 1: lot of respect because he's like, you know, the master
Speaker 1: of the horse, and then he did like parties, and
Speaker 1: then he was like basically like a butler. Oh. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they were just like, oh, Robert, you know, he
Speaker 1: freaking deals with the queen right and makes her happy,
Speaker 1: and he like does the parties. But we are the politicians. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are doing the real work of running the cut,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, right, even though like managing
Speaker 1: the queen must have been actually incredibly important, probably more
Speaker 1: difficult than managing you know, international relations. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And they would even write to him sometimes when he
Speaker 1: wasn't at court and be like, hey, I hope your
Speaker 1: comeback soon. Between real four we're all we're all suffering.
Speaker 1: Please come back, stactor. I love the court wants your presence.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Robert Dudley Party. That's all I know, right,
Speaker 1: And thanks again to Daniel Fields for selling us the
Speaker 1: story about Elizabeth and francois that we were able to
Speaker 1: include it here, and my parents for suggesting this episode
Speaker 1: so they would finally have a reason to listen to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think your dad made it through to the
Speaker 1: end of episode two? No? No, Hey dad, if you're
Speaker 1: still there, thanks for listening, Thanks for listening. We exonerated him,
Speaker 1: did my duty by the family, right, So yeah, let
Speaker 1: us know what you thought. We hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: story as much as we did, and we always love
Speaker 1: hearing from you, so please reach out. Our email address
Speaker 1: is Raddick Romance at gmail dot com. That's right. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Instagram. I'm at Oh Great, it's Eli.
Speaker 1: I'm at Sanamite Boon and the show is at Riddick
Speaker 1: Romance and you are awesome. We really appreciate you for
Speaker 1: listening and we can't wait to bring you another episode soon.
Speaker 1: We'll catch it in so long, friends, it's time to go.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to our show. Tell your friends neighbor's
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