Elizabeth I's Italian Letters [2017° ed.] 1137442328, 9781137442321

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QUEENSHIP AND POWER

ELIZABETH I’S ITALIAN LETTERS Edited and Translated by

Carlo M. Bajetta

Queenship and Power Series Editors Charles Beem University of North Carolina, Pembroke Pembroke, USA Carole Levin University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, USA

This series focuses on works specializing in gender analysis, women’s studies, literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitutional, and diplomatic history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the strategies that queens—both consorts and regnants, as well as female regents—pursued in order to wield political power within the structures of male-dominant societies. The works describe queenship in Europe as well as many other parts of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Islamic civilization

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14523

Elizabeth I’s Italian Letters Edited and translated by Carlo M. Bajetta

Queenship and Power ISBN 978-1-137-44232-1    ISBN 978-1-137-43553-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962734 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: George Gower. The Plimpton ‘Sieve’ portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. Oil on panel, 1579. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.

Contents

Acknowledgments 

 ix

List of Abbreviations   xi List of Figures   xvii A note on the transcriptions  xix Introductionxxi Letters: 1  To Katherine Parr

1

2  To Girolamo Priuli, Doge of Venice

9

3  To Guido Giannetti 

17

4–6 To Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor    February–April/May 1566    May–June 1567    7 November–10 December 1567

21 25 45 53

7–8 To Gian Luigi (Chiappino) Vitelli, Marquess of Cetona   2 March 1570/1   3 August 1575

63 69

9  To Don Antonio de Crato, Pretender of Portugal

75 v

vi 

Contents

10–13 To Doge Nicolò da Ponte and the Signory of Venice    September/October 1581   25 March 1582   24 December 1582   20 April 1584

79 87 91 97 101

14  To Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany

107

15  To Doge Pasquale Cicogna and the Signory of Venice

113

16–19 To Alessandro Farnese, Prince and Later Duke of Parma   7–8 July 1586   late February–6 March 1586/7   13 April 1587   c. April 1587 20  To Bartolomeo Brutti

121 135 151 157 163

21–22 To Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany   6 April 1592   9 September 1594

173 189

23  To Don Antonio de Crato, Pretender of Portugal

197

24–27 To Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany   2 and 29 September 1595   c. 1596   25 October 1596   11 November 1596

209 219 223 229

28  To Archduke Albert VII of Austria

237

29  To Maria de’ Medici, Queen of France

245

Contents 

vii

Appendix 1:  Elizabeth’s Letter to Wanli, Emperor of China

251

Selected Bibliography 

261

Index of names 

277

Acknowledgments

Probably far too many people than I can now remember have answered questions and provided help over these last five years. I feel I should mention Angela Andreani and Roberta Grandi first, as they had to deal with the terrible task of double-checking my transcripts from the originals—quite probably often wondering why I asked them to do this more than once. My debt to Simon Adams is considerable indeed. He has been most generous with his time, and had the patience to go through a good portion of the first version of this book, providing invaluable comments, corrections and support. Elizabeth Goldring and Steven May’s suggestions have likewise proved most useful, often prompting me to go back to my earlier convictions and revising my commentary. Other colleagues in Italy and elsewhere have unwearyingly answered a vast number of queries on individuals, historical circumstances, linguistic minutiae concerning Early Modern English, sixteenth-century Italian, editorial theory, handwriting styles, and much more. These include Rayne Allinson, Maurizio Arfaioli, Edoardo Barbieri, Peter Beal, Alan Bryson, Guillaume Coatalen, Michele Colombo, Frances M. Gage, David Scott Gehring, Jonathan Gibson, Gabriel Heaton, Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, Kristine Kowalchuk, Jane Lawson, Rachel McNamara-Coyne, Alessandra Petrina, Gianmario Raimondi, Luca Serianni, Kathryn Sutherland, Michal Wasiucionek, Christine Woodhead, Heather Wolfe and Henry Woudhuysen. I am most indebted to Carole Levin, who has been a supporter of this project since its conception. Any remaining errors, ça va sans dire, are my own. Earlier versions of some sections of this volume have appeared in Notes and Queries, the Journal of Early Modern Studies and in the volume I coedited together with my friends and colleagues Guillaume Coatalen and Jonathan Gibson, Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence: Letters, Rhetoric, and Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). I am grateful to the publishers for allowing me to reprint part of the original articles. ix

x 

Acknowledgments

A fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2012 allowed me to work in an incredibly friendly scholarly environment, and proved crucial to working out the relationships between the various hands visible in the manuscripts. Staff at other libraries and Archives (including the National Archives at Kew, the British Library, The London Metropolitan Archives, the Lancashire Record Office, the Vienna Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, the State Archives of Parma, Genoa, Naples and Venice, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and Archivio Segreto in Rome, and the Trivulziana Library in Milan) has been of invaluable help. The research was financed by grants from the Italian Ministry of Education (Prin-2008) and Università della Valle d’Aosta. At the latter institution the administrative staff, in particular Nadir Ducret, Alessandro Incoletti, Enrica Monzeglio, Matteo Rigo and Giovannina Venanzio, have proved most helpful—and extraordinarily patient with my intolerance for complex, and to me incomprehensible, regulations. Finally, two people gave the research a totally new perspective. My twin daughters Marta and Sara, the (unwittingly) sweetest enemies of Elizabethan studies, were born in 2011. This book is dedicated to them.

Abbreviations

ACFLO

Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals. Edited by Janel Mueller and Leah S. Marcus. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters

Rayne Allinson. A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Andreani, Letters 1590–96

Angela Andreani. ‘The Letters of Queen Elizabeth I, 1590–1596: Weighing Archival Evidence.’ Unpublished PhD diss., University of Milan, 2011.

AGS

Archivo General de Simancas.

ASFi

Archivio di Stato, Florence.

ASGe

Archivio di Stato, Genoa.

ASMi

Archivio di Stato, Milan.

ASNa

Archivio di Stato, Naples.

ASVe

Archivio di Stato, Venice.

Bell, Diplomatic Representatives

Gary M. Bell. A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives 1509–1688. London: Royal Historical Society, 1990.

Bishops’ Bible

The Holie Bible. London: Richarde Iugge, 1568 (STC2 2099; ESTC S122070; the copy consulted is the one owned by Elizabeth, Folger STC 2099, Copy 3).

BL

British Library, London.

xi

xii 

Abbreviations

Briquet

Charles Moïse Briquet. 1907. Les filigranes: dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600. 4 vols. Amsterdam: The Paper Publication Society, 1968.

Cheyney, History of England

Edward P. Cheyney. 1914. A History of England: From the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth. 2 vols. London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1926.

Cooper, The Queen’s Agent

John Cooper. The Queen’s Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I. London: Faber and Faber, 2011.

CP

Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, Cecil Papers.

CSPD

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic. Edited by Robert Lemon (vols. I, II, 1547–1590), M. A. E. Green (vols. III–VI, 1591–1603 and addenda; vols. VII, XII, and addenda, 1566–1625). 12 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1856–72.

CSPF

Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth. Edited by Joseph Stevenson, Allan James  Crosby, et al. 23 vols. London: Longman and Co., 1863–1950.

CSP Rome

Calendar of State Papers, Relating to English Affairs, Preserved Principally at Rome in the Vatican Archives and Library. Edited by J.M. Rigg. 2 vols. London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1916–26.

CSPSp

Calendar of Letters and State Papers, Relating to English Affairs, Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas: Elizabeth. Edited by M. A. S. Hume. 4 vols., London: Eyre and Spottiswoode for H. M. Stationery Office 1896–99.

CSPVen

Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy. Edited by Rawdon Brown, G. Cavendish Bentinck, Horatio F. Brown and

Abbreviations 

xiii

Allen B. Hinds. 38 vols., London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1864–1947. CW

Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Edited by Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

DBI

Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Edited by Alberto M. Ghisalberti, Massimiliano Pavan, Fiorella Bartoccini, Mario Caravale, Raffaele Romanelli. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960-in progress. Online edn.: .

Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony

Susan Doran. Monarchy and Matrimony: the Courtships of Elizabeth I. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Doran, ‘Religion and Politics’

Susan Doran. ‘Religion and Politics at the Court of Elizabeth I: The Habsburg Marriage Negotiations of 1559–1567.’ The English Historical Review 104 (1989): 908–26.

EEBO

Early English Books Online: .

EFC

Carlo M. Bajetta, Guillaume Coatalen, and Jonathan Gibson, eds. Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence: Letters, Rhetoric, and Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

ESTC

The English Short Title Catalogue: .

EDIT-16

Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle Biblioteche. EDIT 16: Censimento Nazionale delle Edizioni Italiane del XVI Secolo: .

Florio 1598

John Florio. A Worlde of Wordes, or Most Copious, and Exact Dictionarie in Italian and English. London: Arnold Hatfield for Edward Blunt, 1598 (STC2 11098; ESTC S102357; copy: Huntington Library 59838, via EEBO).

xiv 

Abbreviations

Florio 1611

John Florio. Queen Anna’s New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues. London: Melchior Bradwood [and William Stansby] for Edward Blount and William Barret, 1598 (STC2 11099; ESTC S121353; copy: Huntington Library 59842, via EEBO).

Giles, Works of Ascham

The Whole Works of Roger Ascham. Edited by John Allen Giles. 3 vols. London: J. R. Smith, 1864–65.

Granvelle Correspondence

Correspondance du Cardinal de Granvelle, 1565–1586. Edited by Edmond Poullet. 12 vols. Brussels: Havez, 1877–96.

Gravell

The Thomas L. Gravell Watermark Archive. Edited by Daniel W. Mosser and Ernest W. Sullivan II, with Len Hatfield and David H. Radcliffe, 1996-in progress: .

Harrison

The Letters of Queen Elizabeth. Edited by G. B. Harrison. London: Cassell, 1935.

Katherine Parr: CWC

Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Corre­ spondence. Edited by Janel Mueller. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Klarwill

Victor von Klarwill. Queen Elizabeth and Some Foreigners: being a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters from the Archives of the Hapsburg Family. London: John Lane, 1928.

Lawson, New Year’s Gift Exchanges

Jane A. Lawson. The Elizabethan New Year’s Gift Exchanges, 1559–1603. Oxford: Oxford University Press—British Academy, 2013.

Levin, Reign of Elizabeth

Carole Levin. The Reign of Elizabeth I. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.

Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King

Carole Levin. The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

LP Henry VIII

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII. Edited by John S. Brewer,

Abbreviations 

xv

James Gairdner and Robert H. Brodie. 21 vols. London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1862–32. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth and the Making of Policy

Wallace T. MacCaffrey. Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572–1588. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.

MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I

Wallace T. MacCaffrey. Elizabeth I. London and New York: Edward Arnold, 1993.

MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I: war and Politics

Wallace T. MacCaffrey. Elizabeth I: War and Politics, 1588–1603. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Nichols’s Progresses

Elizabeth Goldring, Faith Eales, Elizabeth Clarke, and Jayne Elisabeth Archer, eds. John Nichols’s The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources. 5 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

ODNB

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Online edn., ed. Lawrence Goldman, 2008-in progress: .

PC

The National Archives, Kew, Records of the Privy Council.

Pryor

Felix Pryor. Elizabeth I: Her Life in Letters. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003.

Read, Walsingham

Conyers Read. Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925.

Ryan, Ascham

Lawrence V. Ryan. Roger Ascham. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963.

Salisbury

Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable, the Marquess of Salisbury: Preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire. 24 vols. London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1883–1976.

xvi 

Abbreviations

SP

The National Archives, Kew, State Papers.

SPF—List and Analysis

List and Analysis of State Papers, Foreign Series, 1591–1597. Edited by R. B. Wernham. 7 vols. London: H. M. Stationery Office—The National Archives, 1964–2000.

Starkey, Apprenticeship

David Starkey. Elizabeth I: Apprenticeship. Rev. ed. London: Vintage, 2001.

Starkey, Six Wives

David Starkey. Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

Thomas, Principal Rules

William Thomas. 1550 (STC2 24020). Principal Rules of the Italian Grammer. London: Thomas Powell, 1562 (STC2 24021; ESTC S118392; copy: Huntington Library, 22497 via EEBO).

Translations: 1544–89

Elizabeth I: Translations, 1544–1589. Edited by Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Translations: 1592–98

Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598. Edited by Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

USTC

The Universal Short Title Catalogue. University of St. Andrews, 1997-in progress: .

Vocabolario Treccani

Il Vocabolario della Lingua Italiana Treccani. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 2010-in progress. Online edn.: .

Vocabolario della Crusca

Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca. 1612–1623 (1st–5th edn.). Online as Lessicografia della Crusca in Rete, 2000-in progress: .

Wernham, Return of the Armadas

R. B. Wernham. The Return of the Armadas: The Last Years of the Elizabethan War Against Spain, 1595–1603. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

Wyatt, Italian Encounter

Michael Wyatt. The Italian Encounter with Tudor England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Figures

Fig. 1 (a-b) Elizabeth to Christian I, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg (in the hand of scribe ‘B,’ 1590). Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library, MS X d 138, item 5, fol. 1. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library xxxiv-v Fig. 2 (a-b) Thomas Windebank to Sir Robert Cecil (1602). Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 94/140, fol. 1. Reproduced with the permission of the Marquess of Salisbury xxxix-xl Fig. 3    Letter 6b—Elizabeth’s last Italian missive to Emperor Maximilian II (1567). Vienna, Haus-, Hof- undStaatsarchiv, Hausarchiv-Familienakten, Karton 21, Konvolut 4, Faszikel 5, fol. 115. Reproduced with the permission of the Austrian State Archives

56

Fig. 4    Letter 12—Elizabeth to Doge Nicolò da Ponte and the Signory of Venice (1582). Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Collegio, Lettere Principi 33, fol. 7. Reproduced with the permission of the Italian Ministero dei Beni Culturali (concessione n. 21/2016)

99

Fig. 5 (a-b) Letter 17—Elizabeth to Alessandro Farnese (1587). London, British Library, Cotton Charter IV.38(1), fol. 1. ©The British Library Board 138-39 Fig. 6    Letter 20—Elizabeth to Bartolomeo Brutti (draft, with corrections in Thomas Windebank’s hand, 1590). TNA, SP 97/2, fol. 41. Reproduced with the permission of the National Archives, Kew

166

Fig. 7 (a-b) Letter 22—Elizabeth to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (in the hand of scribe ‘B’, 1594). Folger Shakespeare Library MS X d 138, item 6, fol. 1. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library 191-92

xvii

xviii 

Figures

Fig. 8    Letter 27—Elizabeth to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (in Thomas Windebank’s hand, 1596). Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato 4183, fol. 40. Reproduced with the permission of the Italian Ministero dei Beni Culturali

231

Fig. 9    Letter 28—Elizabeth to Archduke Albert VII of Austria (1599?). TNA, SP 78/41, fol. 1. Reproduced with the permission of the National Archives, Kew

239

No further reproduction allowed without written permission from the copyright holders

A Note

on the

Transcriptions

In the following pages, the spelling and punctuation of the original sources have been preserved. Occasionally, such as in the case of the Queen’s holographs and for the unique set of notes from which Letter 23 was drafted, the lineation has been kept as well. Deletions have been marked with a strikethrough font and insertions printed above the relevant line of text. Other significant features visible in the manuscripts, including different layers of revision, are discussed in the footnotes following the system devised by David Vander Muelen and G. Thomas Tanselle in their ‘A System of Manuscript Transcription’ (Studies in Bibliography 52 [1999], 201–12), which entails the use of short descriptions, printed in italics within the apparatus. Mostly for reasons of space, however, the symbol ‘~’ has been retained to indicate the same word as printed on the left before the bracket, and the symbol ‘^’ to mark the absence of punctuation. Brevigraphs and contractions have been expanded (in this case, superscripts have been silently lowered), and supplied letters have been italicized: consequently, forms such as ‘Vra’ will appear as ‘Vostra.’ Elizabeth punctuated lightly; in her drafts, it is clear that significant space is sometimes used as a substitute for a full stop or an oblique stroke (cf. e.g., the distance between ‘Germania’ and ‘hora rispondero’ in Letter 4—draft 1). This has been reproduced allowing four spaces between the words. In her holograph final versions, the Queen frequently used a flourish at the end of a word or at the beginning of the following in order to mark the end of a sentence; this has been reproduced by supplying a full stop in square brackets. The explanatory notes are normally linked to the first occurrence of a word in the Italian text. For example, a probable reference to the Diet of Augsburg of 1566 will be found in the notes to the first draft of Letter 4 below, where ‘Germania’ first appears. One should note, however, that imposing a single, inflexible, editorial principle on manuscripts which clearly show a very different history xix

xx 

A Note on the Transcriptions

of composition and transmission may result in obscuring the significant features of these documents. Burghley’s holograph drafts, Elizabeth’s afterthoughts, Walsingham’s additions as well as the minute work of a number of anonymous scribes call for what may be termed a case-by-case approach to analysis—one could almost say, an ad personam treatment. As such, in some instances (see e.g. Letter 24a-b) variant spellings have been registered in the apparatus of the different scribal copies so as to allow a comparison of the uses of the different scribes (in this case, Thomas Windebank and scribe ‘B’) working on the same text. Admittedly, though, the text of some of the other letters becomes much more legible when just a few readings from the other witnesses are inserted directly in the main body of the text (and variants noted in the apparatus, Letter 24b being, again, a good case in point). In other instances, however, a few slips of the pen do not hinder understanding, but give a clearer impression of the style of the writer, no matter how slightly erroneous the Italian spelling might oftentimes be. In many respects, this edition argues implicitly for allowing each document to proffer its own editorial principle—an approach which is frequently more respectful of the person who penned the lines or framed their wording than that of submitting textual witnesses to stringent rules, which may engender abstract (and sometimes almost nonsensical) transcriptions. It is hoped that the textual introduction to each letter may provide sufficient detail to make these individual choices sufficiently clear. In general, the date presented in the original documents has been allowed to stand, thus following the style of the place, normally Old Style (Julian calendar) for letters written in England, and New Style (Gregorian calendar) for letters coming from the continent. The ‘double date’ system has generally been used for dates between 1 January and 25 March (e.g., 2 February 1566/7). Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the present editor’s. Elizabeth’s letters rarely present a capital ‘N’ in ‘Noi.’ The capitalization of the pluralis maiestatis ‘We’ in the translations reflects such use in the original texts.

Introduction

Not only, as many of her contemporaries knew, did Elizabeth I speak Italian: she clearly had a penchant for it. In 1564 she declared this quite unequivocally to the envoy from Vienna, when she said that she liked ‘the manners and customs of the Italians better than those of all the rest of the world,’ and stated that she was ‘as it were, half Italian.’1 Another, even more interesting sign of such appreciation is testified to by the Spanish Ambassador Bernardino De Mendoza, who in 1578 noted that the Queen had, all in all, paid him what almost amounted to a compliment. ‘She said that if I were a gaglioffo (for she likes to use such terms as these in Italian) I should not have remained here so long.’2 While the affirmation that Mendoza, a nobleman of the highest Spanish lineage was, after all, not ‘a worthless knave’ was not exactly flattering, the ambassador’s incidental remark is intriguing. It is in fact revealing of Elizabeth’s use of Italian in her diplomatic relations, a language she often employed, in conversation and in writing, for irony, understatement or as a means to establish a more intimate rapport with her interlocutor or addressee. Much excellent scholarship has been based upon the editions of Elizabeth’s letters and works which have been published to date. However, with few exceptions, modern scholars have unjustly neglected her letters in the romance languages, leaving almost untouched a critical source for scholarly work.3 Such an omission regarding Elizabeth’s vernacular correspondence, and her Italian correspondence in particular, is indeed striking. Of the most complete (yet still selective) editions available, Harrison’s The Letters of Queen Elizabeth (1935) prints only a missive to the Prince of Parma from the Calendar of State Papers (no. 16b below) and an English translation of Elizabeth’s letter to Katherine Parr (no. 1). This is the only letter to appear in Mueller and Marcus’ Elizabeth I: Autograph, Compositions and Foreign Language Originals (2003), and in the facsimile collection edited by Felix Pryor (Elizabeth I: Her Life in Letters, 2003).4

xxi

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Introduction

This is all the more surprising given that a large number of studies (from the early pioneering essays by Lewis Einstein, Mary Augusta Scott and John Hale to the extensive research carried out by Spartaco Gamberini and Sergio Rossi, and the more recent volumes by Michele Marrapodi, Lucilla Pizzoli, Michael Wyatt and Jason Lawrence) have demonstrated to what extent Italian played a key role in Elizabethan culture.5 It is indeed beyond the scope of this introduction to furnish a survey of such an ample topic. One should recognize, however, that even quite apart from its extensive literary influence, Italian was extraordinarily popular in this period: it was read by courtiers and scholars (perhaps as suggested by Florio and other language teachers of the time, alongside a translation) and spoken, for show or political necessity, by fashionable parvenus and powerful statesmen alike.6 Young gentlemen returning from their Grand Tour loved to display some knowledge of it, and this could be a reasonable advantage when attempting to climb the social ladder. Italian, in fact, was fashionable at Court. Sir Thomas Smith (the Principal Secretary of State to Edward VI and Elizabeth), Sir Francis Walsingham, Lord Burghley, Thomas Wilson, Sir Christopher Hatton, the Earl of Leicester, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Ralegh, to name but a few, could certainly read it and some of them could converse in Italian passably well.7 So did the Earl of Southampton, the dedicatee of Florio’s first dictionary, who spoke it well even before his visit to Italy in the late 1590s.8 It is hardly surprising that many of the leading figures of the Court were the addressees of Italian books.9 The Queen herself was the recipient of at least twenty volumes in this language, in manuscript and print, seventeen of which were presented to her as New Year’s gifts.10

1.  Elizabeth’s Italian That Elizabeth was a keen reader of Italian literature is evidenced both by contemporary reports and the direct or indirect quotations found in her correspondence. Petrarch may have been an old friend, known perhaps since the days with her stepmother Katherine Parr, who owned a copy of his works.11 The Princess inscribed a line from the Thriumphi in her Psalter, which she slightly misquoted—perhaps a sign she was citing from memory.12 Half-quotations and reminiscences from the Canzoniere, in fact, may lie behind a number of phrases in the missives printed below; certainly, though, Elizabeth drew from Petrarch twice in a single letter, no. 19, quite significantly a text in which the Queen expresses her joy-

Introduction 

xxiii

ous feelings at what she believes could be a felicitous conclusion of the long-sought peace negotiation in the Netherlands. Elizabeth inserted (again, slightly misquoting) a few lines from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in a holograph French letter to François, Duke of Anjou, probably in February 1579/80.13 Some four years later, she had a ‘knight’ from her Court (probably Philip Sidney) enquire via the Italian language instructor Giacomo Castelvetro ‘whether the unfortunate Tasso’ was ‘still composing anything, or not,’ and ask, if the author of Gerusalemme Liberata was now ‘producing anything worthwhile,’ to get a sample. Castelvetro ensured his friend Lodovico Tassoni, secretary to Duke Alfonso II of Modena and Ferrara, that questa reina non stima meno avventuroso il Serenissimo nostro Duca per avere cotesto gran poeta cantate le sue loda, che sì facesse Alessandro Achille, per avere egli avuto il grande Omero; e mi dicono che ella ne sappia di già molte stanze a mente. [this queen does not regard His Highness our Duke any less fortunate to have had his praises sung by this great poet than Alexander the Great did Achilles for having had the great Homer to praise him; and I am told that she already knows many stanzas by heart].14

1.1  ‘Shee Loueth Them Almost too Wel’: Elizabeth and Italian(s) A Lady often eulogized for her learning and for her love of foreign cultures—she loved foreigners ‘anche troppo,’ as Florio stated15—Elizabeth was certainly proud of her fluency in Italian. Contemporary accounts recount how she sometimes sought compliments on her ability to speak the language, one notable example being a famous exchange with the Venetian Ambassador, Scaramelli, when, at the end of their interview in 1603 she said non so s’haverò ben parlato in questa lingua italiana; pur, perchè io la imparai da fanciulla, credo che sì, et non havermela scordata [‘I do not know whether I have spoken this Italian language well; yet, since I learned it as a child, I believe I have not forgotten it’].16

Such proficiency had been noted much earlier, before Elizabeth ascended the throne. As early as August 1554, Giacomo Soranzo, then envoy from the Venetian Republic, observed that she had a considerable knowledge of

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Introduction

Italian. Three years later his compatriot and colleague Giovanni Michiel pointed out that her skills far surpassed Queen Mary’s.17 Praise for the young Princess’s linguistic achievements was forthcoming also at home. In a private letter of 1555 to his fellow humanist scholar Johann Sturm, Roger Ascham mentioned Elizabeth’s extraordinary talent for Greek, Latin, French and Italian (which he was later to extol on various occasions).18 In fact, when he took over as royal tutor in 1548, after the death of his former pupil and friend William Grindal, Ascham found she already had a reasonable command of Italian. Even before that time, he was evidently aware that she could read and write in this language: in about 1545—a year after she had written Letter 1 in her own hand—he sent her ‘an Italian book’ together with a new silver pen.19 As Michael Wyatt has pointed out, modern scholars, with very rare exceptions, are quite confident that Elizabeth’s preference for ‘and the prominence she accorded [to] Italian culture can to a high degree be ascribed to the close presence in her life of Giovanni Battista Castiglione.’20 The latter’s first English connection, though, seems to date to 1544, when he fought among Henry VIII’s troops in France.21 This is also the year of Elizabeth’s letter to Katherine Parr, which clearly presupposes a familiarity with the language, as does her Italian translation of Katherine Parr’s Prayers or Meditations (1545).22 It is not easy to ascertain, however, how such knowledge was acquired. Very little, in fact, is known about the Princess’s first tutor, William Grindal. He was certainly best known for his knowledge of Latin and Greek; if, as Stephen Wright asserts, his tutorship started in late 1546, it lasted less than two years.23 While a translation (this time from an Italian text with decidedly Senese traits, Bernardino Ochino’s sermon ‘Cosa è Christo’) was carried out in 1547, we have no surviving evidence indicating that such endeavours were attempted when Ascham was teaching the Princess or after 1548, if we exclude the spurious translation from Petrarch’s Thriumpi.24 One has, quite simply, to admit, as did Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel, that very little evidence exists as to Elizabeth’s ‘early acquisition of the rudiments’ of Italian.25 As Aysha Pollnitz has shown, in fact, Elizabeth need not have shared the same set of tutors as her brother Edward VI in the early 1540s. No schoolmaster, moreover, appears to have been appointed to Elizabeth’s household in this period; her early educators may have been solely one John Picton and Katherine Champernowne (subsequently, Astley).26

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While no document explicitly related to Castiglione’s early teaching of Elizabeth is now extant, he quite probably had connections with the English Court from about 1550. On 29 October, he received letters of denization without having to make any payment, which—as Charlotte Bolland has recently pointed out—suggests that he was already in royal service.27 It is possible that he received payment for his services in the Princess’s household while she was at Hatfield in 1551.28 He certainly shared her fate and that of other servants of the Princess, including Kate Champernowne-Astley: he was imprisoned in the Tower in 1554, following the Wyatt rebellion because he had carried the Princess’s letters.29 Two years later he was imprisoned again, this time in connection with the circulation of an anti-Catholic text which enquiries had traced to Elizabeth’s household. He regained his freedom only upon Elizabeth’s accession. Soon after this he became groom of the Privy Chamber (on 28 Jan 1559/60) and was granted for life the offices of bailiff, wood Ward and Steward of the manor of Benham Valence, Berkshire, and keeper of the park and of the mansion there with a significant stipend.30 This same year, in a letter to the Emperor Ferdinand, he was described as ‘one of her favourite and private chamberlains.’31 Not many signs of such a special closeness with the Queen, however, seem to be extant. One of Castiglione’s two surviving holograph pieces, a letter to Lord Cobham dated from Westminster, 26 March 1568, proves that the Italian gentleman was sufficiently well placed at Court—even if not necessarily in frequent contact with the Queen. Castiglione clearly had interesting inside news of recent events from the Privy Chamber, yet this had been told him by ‘Mr. North [who] had a long conversation with her Majesty.’32 Interestingly, this document, together with a much later missive, also shows that if Castiglione had any role in Elizabeth’s early training in Italian, this must have been confined to the language itself: the Italic hand visible on these manuscripts, in fact, does not bear any resemblance to the young Princess’s fine penmanship.33 As will be seen below, Castiglione’s hand, moreover, does not appear in any of the drafts or final versions of the extant Italian letters. This seems to rule out any role as Elizabeth’s ‘Italian consultant,’ which one may expect from a trusted teacher. Significantly, it was Ascham, not Castiglione, who was given the post of Latin Secretary in 1554, a position confirmed under the new regime. However, ‘John Baptist,’ as he was known at Court, certainly enjoyed the Queen’s favour throughout his long life. He regularly exchanged New

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Year’s gifts from 1559 to 1598, the year of his death,34 and, besides the Stewardship of Benham Valence, received other concrete tokens of her benevolence. In March 1579/80, a warrant under the Sign Manual was issued for a grant ‘unto John Baptist, Castilion, esquire, one of the Grooms of the Privy Chamber, of the fee-farm of the manors of Snave co. Kent, and Stapleford, co. Wilts, to hold to him and to Margaret his wife, and to the heirs male of their two bodies.’35 As Bolland notes, Castiglione’s position enabled him to act ‘as a liaison between other Italians and the highest levels of the court’ and to play a significant role in the circulation of Italian books.36 He almost certainly brought many Italian people and books to the attention of Elizabeth and her courtiers: one need only think of intellectuals such as Jacopo Aconcio, Pietro Bizzarri, Scipione and Alberico Gentili and their works—or recall the less scholarly and much less recommendable Marcantonio Erizzo, the protagonist of the complex story narrated in Letters 2 and 3.37 Pietro Bizzarri’s claim in 1568 that Castiglione had been ‘principal precettore’ (the ‘chief instructor,’ but not the ‘sole teacher’) should perhaps be taken more literally than has hitherto been supposed.38 Elizabeth’s training in Italian, as Petrina has suggested, may not have been simply the result ‘of the influence of one man, however talented,’ but of ‘a network of books and readers around her,’ which dates back to her time with her learned stepmother Katherine Parr, and went on until much later in her life.39 It seems no coincidence, then, that—given the diversity of provenances of the many Italian gentlemen and volumes present and circulating in the English Court in these years—the principal features of Elizabeth’s Italian are, as it has recently been ascertained, mostly polymorphic. Working chiefly from the holograph texts of what are reproduced below as Letters 4–6, Gianmario Raimondi has detected a substantially Florentine substratum, which incorporates a large number of Northern variants. Such a variety in lexis and morphology is clearly indebted to the kind of vernacular which came out of the sixteenth-century presses, ‘moulded along the Florence-Venice axis via the work of polygraphs such as Ludovico Dolce, Francesco Sansovino, or even Pietro Aretino.’40 In this, Elizabeth’s version of the language of the Peninsula appears to conform ‘to the basic formula of the linguistic-editorial geography of the sixteenth century,’ synthesized by Armando Petrucci as ‘Tuscan language in a Venetian book.’41 One should be careful indeed working from a very small corpus such as that of the holograph texts presented in this volume. Interestingly, though,

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a few features are still worth considering. As Raimondi notes, Elizabeth’s occasional ventures into pure Tuscan—for example, the diphthongization in ‘duoi’/’duoe’ (visible in Letter 4) or the palatalized forms ‘manchete’ (Letter 5a) or ‘manchessi’ (Letter 5b)—do not necessarily represent considered choice: it is ‘probably the result of episodic reader reminiscences,’ or more often ‘interlingual approximations typical of the adjustment path toward a foreign language followed by all learners.’42 This double layer may suggest learning through conversation as well as through reading. The Queen, it seems, was closely following Ascham’s precepts as set out in his Scholemaster: in order to ‘speake as the best and wisest’ she was frequently conversant with both men and books.43 1.2  ‘Servitore Perfetto’ Giacomo Castelvetro’s statement in 1592 is significant in this respect. Writing to James VI of Scotland, this Italian teacher and editor remarked that not only could Elizabeth speak Italian almost as a native: she held the language in such esteem that she did not ‘consider any of her servants to be perfect’ (‘che non stima quel suo servitor esser perfetto’) who did not ‘have full command of it’ (‘che non la possiede’).44 Significantly this was not just for the ‘rare beauty’ (‘rara beltà’) of the language itself but also per la quantità di rari libri, che in essa et non in altra si leggono, merita d’esser d’ogni nobile spirto saputa; se non fosse mai altro solo per poter intender i nobili poemi, da pochi anni in qua venuti a luce, del gran poeta Torquato Tasso. [for the number of rare books that can be read in this and no other tongue; and if there were no other reason, at least to be able to read the noble works which have appeared in the last few years, of the great poet Torquato Tasso].45

The Queen—who, as seen above, seems to have been fairly up-to-date in terms of current peninsular literature—did not appreciate Italian culture merely on an aesthetic level. She thought that some knowledge of this language was a necessary prerequisite to serving in the state apparatus.46 The connection between Italian and diplomacy was certainly of long standing. As Garrett Mattingly observes,

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diplomacy in the modern style, permanent diplomacy, was one of the creations of the Italian Renaissance. It began in the same period that saw the beginnings of the new Italian style of classical scholarship ...; its full triumph coincided with the full triumph of the new humanism and the new arts.47

That Italian still enjoyed a special prestige among Elizabethan diplomats and civil servants must have been quite clear to Henry Cheke, Burghley’s nephew and later a clerk of the Privy Council. Before being allowed to take on his position, Cheke struggled to demonstrate his proficiency in this language by travelling to and sending Cecil letters from Italy, and even by publishing his Freewyl, a translation of Francesco Negri’s Tragedia del libero arbitrio (1546–50), in the mid-1570s.48 1.3  Persuasion and Insinuation The Queen’s pragmatic view on the uses of Italian did not escape the eyes of her contemporaries. The Spanish ambassador Álvaro de la Quadra— who spoke Italian with Elizabeth—thought that ‘her language (learnt from [the] Italian heretic friars who brought her up) is so shifty that it is the most difficult thing in the world to negotiate with her.’49 Petruccio Ubaldini, not usually ungenerous in his praise of Elizabeth, remarked in 1583 that nell’arte del persuadere e insinuare é artificiosissima, e perché non ha poco cognitione delle historie havendo la lingua latina e la greca et le due italiana e franzese familiari, usa anche un’arte mirabile coi forestieri. [she is most cunning in the art of persuasion and insinuation. Because of her not inconsiderable grasp of history, given her knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages as well as Italian and French, she also uses an admirable finesse with foreigners].50

Giuliana Iannaccaro has noted, however, how the Queen’s early rhetorical style seems to mirror her ‘pride in managing, successfully, the language of a rich cultural tradition’, and reflect her taste for irony, rather than being a deliberate attempt at deceitful prose.51 Quite significantly, Ascham once remarked that Elizabeth’s style grew ‘out of the subject; chaste because it is suitable, and beautiful because it is clear.’52 While clearly not immune to partiality, he was evidently attempting to affirm his pupil’s adherence to decorum and honest plainness: elocutio was

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certainly not, Ascham believed, everything to her. In fact, the apparently convoluted style of some of the letters printed below (nos. 1, 4–6) becomes more understandable in the light of Renaissance prosody, the contemporary taste for citation53 and Elizabeth’s notorious resistance to careful punctuation. Similarly, the ostensible complexity of some later missives (17, 28) is to be seen more in relation to the common Italianate use of multiple incidental phrases and subordinates than to excessive ornamentation.54 A late, almost intimate letter such as no. 29, while presenting an extended metaphor, is a good example of Elizabeth’s attempt at directness and clarity (pace what may appear, by modern standards, a final tortuous salutation). Again, one should be wary of generalization when results from less than ten texts (including drafts and final copies) are taken into consideration. Certainly, though, it is evident that most of Elizabeth’s holograph letters present the same taste for figurative language, and her almost compulsive habit of rewriting, that one finds in the English correspondence which the Queen penned in her own hand.55 Some interesting examples can be seen in those missives for which both a holograph draft and a final version are extant, such as Letters 4–6, and 17a, the latter being almost a visual counterpart to Elizabeth’s quasi-proverbial hesitation when faced with a complex political situation. Certainly, Elizabeth’s Italian style, while not over-elaborate, is at least self-conscious. As Petrina has noted, her use of Italian seems frequently to have been directed at self-representation, since the Queen, who never passed the borders of her own country, used her linguistic ability to project abroad an image of sophisticated cosmopolitanism.56

In Elizabeth’s holograph missives such self-representation frequently appears to be related to the Queen’s ‘two bodies.’ Both ‘body politic’ and ‘body natural,’ for example, become inextricably linked when Elizabeth metonymically associates the wrongs done to her subjects and friends, or the Spanish ‘sword’ menacing her realm, with her own person; or, again, when she compares the veracity of her peace propositions to the purity of the words pouring forth from her mouth (respectively, in Letter 18, which quite probably reflects a holograph original, and in 17a). The love for her people appears—just as in many of her writings and public statements, most notably the famous ‘Golden Speech’57—as important to her as her honour and well-being (cf., e.g., no. 4). It may be significant in

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this respect that among the most frequently recurrent nouns in the holograph corpus one finds the same number of occurrences of variants of ‘affezione’/ ‘amore’ as those of ‘onore.’ Her femininity is used astutely in no. 4, where the Queen manages to establish a connection between the Archduke’s indecision and their (possible) mutual liking.58 Similarly, in no. 19, we find a reference to her sex, which Parma is said to honour by allowing his own life to be willingly entrusted into Elizabeth’s hands. The latter example—possibly Elizabeth’s last and almost desperate attempt to conclude the negotiations for peace in the Netherlands just before the coming of the Armada—shows how such choice of language was eminently pragmatic. This was, however, no exceptional case. In essence, all of the letters included in this collection speak in the complex language of diplomacy: even the letter to Katherine Parr, in fact, can be seen as an indirect plea for favour, and as a concrete request. It seems evident that in Elizabeth’s hands, rhetoric and Italian were very frequently used as powerful tools for negotiating.

2.  Authorship and the Production of Elizabeth’s Italian Correspondence Metaphor features prominently also in some of the non-holograph letters, such as no. 7 (the tempest image, however common, also recurring in two holograph letters to Anjou and James VI, in a missive to Mary Queen of Scots)59 and in no. 23, for the composition of which—as will be shown below—Elizabeth’s secretary Thomas Windebank received detailed instructions. Such use of figurative language has often been considered one of the hallmarks of Elizabeth’s style.60 Even when trying to associate this to other typical elements used in attribution studies (such as recurrent lexical choice, ideology, gender or preference for some specific word-forms over others), however, one is faced with the small size of the holograph corpus, and by the very nature of the documents extant to this day.61 While about a third of the documents transcribed in this volume are holograph, in fact, the majority of these missives are either signed copies or draft versions. These materials clearly pose a number of questions concerning their authorship. One can certainly feel quite confident about the authorial element in letters such as no. 4–6, which deal with an issue as delicate as that of the Queen’s marriage to Archduke Charles of Austria. Much of the non-holograph texts, however, touch on far less exciting topics. One may expect the Queen’s most trusted collaborators, such

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as her Principal Secretaries and the office of the Latin Secretary, to have played a considerable part in the composition of such material. Questions of authorship related to these letters clearly arise: how is one supposed to distinguish between what ‘the Queen wrote’ and what her ministers asked her to sign? 2.1  Material Letters Ascham once observed that when Elizabeth wrote in Latin or Greek there could be nothing more beautiful to view.62 It is curious he did not mention Italian, as Letters 1 and 4–6, are clearly a good instance of Elizabeth’s early penmanship at its best (see Fig. 3—Letter 6b, below). The latter set, 4–6, confirms Woudhuysen’s idea of Elizabeth’s gradually moving away from a formal style—apparently based on her half-brother’s tutor Jean Belmain’s, and visible in Letter 1 and her early translations (e.g., from Parr’s Meditations and Calvin’s Institution of the Christian Religion)— to a more personal and pointed formal italic. Interestingly, the letters to Maximilian II are reminiscent of the script which Felix Pryor terms Ascham’s ‘Cambridge Italic’ and to Elizabeth’s own holograph letter of 1556 to Queen Mary. These documents seem to evidence the strong influence of the flourished capitals appearing in Giovan Battista Palatino’s writing manual, a phenomenon which Jonathan Gibson has noted in Elizabeth’s writings and letters from the late 1540s.63 Maximilian II, the addressee of Letters 4–6, had been careful to send at least one holograph message.64 Even in later life, like most Renaissance Princes, Elizabeth appreciated when a fellow monarch wrote in his own hand, and reciprocated as often as possible. Her instructions to Valentine Dale, ambassador to France, in 1574 are eloquent in this respect: You shall also say to the king that though the contents of his letters seemed strange to us ... yet it did much content us to receive the letter written wholly with his own hand, for the which we do heartily thank him, and pray him at this time to hold us for excused that we do not acquit him with the like. The cause thereof being in that our hand was at the time of this depeach somewhat strained, that we could not write.65

It is indeed a pity that no holograph final copies of the letters to Farnese (no. 17, and if it was ever sent, 19) and to Albert of Austria (28) have been hitherto located.66 The extant drafts in Elizabeth’s ‘skrating’ hand,

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however, seem to differ in one substantial element. Letter 17, penned about the time of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, is a testimony to Elizabeth’s difficulty in framing a response in such a difficult moment. As seen above, it was clearly a working copy, and the writer here is evidently making no real effort as to clarity of letter-forms or mise en page. Letters 19 and 28, instead, present a much more orderly upper portion, perhaps Elizabeth’s attempt at writing fair. The hand in 28 degenerates only towards the end of the page, possibly as a result of tiredness of the ageing Queen: one cannot but entertain the thought that, in both cases, she started writing in the hope that what she was putting on paper might be sent immediately (see Fig. 9 below). Whatever the real nature of these two manuscripts, Elizabeth’s careful penning and revision of her missives to Maximilian II, the only Italian documents in both draft and final holograph copy now extant, points to the fact that she evidently considered both the verbal element and the presentation of the letters to be of equal importance for the content she intended to convey.67 This suggests a new approach to Elizabeth’s epistolary texts. In Shakespeare’s Letters, Alan Stewart has pointed out that the material evidence of Renaissance correspondence ‘force[s] us to consider the letter not as a text but as an object,’ and a number of recent publications have proven how fruitful such an approach can be.68 The achievement of these studies demonstrates, as James Daybell has recently claimed, that ‘early modern letters can only be fully understood by ... paying attention to the ‘materiality’ of texts.’69 When one examines the non-holograph material from this perspective, in fact, a number of important issues come to light; in particular one can understand that the commonly accepted accounts of how what F. J. Platt has termed the Elizabethan ‘Foreign office’ worked70 may not always apply to the Italian missives—and perhaps not even to the entirety of the Latin correspondence. A joint study of these two categories can, in fact, be very useful to dispel some generally held beliefs. In his edition of the letters sent to the Protestant Powers, for example, E.I. Kouri states that ‘letters given under the signet were in English, but those belonging to the Queen’s diplomatic correspondence with foreign powers ... were not sealed with the signet. ... The Royal signature written at the foot sufficed as proof of genuineness.’71 The small but unique collection of letters sent to some continental Princes in Latin and Italian signed by Elizabeth preserved at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington (MS X d 138) seems to contradict this. All of the letters in this volume, in fact, show traces of a seal, and at least

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one bears a papered signet seal (Folger X d 138 (5); see Fig. 1b, above, and 7b—Letter 22). The size of the wax stains (1.5 x 1.5 inches) visible on the letters in this manuscript is certainly compatible with the surviving seal, and with another one of the same dimension and appearance now in Folger V b 181. This detail is significant: the presence of a signet seal suggests that the production of these missives should be seen in relation to an identifiable group of Court employees, the Clerks of the Signet. Among these were men such as Thomas Windebank, who often enjoyed a unique working relationship with Elizabeth, which even included transcribing the prose parts of her translation of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, into which she added, in her own hand, the poetry sections.72 2.2  Offices and Official Hands The production of the majority of the official foreign correspondence, the greater portion of which was in Latin and French, was dealt with by the Secretariats of State (the office of the Principal Secretary), and of the Latin and French Tongue.73 Roger Ascham, Elizabeth’s first appointed Latin Secretary, apparently made a point of penning and personally countersigning most of the Queen’s missives which he was required to compose, and used collaborators mostly in order to keep copies of these texts for his records.74 Ascham’s successor to this post from about 1568, Sir John Wolley, had evidently a very different view of his position. Not being endowed with what one may term beautiful handwriting, and having to deal with a significantly increased workload, he regularly employed various copyists for both drafts and the final versions to be sent.75 Probably in an effort to ensure that the numerous Latin letters by the Queen produced under his supervision were not too dissimilar from one another, Wolley seems to have established a ‘house style’ which featured engrossed capital letters placed to the left of the text to mark the beginning of paragraphs, and an overall similar script for the first line, which normally included a formal salutation starting with the name of the Queen (see Fig. 1a).76 His successor from 1596, Christopher Parkins, whose italic was much more acceptable, was to continue, at least in part, this tradition.77 Contrary to some scholarly assumptions, it seems that the staff of the secretariat for the French Tongue only dealt with letters in this language.78 In none of the Italian drafts, files or sent copies which survive today has the hand of any of the Elizabethan Secretaries of the French Tongue

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Fig. 1 (a)  Elizabeth to Christian I, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg (in the hand of scribe ‘B,’ 1590). Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library, MS X d 138, item 5, fol. 1. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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Fig. 1 (b)  Elizabeth to Christian I, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg (in the hand of scribe ‘B,’ 1590). Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library, MS X d 138, item 5 fol. 2v. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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(Nicasius and Charles Yetsweirt, Thomas Edmondes) been detected. While during the Elizabethan period the office of the Principal Secretary would—at least in theory—frequently provide the foreign language secretariats with either English versions of the missives to be translated or Latin or French texts to be revised, the procedure was not always linear.79 Elizabeth’s most trusted collaborator, William Cecil, Lord Burghley from 1571, was frequently personally involved in the shaping of a letter, following its iter from draft to final copy. A typical example of the concluding phases of such a procedure may be seen in SP 70/8, fol. 12, in which the Lord Secretary provided the final touches to the Latin text prepared by Ascham (but probably not copied by him), including the various titles of the addressee, Fredrick II of Saxony, the final formal salutation, and the place and date. Evidently, though, at least on some occasions, the final product was the fruit of a joint effort, to the point where some letters could be countersigned by both Ascham and Cecil, as witnessed by a rare example now in the Vienna Archives.80 It should be noted that during Elizabeth’s reign no secretary for the Italian tongue was ever appointed. The office of the Latin Secretary—at least, in theory—would have to deal with this language as well. Interestingly, though, no example of an Italian letter signed by Elizabeth in Ascham’s hand has come to light, and, in fact, there are no Italian texts in his letterbooks (BL, Royal MS 13 B I, Lansdowne MS 82/12, and Add. MS 35840, the latter relating to Ascham’s brief service under Mary I, 1554–1558), nor have any been included in the printed collections of letters attributed to him.81 The situation does not seem to have changed much in later years. Many of the letters produced by Wolley’s secretariat between 1569 and the mid-1580s were transcribed into a register, probably about the mid1590s, by two of his collaborators in what is now Cambridge University Library MS Dd 3.20.82 Out of a total of 306 letters, only two (nos. 7–8 in this edition) are in Italian, and these appear to have been copied by someone who had little or no knowledge of this language.83 Parkins, who until 1594 had been employed, as he once recounted, ‘extraordinarily for Latin despatches of the Dutch, the Easterlings and other strangers,’84 is found writing to the Venetian Signory in 1599, again, in Latin, and does not appear to have produced or annotated any vernacular texts. A former Jesuit and a resident in Italy for about three years, he quite probably knew Italian sufficiently well, and during his tenure at least six letters in Italian (all extant) were produced. None of the drafts or final copies of these,

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however, are in his handwriting, while Thomas Windebank’s, as will be seen below, features in three documents.85 One could suppose that the Italian missives of this period were mostly taken care of by the collaborators of the Lord Secretary; however, out of the five letters extant for the years in which Ascham was in office, three are in Elizabeth’s holograph, and only two, which will be discussed below, are in an unidentified scribal hand. It was, furthermore, not one of the scribes working for the Secretary, but Cecil himself, who inserted the date ‘2 aprilis’ on one of the Italian letters to Maximilian II (no. 4). It seems reasonable that Cecil, who—as noted above—could certainly read Italian, wanted to be privy to the contents of these letters: they touched, after all, upon a crucial theme for the realm of England, that of the marriage of its sovereign. Hence, in all likelihood, he may have dealt with them in a way similar to that in which he dealt with the most important Latin missives he usually handled.86 The man Elizabeth affectionately nicknamed her ‘Spirit’ had a prominent role in the foreign correspondence for a large part of the Queen’s reign. He was appointed Lord Treasurer in 1572, a position which entailed rather different commitments from those of the Principal Secretary; nevertheless, he exercised considerable influence in the area of foreign policy also during the brief term of office of his successors, Sir Thomas Smith (1572–1576) and Thomas Wilson (1577–1581), to the extent that Elizabeth sometimes refused to sign papers until Burghley had approved them.87 Significantly, no trace of either Smith’s or Wilson’s handwriting can be found in any of the Italian letters which have so far come to light.88 Sir Francis Walsingham, sworn Secretary in 1573, was certainly a gifted linguist, especially in French and Italian. His skill and determination were to outshine both Smith and Wilson, and he was certainly a leading figure in the shaping of Elizabeth’s international relationships.89 As will be seen below, he certainly had an important—though not exclusive—role in the shaping of the Queen’s correspondence in this period. Even Walsingham, though, as Mark Taviner has convincingly pointed out, had to come to terms with Burghley’s pre-eminence: in fact, the latter was viewed ‘as the paterfamilias of each of the new Principal Secretaries, not merely in recognition of his past service in that office, but of his continuing centrality to the Privy Council administrative process and his general authority within the polity.’90 William Davison held the secretaryship in tandem with Walsingham only for a very short period. Having started on 30 September 1586, his career was de facto interrupted in 1587, after his public disgrace

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in the Star Chamber for his role in the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. He remained a shadowy figure, formally in office, yet no longer allowed to fulfil his duties as Principal Secretary. On Walsingham’s death (which took place on 6 April 1590), the vacant secretaryship was left unfilled, and Burghley took over most of the work, with the assistance of his son Robert.91 One can assume that, on the whole, his and Burghley’s careful scrutiny was behind much of the early correspondence as well as a number of the missives sent abroad in the 1590s.92 A series of Italian letters written between the early 1580s and mid1590s represents a good example of how an analysis of the handwriting can assist in reconstructing the origin and textual vicissitudes of documents such as these. The first draft of a letter to the Albanian-born diplomat Bartolomeo Brutti (no. 20; SP 97/2, fol. 41), penned by an unidentified scribe in 1590, was endorsed by Cecil and bears one correction by him. A copy of the sent version of this, on fol. 43, is in the hand of Thomas Windebank, Clerk of the Signet and Elizabeth’s secretary, who endorsed it ‘ij° octobris 1590 / Copie of her maiesties lettre to Bartolomeo Bruto. written in Italian and sent by Thomas Wilcok’ (see Figs. 2 and 6—Letter 20). Windebank’s role, however, was not apparently limited to producing a file document. In fact, as a comparison of these two documents can show, it is his hand which amended the text at various points (cf. e.g. ‘honoratamente esseguita’ and ‘gloria’ in both manuscripts). Almost all of these corrections were inserted in SP 97/2, fol. 43, where two expressions were further elaborated.93 Windebank’s distinctive italic handwriting is also visible in the draft of a message sent in 1595 to Ferdinando I of Tuscany (no. 24b; SP 98/1, fol. 107). A note on the back of this document states that the wording of this missive was the result of the joint efforts of Sir John Wolley and ‘Dr. James,’ quite probably John James (c.1550–1601), one of the Queen’s physicians and keeper of the State Papers. This note was inserted at a later stage after the original endorsement (in Windebank’s secretary hand), which typically summarized briefly the identity of the addressee and the purpose of the letter. It may simply signal the fact that Windebank had had no role in drafting (or translating) the text. One wonders, though, if this addition could also be meant to indicate that the text was originally composed in Italian. Pace Evans’s suggestion that ‘the Latin secretary’s duties were bureaucratic, not political,’ Wolley was paid £40 a year, a sum almost equivalent to the earnings of a minor country gentleman.94 Valued at such an amount

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Fig. 2 (a)  Thomas Windebank to Sir Robert Cecil (1602). Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 94/140, fol. 1. Reproduced with the permission of the Marquess of Salisbury.

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Fig. 2 (b)  Thomas Windebank to Sir Robert Cecil (1602). Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 94/140, fol. 2v. Reproduced with the permission of the Marquess of Salisbury.

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of money, his services may well have extended beyond the mere translation of documents. His unofficial sharing of the principal role of secretary with Robert Cecil (after the latter’s taking over a large portion of his father’s responsibilities) between 1593 and 1596, moreover, would almost certainly entail the drafting of important items of correspondence.95 The sent version of the letter to Ferdinando I (no. 24b) was not, however, penned by James, the Latin Secretary, or by Windebank. It presents, in fact, the typical ‘house style’ of Wolley’s secretariat (with a handwriting which will be identified as that of scribe ‘B’).96 Windebank, however, had a role in this as well, since he added the place and date at the bottom of the text, and the address ‘Al Serenissimo Principe / il gran Duca di / Toscana’ on what is now fol. 51. 97 Quite interestingly, a third scribe (‘C’) was employed for an earlier draft, with a significantly different text (no. 24a). This man, possibly an Italian from the North (at least judging from some of his characteristic spellings), was evidently known to be a trusted servant of the Court.98 It was he whom Agostino Grafigna (the Genoese merchant who briefly got involved in the negotiations with the Duke of Parma in the mid-late 1580s; cf. nos. 16–17) asked to write a rather curious letter of self-recommendation which he had composed in 1586, in the hope that Elizabeth would sign it immediately and send it to the Doge of Genoa.99 Grafigna, who clearly knew that C’s hand was used in royal correspondence, evidently saw calligraphy as a means of obtaining the sovereign’s approval. ‘C’’s career may have begun at least some four years earlier, when he penned a beautiful letter sent to Venice in 1582. He went on to write three more letters during the 1580s as well as one to the previous Duke of Florence, Francesco I, in 1585 (respectively, nos. 10, 11–13, 15 and 14). While Windebank worked with the Cecils and collaborated with Wolley (and, later, Parkins, cf. SP 98/1, fol. 113 and 118), and frequently received his instructions from the Queen,100 ‘C’ was clearly collaborating with Wolley and the office of the previous Principal Secretary: some English drafts of the Venice letters (BL, Add. 48126, fols. 175–76 and 178) were, in fact, annotated by Walsingham and his close collaborator and kinsman Robert Beale.101 What the data presented so far indicate is that the production of the Italian letters was far less straightforward than some modern accounts would have us believe. Some of these, in fact, have presented what appears to be a simplified iter for the production of the international correspondence: from State to Latin secretariat, and hence, via the signet office, to the hands of the Queen for her signature.102 The evidence, however,

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would suggest that the process was less clear-cut: draft letters and copies, in fact, seem to go both ways between the office of the Principal Secretary and that of the Latin Tongue. This was quite probably the case for the period in which Sir John Wolley was sharing the burden of the Queen’s correspondence with Robert Cecil (1593–1596). A volume of letters from Elizabeth dating from about this period, now in the London Metropolitan Archives, CLC/234/MS01752 (formerly Guildhall Library MS 1752; henceforth Gui), presents copies of missives which were sent both abroad and to England.103 This manuscript is very accurate in its summary of contents, and reports significant details as to the iter and/or delivery of these missives (e.g., on p. 202 we find ‘A letter from her maiestie to Sir Robert Sidney. By [way of] master Lake’; one ‘to the Queen of Denmark, sent by the Lord Zouch’ on p. 331; another ‘to the Dyett held at Spiers in Germany by Master Stephen Lesiour,’ on p. 376) or the vicissitudes of these texts (see, for example, the notes on p. 76, ‘Passed the signet only’; or p. 98, next to a missive to Mary Queen of Scots: ‘postscript of her Maiesties own hande’; or p. 140, ‘this lettre is staied’). While a good number of the sidenotes in this volume are in Windebank’s hand, quite intriguingly none of the ones just quoted above are his. Such precision, however, would be impossible for anyone outside the inner circle of the Secretariat of State. The London Metropolitan Archives book, then, appears to be the sole example of a register of Elizabeth’s official outbound correspondence which mixes texts dealing with national and foreign affairs (including a transcript of no. 26, by Windebank) and which, at the same time, includes texts penned by the same men who copied letters which were sent, some of which are still extant in foreign archives. All these are clear signs of the fact that Gui was the product of collaboration between the Latin and State Secretariats. The handwriting of a number of scribes who penned much of the Queen’s domestic and foreign correspondence can be found in this book. For example, the calligraphy of a third scribe, visible on pp. 399–401 and 460–61, is also found in the final version of a Latin letter sent to the Doge in 1599 now in the Venice archives (Lettere di Principi 33, fol. 16). This seems to point to the fact that this system of collaboration—or at least the choice of keeping a common register—was carried on under Wolley’s successor, Christopher Parkins: Gui, in fact, includes documents dated from 1595 to 1599. In a way, however, the fact that the royal correspondence, even before or after the mid-late 1590s, could start its course from either the State or

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Latin secretariat may be implicit in the procedure which Beale, evidently familiar with the workings of the ‘Foreign Office,’ suggested was standard practice: When anie businesses cometh into the Secretarie’s handes, he shall doe well for the ease of himselfe to distribute the same and to use the helpe of such her Majestie’s servants as serve underneath him, as the Clercks of the Councell, the Clercks of the Signett, the Secretarie of the Latin and of the French tonge, and of his own servants.104

Beyond the mere analysis of handwriting styles, one needs, then, to turn to the work carried out by these men. 2.3  From Hands to Heads One would expect the first category of these Court employees, the Clerks of the Privy Council, to have played a significant role in the shaping of the Italian letters. The council clerks, in fact, had frequently travelled abroad and/or had experience of diplomatic missions. They were important collaborators of the Secretary of State on matters of foreign policy, and were, at least at Whitehall, located conveniently in the vicinity of the Latin secretariat.105 However, no example of the handwriting of civil servants such as Bernard Hampton, Edmund Tremayne (who spent a year in Italy), Thomas Wilkes, Henry Cheke (both of whom had certainly a working knowledge of Italian), Robert Beale, William Waad, Anthony Ashley, Daniel Rogers, Thomas Smith (the future Secretary of State, who had earned his degree from Padua), another man of this name106 or Thomas Edmondes (later Secretary of the French Tongue) has been identified in the text of the forty-eight known surviving specimens (which include drafts, copies and sent versions) of Italian correspondence examined in the course of this research. Among the other members of the Elizabethan ‘Foreign Office,’ the Clerks of the Signet, which included men of significant expertise in the writing of official correspondence such as Thomas Lake (nicknamed ‘Swiftsure’ for his ability to speedily dispatch with business) and Nicholas Faunt (the author of Discourse Touching the Office of Principal Secretary of State, 1592), only the hand of Thomas Windebank can be safely connected to a number of Italian letters.107 Walsingham, Burghley and Robert Cecil employed a large number of persons to deal with the enormous amount of paperwork which their respective

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positions and status entailed. As his servants Michael Hicks, Vincent Skinner and Henry Maynard knew only too well, Burghley alone received hundreds of letters from petitioners every week, in addition to the burden of the foreign and home affairs he would have been required to deal with.108 In fact, the Secretaries’ private collaborators were, as Platt has shown, a sort of unofficial appendix to the ‘Foreign Office’ staff. Quite importantly, the difference between the official and unofficial members of this group was sometimes blurred by the fact that some of the Council and Signet Clerks were either former, current or soon-to-be employees—and even, sometimes, relatives—of Burghley (e.g., Bernard Hampton was his secretary, and Henry Cheke his nephew) and Walsingham (Faunt had been in his service since 1578 and after his master’s death was employed by Cecil; Lake was taken on in 1584 and became a Clerk five years later; Edmondes was employed to assist Sir Francis in making ciphers in 1589 and may have later worked for Robert Cecil; Beale served as secretary and later became a kinsman of Walsingham’s by marriage to the latter’s sister-in-law).109 It is no surprise, then, to find that a draft letter from Elizabeth to Don Antonio of Portugal, written in 1580 by an unidentified amanuensis, presents an addition in what could be the hand of Lisle Cave, and was endorsed by Lawrence Tomson, both private secretaries to Walsingham (SP 89/1, fol. 134 r-v).110 In many respects, these men were not merely, as Jonathan Goldberg states, ‘living pen[s].’111 Beale (himself the author of an account of the secretarial mission and duties),112 Faunt and Robert Cecil all emphasize how the main office of the man serving the Principal Secretary should rest, as Sir Robert stated, in ‘trust and fidelitie,’ and in his being a ‘keeper or conserver of the secret unto him committed.’113 Sometimes, though, the duty went far beyond that of being a simple recorder. Bernard Hampton was not only asked by William Cecil to produce fair copies from his notes of restricted meetings of the Privy Council; as Steven Alford has noted, he was ‘a key draughtsman in the delicate relationship between Queen and Council in the parliamentary session of 1566, and he worked on some political papers which can only be described as private Cecil projects.’114 An experienced diplomat such as Beale was allowed to act as State Secretary during Walsingham’s absence from England in 1583, and Sir Thomas Smith went on to occupy this post after having previously served as a clerk.115 When collaborators of this stature, serving either in the Principal or the Latin secretariat, happened to be skilled in foreign languages, such knowledge would have been put to good use. As Vaughan notes,

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clerks like Edmondes with extensive experience in a single country [France], or like William Waad who served in virtually every major western European country, became expert diplomats abroad, and continued to serve the Privy Council as envoys abroad and specialists at home throughout their tenures as clerks of the Council’.116

One cannot exclude a priori, then, that many (visible) hands and a number of (unseen) heads collaborated in producing the Italian missives. Certainly, the physical production of these documents was apparently not something which anybody who ‘had Italian’ could participate in. In fact, where one might expect to find the handwriting of some of the Italian figures gravitating around the Elizabethan Court (such as, as seen above, Giovan Battista Castiglione, the writing master Petruccio Ubaldini, the Regius Professor of law at Oxford Alberico Gentili, or less known figures such as the royal physician Giulio Borgarucci, the grammarian Alessandro Citolini, Elizabeth’s envoy Guido Cavalcanti, or even some of the members of the Lupo family, the Court musicians) one finds only, as will be seen below, the hand of the merchant and diplomat Horatio Palavicino.117 Most of the ‘Italian’ scribes remain anonymous; on the other hand, as seen above, their links with the inner circle of the Court employees are quite evident. As regards the concrete act of collaboration between ‘hands’ and ‘heads,’ however, some distinction can be made between the different phases of the material process of letter-writing, which clearly entailed different skills. Frequently employed to copy out letters in Latin, scribe ‘B’ was also occasionally employed for Italian texts (see, for example, Folger Shakespeare Library MS X d 138 [5–6], two beautiful examples of sent letters signed by Elizabeth, reproduced here as Figs. 1 and 7a, b; see above and Letter 22). This hand, though, does not appear in any of the drafts related to the early phases of composition and revision of any known Italian letter. The case of ‘B’ and of the anonymous scribe Wolley employed for his register, Cambridge University Library MS Dd 3.20, is significant. Not only does it show, again, that not all of the scribes working for the Latin secretariat— no matter how trusted they were as collaborators—were involved in the various phases of the composition and revision (and/or translation) of the royal letters. It also suggests that some of these men, professionals trained to copy out what was set in front of them with what we could today call photostatic precision, were employed only for the final versions to be sent or for the production of file copies, sometimes even irrespective of their proficiency in Italian. The initial drafting was normally (but not always, as

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witnessed by the many mistakes found in the first version of the letter to Brutti) entrusted to people who had a better knowledge of Italian. The absence of Italian letters in Ascham’s hand might be the result of such a division of labour, or simply be due to the fact that during his term of office the only important occasion which may have required the use of this language—the complicated marriage negotiations with Maximilian II of the mid-1560s—also required the employment of a significantly more authorial hand, that of the Queen herself. Some other issues related to collaboration can be surmised from the textual vicissitudes through which some of these letters went. In the case of the 1594 letter to Don Antonio, the text Windebank copied on SP 89/2, fol. 219 (no. 23a) evidently originated from an English document, still visible on the preceding folio. One would be more inclined to consider this as a set of notes rather than a real ‘draft letter’: the state of some of these lines is tormented indeed: as for this young Prince the

Lastly, this bearer her Majestie can not but giue him his due meri in that she awowith he hath gouerned himself very honorably of him the father

in respect therof

euer since the the fathers departinge hence And so doth recommende and of that his good toward hyme she hath taken cause to comm occasion to certain imparte commit som thing by word of mouth vnto him, wich she doubteth not

him the sonne vnto the Louinge father. Vunto both whom we but he will deliuere as well as any elder. W praye one of more

the remembrance of the Marinare she wisshith all prosperitie and yeeres, wherby A[nd] wherby he being the roote of such a branche good may very Iustly conseaue hope of very good fruite, And for such a one her maiestie doth recommend him to such a father vunto whom and she wishith all prosperitie and good successe, as in their meaning We have committed certain thinges to by word of mouth vnto this one Prince

may wish

to any other

your yong sonne, which we doubte not but he will deliuer as aptily as an eld[e]r.118

As mentioned earlier, Windebank had taken down most of Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius, which she had dictated to him at a terrible pace between 10 October and 8 November 1593. It took less than a month for this work to be translated, a tour de force which resulted in Windebank

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becoming one of the best reporters of Elizabeth’s words.119 Quite significantly, one may add, Windebank possibly attempted to keep a record (for either practical use or for the benefit of posterity) of the Queen’s holograph letters. Two copies of Letter 4 and one of Letter 29 are in his hand, and he indicated the recipient of Letters 17 and 19 at the top of the page, noting that these letters were penned by Elizabeth herself (see Fig. 5—Letter 17a).120 The various layers of text presented above would seem to suggest that these lines are the result of a collation of notes taken at dictation together with a number of subsequent revisions. The use of ‘We’ in ‘We praye the remembrance of the Marinare’ is significant in this respect. While the third person is used elsewhere, the royal plural is here associated with a figure which was certainly familiar to Elizabeth. It came from a very personal holograph, an extravagant, half-Portuguese half-Italian letter to the Queen—addressed as ‘bella amichevole molinara del mio core’—which Don Antonio had signed ‘Il Marinaro’ (CP 185/130). There seems to be little reason to doubt that the source of these lines was, at least in part, the English monarch herself, which is also supported by Elizabeth’s characteristic use of metaphors (‘roote of the branche’; ‘may very Iustly conseaue hope off very good fruite’).121 Permitting a secretary to draft a letter from what amounted to little more than a set of notes was not an uncommon procedure in the Renaissance. It is not, in fact, dissimilar to the one described by Henry Cuffe, the Earl of Essex’s secretary, when producing a tract recording a military expedition. Cuffe remembers having first received ‘his Lordship’s Large [that is, general] enstructions’ for this text, then having proceeded to pen ‘very truly’ a first draft, drawing ‘on my owne knowledge’ of the events, adding ‘sundry particulars of the moment’ that the Earl provided. Later after I had penned it as plainely as I might altering little or nothing of his owne drawght, I caused his Lordship to peruse it on[c]e againe and to adde [further parts or corrections] extremam manum.122

When dealing with the correspondence of a Monarch, however, one was required to be extremely wary even of minute details. As Robert Cecil once wrote to Windebank, commenting on a missive he had seen, the Queen’s ‘style’ was part of the message itself, and could be of considerable significance. The reaction of her addressee was an important ele-

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ment, but her words mattered also in the eyes of the law, and to those of posterity: I have pervsed this lettre, and this is written al more solito, not mandatory, but graciously, vouchsafing to cover her Comandment in the cawle of a princely recomendation / Nam epistula regis vim habet legis /, and therefore the style is not to be neglected in these cases, especially where the memory is to be left to all Adges, in the passadge wherof (both for the Past and future) our Soveraines papers will be fownd the Records of more Piety Learning and dolceness then ever Prince dyd leaue behynd them.123

Interestingly, the passages connected with the Mariner and the metaphor relating to the tree and its fruits are found at various points in the text of each of the three Italian draft versions, all penned by Windebank—which indicates that these cannot have been mere translations. It seems, in fact, that the letter was subjected to revision by a reader who was very attentive to such details. One wonders if the Queen herself did not repeatedly call back her trusted servant in order to go over her text again and again. Robert Beale clearly had experience of this; in his treatise he encouraged would-be secretaries: Be not dismayed with the controlments and amendments of such things which you shall have done, for you shall have to do with a princess of great wisdom, learning and experience …. The princes themselves know best their own meaning and there must be time and experience to acquaint them with their humours before a man can do any acceptable service.124

2.4  Heads and Hands Penning Trouble Men like Beale and Windebank were clearly much more than mere executors. One would wish to know more not only about these royal secretaries, but also about those assistants who were helping to pen the letters they collaborated in composing. Unfortunately, as G. R. Elton once observed, while the handwriting of the civil servants of the Tudor era is ‘quite familiar,’ even when ‘we know a name,’ we ‘cannot assign a hand, and familiar hands have no known owners.’125 In the course of this research, however, material evidence (including endorsements, notes, corrections, seals and watermarks) has often been found that links the various states of the Italian missives to a specific entourage. What such evidence tells us is that the drafting and final copying of the Italian letters—apart from

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special cases such as the Maximilian and Don Antonio missives—seem to have quite frequently been the result of the active cooperation of the offices of the Principal and the Latin Secretary, with occasional assistance from other people who, like John James, were trusted Court employees. Even if we should probably interpret ‘office’ lato sensu (to include, that is, some of the personal collaborators working in these secretariats) it is clear, however, that the production remained within a restricted circle of men often working within the precincts of the Court and/or the private rooms (which could technically be ‘at Court’ during the numerous progresses of the Queen) of the Secretary of State and the Latin Tongue.126 Intriguingly, when no elements can be found to demonstrate a link between such a context and the extant Italian missives, that signals trouble. A draft letter (nos. 2a–2b) to the Doge of Venice now in the Cecil Papers and datable to around 1560/1, is neither in Ascham’s hand nor that of his anonymous collaborator who copied some of the items in his letter-books now preserved in the British Library (Add MS 35840 and Royal 13 B I). It is quite probable, given the style and the spelling, that both of the versions of the Cecil Papers missive were penned by a native speaker from Northern Italy. Apparently, this is just a typical letter of introduction for the new English envoy, one Marcantonio Erizzo. The letter mentions one apparently minor difficulty: the man in question is ‘an exile,’ and would therefore need a pardon to return to his native lands. An analysis of contemporary documents reveals, in fact, that Erizzo was quite probably a former English spy, who had been convicted of murder (he had killed his uncle), and who had managed to escape from a Venetian prison. Unsurprisingly, the letter is not to be found in the Venetian archives, and was possibly never sent. A rather different case is that of a signed letter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1592 (no. 21), in which Elizabeth asked Ferdinando I to suppress a book which, she claimed, offended not only her, but also the memory of her mother and father. She consequently demanded that its author, a friar of the Santa Maria Novella convent in Florence, be punished. The book in question, the Storia ecclesiastica della rivoluzion d’Inghilterra, was in fact printed in Florence (and later Bologna) in 1591, and was reprinted in 1594 in Rome. What has not been hitherto noticed is that the letter is in the hand of Horatio Palavicino, the Genovese merchant who played a major role as Elizabeth’s financial agent in the negotiations with the contemporary European powers between the 1580s and the early 1590s. Notwithstanding his diplomatic appointments and his being on good

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terms with Burghley, Palavicino is not known to have ever been directly involved in the work of the Elizabethan ‘Foreign Office’ either prior to or following this instance. In 1591, however, he was asked to produce an Italian version (Mediceo del Principato 4183, fols. 30–31, an adaptation rather than a mere translation) of a missive which Burghley had drafted in English (now SP 98/1, fols. 72–74).127 What the material evidence of these letters tells us is that, depending on the specific case, when matters were potentially quite delicate and complicated, specific expertise could be sought after. A man from Northern Italy (even if not necessarily from Venice) was consulted in an attempt to identify the most appropriate tone and perhaps calligraphy to communicate with the Venetians in relation to the Erizzo affaire. Similarly, Palavicino was evidently found to be a man capable of finding the right tone to translate a rather delicate missive, one which was implicitly asking the Duke of Florence to take the side of those who, even if indirectly, were against the Church of Rome.128 2.5  Hands and the Royal ‘We’ The presence of both ‘familiar’ and ‘unfamiliar’ hands, then, indicates specific choices of collaborators, who were, frequently (but not necessarily always, as witnessed in the case of scribe ‘B’ above) chosen not only for their calligraphic skills, but in all likelihood also for their linguistic abilities. When penning the words of the Queen, heads appear to have counted as much as, and possibly even more than, hands. That considerable attention was devoted to the choice of collaborators must place the production of royal letters in a context nearer to an Eliotian ‘each man to his job’ than to a postmodern dream of collective ‘co-creation.’ As noted above, even when we cannot always identify a scribe, the material evidence of the Italian letters demonstrates that while, occasionally, ad hoc ‘consultants’ were called in, the Queen’s Italian correspondence was generally kept within a restricted circle of trusted civil servants. This was simply good sense, as Faunt noted in his treatise: the ‘ould Maxime’ (in fact, the principle of economy quoted by William of Ockham in his Summa Totius Logicae, I. 12) ‘frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora’ was much in tune with the work of a Secretary of State: what could be achieved by a limited number of trusted servants would rarely be obtained by an excessive number.129 As Windebank’s notes and amended drafts for the Don Antonio letter reveal, these were men who, just as Beale

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had emphasized, were used to interpreting their masters’ will, and ready to amend their texts at any stage.130 Certainly, though, one should not disregard or minimize the ‘social’ nature of these texts, which is endemic in diplomatic correspondence: various individuals contributed to the production of the royal letters, and one cannot but acknowledge the existence of different layers of authority in them. Traces of the authorial presence can sometimes be detected in specific details of language and style; the elusive nature of internal evidence, however, suggests considering these irrefutable only when they come in tandem with material elements. At the simplest level, for example, the Queen’s explicit approval of a letter may be glimpsed by the addition of a holograph final salutation in the original; should Elizabeth’s typical use of metaphor be identified in the text, this would arguably be evidence, at the very least, of her intervention in the composition or correction of the missive. One should note, though, that other codes, apart from the purely linguistic, were occasionally employed in the Italian letters sent to foreign princes.131 The letters sent to the Doge and Signory of Venice in the 1580s, for example, imitate, and quite probably were meant to compete—by virtue of their engrossed coloured initial, and the beauty of their penmanship— with a formal Venetian lettera ducale, an official missive from the Doge (cf. e.g. SP 70/105, fol. 186).132 One should not underestimate the visual impact that letters such as these could have had on the ruling elite of the Venetian Republic. In Senatu senator, in foro civis, in habitu princeps (‘a senator in the Senate, a citizen in the Courts, a Prince in dress’), as the common saying went, by the late sixteenth century the Doge enjoyed only limited power; in his History of Italy (1549), William Thomas went so far as to state that he had ‘heard some of the Venetians themselves call him an honourable slave.’133 Any letters addressed to him were opened in public, in front of the Senate or in the presence of a small number of councillors.134 Elizabeth’s message, then, far from being a private communication between heads of state, was in itself a powerful display of intercultural awareness, and an explicit assertion of willingness to negotiate. Interestingly, the 1582 missive to Venice (no. 11b) presents a rather elaborate lengthy sentence in the last paragraph, immediately preceding the final salutation: Quanto poi concerne l’antica, et stretta amicitia tra i Nostri Regni, Et la Vostra Repubblica: Vi assicuriamo, che nessuno de i nostri predecessori ha piu desiderato la continouation d’essa, che Noi; si per il rispetto dell’affettion,

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che portiamo generalmente à tutti quei della natione Italiana, Et si particolarmente della Vostra Inclita Repubblica. [‘For what concerns the ancient and close friendship existing between Our Dominions and Your Republic, we assure you that none of our predecessors has desired the continuation of it more than We do; both in respect of the affection we bear to all the people of the Italian nation [i.e., race], and in particular to those of your illustrious Republic’].135

This letter is particularly emphatic in its stress of the bonds of affection which bind Elizabeth and Italy in general and the Queen to the Serenissima Repubblica in particular. These were significant words for a monarch: they were clearly meant to have a very powerful rhetorical effect—an effect matched only by the stunning dimensions and elaborateness of the letter. All this could hardly have been achieved without the Queen’s consent and active participation.136 Letter 11 and its English draft constitute a particularly interesting case. One can perhaps get a glimpse of the care taken in the Elizabethan ‘Foreign Office’ when producing documents such as these in a letter sent on 30 September 1568 to the Bishop of Rennes. The latter was commissioned ‘to declare how strange and full of ambiguity’ the speech delivered before the Council by her Ambassador Sir Henry Norris had appeared to Charles IX and his Queen. According to the Bishop, in fact, Norris had given the impression ‘that his mistress [Elizabeth I] meant to deal in the cause between the King and his subjects.’137 The reply draft, corrected by Cecil, stated that The writing in french conteyning a message don by the Q. Majesties ambassador to the French King in the presence of the Q. Mother and the said K Counsell as it hath ben compared with the lettres directed to him from her Majesties, written in english, doth not differ in substance from her Majesties saving so much in one clause as is clear by alterying only this speche that the doctrine of Prynce is contrary to the doctryne of Christ in derogatying that soveraynte of all princes, for this is contrary to the doctrine of christ and derogeth that sought of allwayes in said lettres. And whatsoever other difference there is; the same may be imputed & it may be the variety betwixt the phrase of the french tongue and the english, which may precase give occasion to the french K. counsellers to conceaue more ambiguities in wordes than was ment, for hir Majesties newly revisiting, hir owne lettres, and the message as it was put into french, can find nothing therin ambiguous, but playne in speche and very frendly in matter, deserving in hir opinion rather thanks or at lest allowance than any misliking.138

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Not only, then, was the message—and the letters—compared word for word against the original: it was also submitted to the Queen’s scrutiny. What could have been a diplomatic debacle was avoided by what must have been standard practice: the fidelity of a translation was ensured by the rigid protocols of the English bureaucracy. Elizabeth herself, as Windebank noted, established a routine which enabled a better division of the work: the morning was reserved for the signing of documents, while in the afternoon she usually had letters read aloud to her.139 Cecil was evidently sure of himself and his collaborators: he was used to double checking his work with the Queen, as he apparently had the habit of writing a minute, which was then ‘reformed by her Majesty’s self as she gave me instructions.’140 This is confirmed by Windebank, who, on more than one occasion, was asked to rewrite some sections of her majesty’s letters,141 and by Robert Beale, who, as seen above, reminded the aspirant secretary that he would often be called back to amend his writings, especially at difficult moments in the history of the state. Interestingly, Beale also provides some suggestions on the last, crucial phase of the production of a royal letter, obtaining the signature: When her highnes is angrie, or not well disposed, trouble her not with anie matter which yow desire to have done, unles extreame nesessitie urge it. When her highnes signeth, it shalbe good to entertaine her with some relacion, or speech wherat she may take some pleasure.142

As Felix Pryor has intimated, Elizabeth read what she signed—and her elaborate signature gave her time to ponder over the contents of what she was signing.143 One wonders if, quite apart from the noble intent of pleasing the Queen, Beale was in fact suggesting that if one managed to distract her slightly, he would get his documents signed more quickly, and would not need to revise his text again and again. This risk Windebank knew all too well: Elizabeth could go through the text noting even some of its minutiae.144 It may well be, as Petrina and Iannaccaro observe, that this originated, in the end, from her need for self-defence: she had risked her life more than once in her youth; her early experiences, added to the danger of being a woman in a world ruled by men, made her extremely careful and suspicious in her dealings with other people: her attempts to keep everything under control, both in the private and in the public sphere, also affected her epistolary exchanges.145

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Certainly, though, in her life as a monarch, Elizabeth had to rely on her collaborators. As a result, in the non-holograph letters, as Rayne Allinson has observed, ‘the work of any number of unseen “authors” could lie behind the royal “we”.’146 The royal signature, when combined with other significant verbal and non-verbal elements, brought together such collective endeavours, unifying them in an act of authorial approval. Such sanctioning of collaboration was by no means unnatural or artificial. Elizabeth cared about her Italian correspondence, and on a number of occasions chose this language when writing to non-Italians as if it represented a neutral territory on which to meet a foreign ruler. As in real life, when an important visitor came to Court, such meetings had to be prepared with great care if a successful outcome was to be achieved, and this required the assistance of many hands. In the end, though, it was the Queen one met. Something quite similar happened with her letters. The challenge an editor is faced with when working on Elizabeth’s Italian correspondence, then, is that of accepting to deal first with her many courtiers and servants—as most of her contemporaries had to do—in order to, eventually, have admittance to the presence of the English Gloriana. 2.6  Elizabeth’s Missives: The Corpus and the Survival of Evidence There seems to be abundant evidence that the drafting of some letters, the one to Don Antonio penned by Windebank, no. 23, being a notable example, entailed much work. Especially when multiple drafts (or ‘minutes’ or ‘copies,’ as, rather confusingly, these intermediate versions were indifferently named)147 are extant, it is not always easy to understand where their composition started. It is, then, to be lamented that Nicholas Faunt’s suggestion that a book should be kept, and in it ‘bee noted the arrivall and dispatch of anie Ambassader or messenger sent abroad or cominge hither,’ was never put into practice.148 Faunt’s further recommendations, in fact, provide a remarkable proposal for the organization of the foreign correspondence. A ‘Collection,’ he stated, should bee made of all ye alliances that are beetweene his Majestie and other Princes of the Leagues and treaties presentely in force, as alsoe of the nature, qualitie and tearme of the said Leagues. Whether they bee for offence or defence for intercourse or trades, or in what other sorte and mixture etc. A Booke of ye present negotiacions. Or bookes. And first of the presente negotiacion and intelligence Continued by Ambassandours Resident in Fraunce which will in shorte time make a greate volume.

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Then particularly another of the negotiacion with the Vnited Provinces and (if occasion serue) with the Gouernours Commissioners, deputies, or ministers of thother members of the Lawe-Countreyes. A Booke of the like for Scotland where for the most parte some one or other is imploied by his [sic] Majestie, another for Germanie wither sometimes are alsoe ministers sent the Princes there aboutes the Leavyinge of men for the implovment of moneys etc. Another touchinge the intercourse with Denmark, Sweden, Muscovia and Russia, Turkie Barbary and ye Levant and especially with ye hanse tounes that insist much upon auntient privileges and immunities etc. A particuler volume for Ireland which gouerment requireth manie and sundrie direccions by lettres from her Majestie and the Lo: of the Councell, and wherein it wilbee necessarie to regester the answerrs and relacions of the Chargs and Commissions sent vnto them, for that they are of waight, and daily questionable by reason of the variety of matters and suddaine alterracion and Change of officers and offices both touchinge the warres and Course of Justice in the most peaceable [times].149

No ‘special book’ was suggested for Italy, which was in fact fragmented in a myriad of entities, including the Venetian and Genoese Republic, and the Tuscan states. Some drafts and copies of sent missives are extant among the ‘Italian’ State Papers, such as SP 79 (Genoa), 85 (Italian States and Rome), 92 (Savoy and Sardinia), 98 (Tuscany) and 99 (Venice). However, the correspondence in this language, as noted above, was by no means limited to these regions, but extended to both native and non-native speakers of this language residing in other parts of the world as far apart as France, Austria, Moldova, the Low Countries and China. The only known register of outbound correspondence of the Elizabethan ‘Foreign Office’ as a whole, the ‘Guildhall’ manuscript (Gui), quite interestingly, does not preserve any real geographical distinction between these missives. Nor were all of the Italian letters produced in these years copied in this volume, and the same applies to Sir John Wolley’s letter-book, Cambridge University Library MS Dd 3.20 (Dd3.20). Such confusion in the registers can be a source of frustration, and is frequently mirrored in the rather uneven survival of evidence in modern archives. This, of course, does not apply only to the Italian letters. While Dd3.20, for example, contains a Latin letter to Alfonso d’Este (on fols. 195v–96; 153v–54 of the original foliation), this does not appear to have survived among the papers of the Este and Gonzaga Family now at the Archivio di Stato in Mantua.150 Similarly, the three Latin missives to Cosimo I which were copied in Lansdowne MS 98/102, fol. 101v, are nowhere to be found in Florence, whereas out of the eight copied in BL,

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Royal MS 13 B I, three are extant in the State Archive.151 The ‘Guildhall’ manuscript has copies of two Latin letters to Marino Grimani, Doge of Venice dating from 1599, the sent versions of which are now in Venice; no sent copy can be located, however, for the Italian missive printed below as no. 26 which appears in Gui.152 Elizabeth’s correspondence with Farnese (see below, nos. 16–19) seems to have vanished from the family papers now preserved in Naples (AsNa). Perhaps these missives had the same fate as some precious letters once in the collection. One may note, in fact, that at least one letter, addressed to Margaret of Austria, was once part of it: a seventeenth-century partial inventory of the Farnese papers makes clear that this missive had, unfortunately, already disappeared in 1707.153 Such a situation is no novelty to anyone familiar with manuscript studies and archival research. No doubt war, natural events, careless borrowing and premeditated theft may account for the disappearance of many of Elizabeth’s letters to Italy. Other causes, however, may be behind the absence of a number of missives. The correspondence with Genoa provides an interesting example. While a few draft Latin letters to, and replies from, the Genoese Doge are still among the State Papers at Kew, no original or copy of a letter from the Queen is now in the Genoa State Archive.154 While the former provide evidence as to the existence of the correspondence, no missive from Elizabeth was entered in the incoming register of letters to the Republic, which, however, has entries for messages from Philip II as husband to Mary I, and from James I.155 It may well be that epistolary exchanges with a foreign—and, from 1570, excommunicated—monarch could be a source of embarrassment to some of the Italian city states, at least to those who were more susceptible to the influence of the Roman Church and its powerful allies. The documents printed here, then, may constitute just a fragment of the original corpus of the Italian letters which originated from the Queen and her secretaries. One cannot help remembering that Elizabeth is reported to have been able to write one letter while dictating another and, at the same time, ‘hearing a tale which she made answer unto.’156 While no doubt an exaggeration, the anecdote is a witness to the Queen’s reputation as a writer: some people evidently believed that drafting missives to her was as natural as speaking. Judging from her holograph drafts (cf. below, Letters 4–6; 17, 19, 28) Elizabeth had little difficulty in sketching a missive in Italian, and in giving detailed, if at times somewhat confusing, instructions to her secretaries (cf. e.g. no. 23): she may well have been a prolific correspondent in this language as well. This would not have surprised many of her contemporaries: after all, as she had clearly stated to the Austrian envoy in 1564, she was ‘half Italian.’157

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Notes 1. Elizabeth was speaking to Ahasverus Allinga, the envoy of Archduke Charles and the Emperor his father. Allinga had observed, while talking to the Queen, that in manners the Germans were ‘similar to [those of] the Italians’; Klarwill, 195; see also Mary Augusta Scott, Elizabethan Translations from the Italian (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), xxxviii. Quite significantly, only two years later, Elizabeth was to pen Letter 4 (q.v.), addressed to Charles’s brother Maximilian II (who had just acceded to the throne) in her own hand. For a survey of foreign visitors’ remarks on Elizabeth’s proficiency in the language see Alessandra Petrina, ‘Elizabeth Learning and Using Italian,’ in EFC, 93–113. 2. Mendoza to Secretary Gabriel de Zayas, CSPSp, II, 617. 3. On this topic see the introduction in EFC, xix–xxv. 4. Incidentally, Harrison includes a limited number of French letters, and these in translation; ACFLO prints about twenty French and six Latin missives. 5. Lewis Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1902); Scott, Elizabethan Translations from the Italian; John Hale, England and the Italian Renaissance: The Growth of Interest in its History and Art (1954; rev. ed. with an introduction by Edward Chaney; Oxford: Blackwell, 2005); Sergio Rossi, Ricerche sull’Umanesimo e sul Rinascimento in Inghilterra (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1969) and Id., I documenti della cultura italiana in Inghilterra: il Rinascimento, vol. 1 (Milan: Unicopli, 1986); Spartaco Gamberini, Lo studio dell’italiano in Inghilterra nel ’500 e nel ’600 (Messina and Florence: D’Anna, 1970); Michele Marrapodi, ed., Shakespeare’s Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993); Id., ed., Shakespeare, Italy and Intertextuality (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Lucilla Pizzoli, Le grammatiche di italiano per inglesi (1550–1776): un’analisi linguistica (Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 2004); Wyatt, Italian Encounter; Jason Lawrence, ‘Who the Devil Taught thee so Much Italian?’: Italian Language Learning and Literary Imitation in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). For a concise recent survey of the state of Italian in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day, see Emanuele Banfi, La posizione dell’Italiano (e di ‘Italiani altri’) tra le lingue d’Europa: usi, funzioni, prestigio, vol. II of Coesistenze Linguistiche nell’Italia

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Pre- e Postunitaria, ed. Tullio Telmon, Gianmario Raimondi, and Luisa Revelli (Rome: Bulzoni, 2012); see in particular 64–69 for some notes on Elizabethan England. For an interesting perspective on the Elizabethan and Jacobean ‘Italianate Englishmen’ see Michael J. Redmond, Shakespeare, Politics, and Italy: Intertextuality on the Jacobean Stage (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 29–74. 6. On this topic, together with the bibliography quoted above, see Sergio Rossi and Dianella Savoia, eds., Italy and the English Renaissance (Milan: Unicopoli, 1989). 7. One may wish to remember Gabriel Harvey’s often-quoted note in his copy of Florio’s First Fruits which acknowledged ‘how the Earl of Leicester, Master Hatton, Sir Philip Sidney, and many of our outstanding courtiers, speak the Italian tongue most fluently’ and lamented Harvey’s own inability ‘to speak it with the same dexterity’; Virginia F. Stern, Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia and Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 156 and ibid., note 24. For some brief accounts of the proficiency in Italian of the statesmen and courtiers mentioned above see respectively Alessandra Petrina, Machiavelli in the British Isles (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 19–20; Simon Adams, Alan Bryson, and Mitchell Leimon, ‘Walsingham, Sir Francis (c.1532–1590),’ ODNB, and Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, 26; Wallace T. MacCaffrey, ‘Cecil, William, first Baron Burghley (1520/21– 1598),’ ODNB, the Introduction and notes to Letter 4, below, and Scott, Elizabethan Translations from the Italian, xl; on Wilson see SP 70/141, fol. 121 and below, par. 2.2. On Leicester in particular see Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters (New York: Octagon Books, 1943), 55–58 and 286–93, Lawrence, ‘Who the Devil Taught thee so Much Italian,’ 16, note 9, and Susan Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 119; see also 143 and 331, notes 5–6, on Hatton. On Sidney: Katherine DuncanJones, Sir Philip Sidney, Courtier Poet (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1991), 25–26 76–77; The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Roger Kuin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), I, 92 (where Sidney affirms his will to ‘strengthen’ his Italian), and 585–87. On Ralegh see my Sir Walter Ralegh: poeta di corte elisabettiano (Milan: Mursia, 1998), 320–30 and passim; Mark Nicholls and Penry Williams, Sir Walter Raleigh in Life and Legend (London and New York: Continuum, 2011), 255.

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8. Lawrence, ‘Who the Devil Taught thee so Much Italian,’ 19. To this number, of course, one should add the Secretaries of the Latin Tongue Roger Ascham, Sir John Wolley and Sir Christopher Parkins and several of the Clerks of the Privy Council, many of whom ascended later to higher posts in the state administration; see below, 2.2-3. 9. To quote but a few significant instances, Leicester was the dedicatee of John Florio’s Firste Fruits (1578) and Sir Edward Dyer was the dedicatee of the manuscript version of Florio’s Giardino di Ricreazione (BL, Add. MS 15214, dated 1582). His friend Philip Sidney—the addressee of Giordano Bruno’s Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante (1584) and Heroici Furori (1585)—had connections with the printer John Wolfe (who once described himself as his ‘Servitore’) and the Italian community in London, and was at the centre of an important network of cultural links. Cf. Gamberini, Lo studio dell’italiano in Inghilterra, 122–23. Florio’s father, Michael Angiolo, was a tutor in the residence of the Duke of Suffolk in the 1550s, where he taught Lady Jane Grey and Gilford Dudley. See also Gavin Alexander, Writing After Sidney: The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney, 1586–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006), 8–10. For a complete list of these dedications see Soko Tomita, A Bibliographical Catalogue of Italian Books Printed in England, 1558–1603 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). 10. The calligraphist and scholar Petruccio Ubaldini featured as a major donor. Cf. Lawson, New Year’s Gift Exchanges, 536. On these books see also Elkin Calhoun Wilson, England’s Eliza (London: Cass, 1966), appendix 1 and my ‘The Manuscripts of Verse Presented to Elizabeth I. A Preliminary Investigation,’ The Ben Jonson Journal 8 (2001): 147–205. 11. See the introduction and notes to Letter 1, below. 12. See Translations: 1544–89, 461 and below, Letter 1. 13. See Guillaume Coatalen and Jonathan Gibson ‘Six Holograph Letters in French from Queen Elizabeth I to the Duke of Anjou: Texts and Analysis,’ EFC, 37. Elizabeth’s interest in Ariosto might have been not purely literary: as Michael Wyatt has noted, ‘Ludovico Ariosto went further than any preceding Italian literary figure had done in appropriating an element of antique English culture, one that came to be of central importance in Tudor efforts to establish its historical legitimacy, when he utilized the legends associated with

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King Arthur and the Round Table for Orlando Furioso’ (Italian Encounter, 18). 14. The whole letter is transcribed in Angelo Solerti, Vita di Torquato Tasso, vol. 2 (Turin and Rome: Loescher, 1895), 204–5. See also Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney, 25; Lawrence, ‘Who the Devil Taught thee so Much Italian,’ 13–14 (which provides the translation); Petrina, ‘Elizabeth Learning and Using Italian,’ 99. Elizabeth might have had Tasso in mind when dictating her notes for the composition of Letter 23 and writing no. 29; see the textual notes to these letters, below. 15. Cf. John Florio’s Firste fruites ([London]: Thomas Dawson for Thomas Woodcocke, [1578]; STC2 11096; ESTC S105629 copy: Huntington Library via EEBO), sig. C3v (p. 11v): Amela i stranieri?

Doth shee loue strangers?

Adirui la verita, ella li ama quasi troppo.

To tel you the truth, shee loueth them almost too wel.

Parlela assai lingue? Lei parla otto lingue. Lei parla Greco, Latino, Italiano, Franzese, Spagniolo, Scozese, Fiamengo, e Inglese: tutte queste lingue parla benissimo, et eloquentemente[.]

Doth she speak many languages[?] She speaketh eight languages. She speaketh Greeke, Latine, Italian, French, Spanish, Scottish, Flemish, and English: al these tongues shee speaketh very wel, and eloquent.

Certo, voi mi fate restar quasi attonito, a sentir vi laudarla tanto.

Certis you make me rest almost astonied to heare you prayse her so much.

Pur che io la laudo, piu la merita.

The more I prayse her, the more shee deserues.

16. Rawdon Brown L’archivio di Venezia: con riguardo special alla storia inglese (Venice: Antonelli e Basadonna, 1865), 233; cf. also CSPVen, IX, 531–32, no. 1135. A year before, Elizabeth’s skills as a linguist in ‘Italion, French, Spainishe or Lattyn’ were praised at the entertainment at Cecil house, cf. Nichols’s Progresses, IV, 205–8. Cf also ibid., 550, note 35, and EFC, ix–xx for other contemporary comments on her proficiency in modern languages. On the doubtful authorship of the polylingual devotions printed in 1563 and 1569 see CW, xxii and 129–49. See also my review of the Translations volumes in TLS, 13 November 2009, 8.

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17. CSPVen, VI.2, 1556–57, 1043–85, no. 884; Petrina, ‘Elizabeth Learning and Using Italian,’ 94–96. 18. Giles, Works of Ascham, I.2, 447. See also Ryan, Ascham, 102–7, 216 (where mention is made of this letter), and 223–24; Petrina, ‘Elizabeth Learning and Using Italian,’ 96–97. As Petrina justly observes, given that this letter was not meant for public circulation, Ascham may be here ‘more reliable in terms of his estimation of Elizabeth’s intellectual abilities’ (110, note 1). 19. The package, sent via Mildred Astley, Elizabeth’s governess, included also a book of prayers; Gill, The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, I.1, 86–87; on the dating of this event see also Letters of Roger Ascham, ed. Alvin Vos, transl. Maurice Hatch and A. Vos (New York: Lang, 1989), 75–76 and Ryan, Ascham, 104–5. 20. Wyatt, Italian Encounter, 152. Many such opinions are indebted to Mariagrazia Bellorini’s article ‘Giovan Battista Castiglione, consigliere di Elisabetta I,’ in Contributi dell’istituto di filologia moderna, Serie inglese, ed. Sergio Rossi, Milan: Pubblicazioni dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 1974, 113–32. As Wyatt acknowledges, as early as 1983 Vittorio Gabrieli was somewhat sceptical about such claims; cf. Italian Encounter, 306 note 39; Vittorio Gabrieli, ‘Bernardino Ochino, ‘Sermo di Christo’: Un inedito di Elisabetta Tudor,’ La cultura 21:1 (1983):151–74. For a similar attitude see Petrina, ‘Elizabeth Learning and Using Italian,’ 108. 21. Cf. Massimo Firpo ‘Giovanni Battista Castiglione,’ DBI; Wyatt, Italian Encounter, 152. 22. BL, Royal MS 7 D X; Translations 1544–89, 179–99. 23. Stephen Wright, ‘Grindal, William (d. 1548),’ ODNB; see however Woudhuysen, ‘The Queen’s Own Hand: A Preliminary Account,’ in Peter Beal and Grace Ioppolo, eds., Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing (London: British Library, 2007), 1–2. 24. On the unlikeliness that this may be a work by Elizabeth see Translations 1544–89, 459–68. 25. Ibid., 1. 26. Aysha Pollnitz, ‘Christian Women or Sovereign Queens? The Schooling of Mary and Elizabeth,’ in Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock, eds., Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 133. See, however, Woudhuysen, ‘The Queen’s Own Hand,’ 3, note 11, who points out, quoting from

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Frank A. Mumby’s Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth, that the Council, in 1554, declared not to know anything of John Picton. 27. Charlotte Bolland, ‘Alla Prudentissima et Virtuosissima Reina Elisabetta: An Englishman’s Italian Dedication to the Queen,’ in Leadership and Elizabethan Culture, ed. Peter Iver Kaufman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 42. 28. Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, ‘Household Expenses of the Princess Elizabeth during Her Residence at Hatfield, October 1, 1551, to September 30, 1552,’ The Camden Miscellany , Old Series, 2 (1852): 34, 37, 42. Bolland, ‘Alla Prudentissima et Virtuosissima Reina Elisabetta,’ 42. 29. Cf. Bolland, ‘Alla Prudentissima et Virtuosissima Reina Elisabetta,’ 42; Bellorini, ‘Giovan Battista Castiglione, consigliere di Elisabetta I,’ 123; Firpo ‘Giovanni Battista Castiglione’. 30. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1558–1560 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1939), 251. 31. Klarwill, 105. 32. CP 4/15; dated ‘in Westminster alli 26 Marzo 1568’ but, erroneously dated ‘May 26’ in the Salisbury Catalogue, I, 356, no. 1173. 33. CP 169/27, dated from Benham, January 7/17, 1592/3. On Elizabeth’s early hand see below, 2.1. Jonathan Gibson has identified other documents in Castiglione’s secretary hand, which he does not consider significant for handwriting analysis; ‘The Queen’s Two Hands,’ in Alessandra Petrina and Laura Tosi, eds., Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 57. 34. Lawson, 628, which corrects the DBI article and Nichol’s Progresses I, 249 by evidencing that Castiglione last exchanged New Year’s gifts with the Queen in 1598. 35. Salisbury, II, 319. On Margherita Castiglione (née Compagni), Mother of the Maids of the Chamber, see Lawson, 628. 36. Bolland, ‘Alla Prudentissima et Virtuosissima Reina Elisabetta,’ 42. 37. On these men see Lawson, 628 and ad indicem; Bellorini, 123; Id. ‘Note di poesia nell’opera di Alberico Gentili, giurista elisabettiano (1532–1608),’ in Il passaggiere italiano, ed. Renzo Crivelli, Luigi Sampietro, and Joseph Trapp (Rome: Bulzoni, 1994), 139–55, and below, 2.3 and Letter 2a-b and 3. Castiglione published Aconcio’s Essortazione al timor di Dio, cf. Charles Donald O’Malley, Jacopo

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Aconcio (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1955), 181–82; Lawrence, ‘Who the Devil Taught thee so Much Italian,’ 6. 38. See Historia di Pietro Bizari. Della Guerra fatta in Ungheria dall’inuittissimo Imperatore de Christiani, contra quello de Turchi (Lyon, 1568), 205–6; Petrina, ‘Elizabeth Learning and Using Italian,’108–9. 39. Cf. Petrina, ‘Elizabeth Learning and Using Italian,’108–9. 40. Gianmario Raimondi, ‘Elizabeth’s Italian: Linguistic Standards and Interlingual Interference,’ in EFC, 159. 41. Ibid., 159; Armando Petrucci, ‘Storia e geografia delle culture scritte (dal secolo XI al secolo XVII),’ in Letteratura Italiana: Storia e geografia, II, L’età moderna, Torino 1988, 1267. See also Pietro Trifone, ‘La lingua e la stampa nel Cinquecento,’ in Storia della lingua italiana, ed. Luca Serianni and Pietro Trifone, 3 vols. (Turin: Einaudi, 1993), I, 434. 42. Raimondi, ‘Elizabeth’s Italian,’ 159. 43. Giles, Works of Ascham, III, 210. 44. Quoted in Lawrence, ‘Who the Devil Taught thee so Much Italian,’ 7, which also provides the translation (here slightly corrected as regards Lawrence’s use of ‘courtier’ instead of ‘servant,’ an inclusive and non-derogatory term which may also point to any of Elizabeth’s diplomats serving abroad). 45. Ibid., 7–8. 46. Interestingly, when Humphrey Gilbert proposed his scheme for ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Academy’ he suggested that it should maintain lectureships on and education in the traditional arts subjects, divinity and Roman law. In addition to this, Gilbert proposed that there should be stipendiary lecturers in French, Italian, Spanish and High Dutch; cf. Alexandra Gajda, ‘Education as a courtier’ in Dennis Flynn, M. Thomas Hester, and Jeanne Shami, eds., The Oxford Handbook of John Donne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 395–407; online edition via Oxford Handbooks Online ), 11. 47. Garrett Mattingly, ‘The Italian Beginnings of Modern Diplomacy’ in ‘Diplomacy’ in Modern European History, ed. Laurence W. Martin (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 1–14; cf. also Id., Renaissance Diplomacy (1955; New York: Cosimo, 2010), 55–108. On this topic see also Brinda Charry and Gitanjali Shahani (eds.), Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).

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48. See my ‘Tracing A ‘Lost’ Context: Henry Cheke’s Freewyl,’ Aevum 71 (1997): 711–30 and below, 2.3. For an edition of Negri’s tragedy (which, however, makes no mention of its English translation) see Francesco Negri da Bassano, Tragedia intitolata libero arbitrio (1546 / 1550), ed. Cristiano Casalini and Luana Salvarani (Rome: Anicia, 2014). 49. CSPSp , I, 89. Elizabeth could read Spanish but is not known to have spoken it; see, for example, SP 89/1, fol. 100, which includes a holograph postcript in this language and above, note 15; see also EFC, 115 and 143, note 2. 50. ‘La ‘Relatione d’Inghilterra’ di Petruccio Ubaldini,’ ed. Anna Maria Crinò, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, 3rd ser., vol. IX:2 (1979): 641–757; see 695–96 for this citation. See also Wyatt, Italian Encounter, 128. 51. Giuliana Iannaccaro, ‘Elizabeth’s Italian Rhetoric: The ‘Maximilian Letters’,’ in EFC, 181. 52. Ryan, Ascham, 147. Cf. also Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 21–22. 53. As Ascham warned in the second book of his Scholemaster (1570), without ‘all the trewe doctrine of Gods holie Bible’ even ‘Plato and Aristotle in Greeke, Tullie in Latin’ would be but ‘fine edge tooles in a fole or mad mans hand’; English Works, ed. William Aldis Wright (1904; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 266; see also, for a modernized text, Brian Vickers, ed., English Renaissance Literary Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 143. It is not surprising that Elizabeth’s imagery in her Italian as well as in her other letters is frequently biblical as well as literary (cf. ACFLO, xxviii). 54. On this point see also ACFLO, xxvii–xxix. 55. See ibid., xiii and below, introduction to letters 4–6. 56. Petrina, ‘Elizabeth Learning and Using Italian,’ 109. 57. For different versions of this text see CW, 346–54. 58. See the note to line 23 in no. 4b—draft 2. One may perhaps see a glimpse of this also in the en passant addition in the non-holograph Letter 2a (‘We hope, however that—this being our first request— because of your benevolence, such favour will be granted’). 59. ACFLO, 55 and 62; CW, 130. 60. Cf., e.g., Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works, ed. Steven W. May (New York: Washington Square Press, 2005), xix, 71–73; Giuliana Iannaccaro and Alessandra Petrina, ‘To and from the Queen:

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Modalities of Epistolography in the Correspondence of Elizabeth I,’ Journal of Early Modern Studies 3 (2014): 71–73. 61. Cf. Harold Love, Attributing Authorship: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), in particular 79–131. 62. Giles, Works of Ascham, I, 191; Ryan, Ascham, 107; Cf. also Woudhuysen, ‘The Queen’s Own Hand,’ 2. 63. Cf., for example, BL, Lansdowne MS 1236, fol. 37, reproduced in Woudhuysen, ‘The Queen’s Own Hand,’ 9 (plate 2); Letter 6b (Fig. 3) and Letter 4 (reproduced in EFC, 116–17 as Fig. 5.1), and Ascham’s hand in SP 1/214, fol. 54. Pryor, 41; Gibson, ‘The Queen’s Two Hands,’ 51–57 and 63, note 14. 64. See the introduction to Letter 4 below. 65. CW, 227. 66. On the survival of Elizabeth’s letters see below, 2.6. 67. Cf. the introduction to letters 4–6 below. 68. Alan Stewart, Shakespeare’s Letters (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 66. 69. James Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512–1635 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 10. See also Peter Hinds and James Daybell, eds., Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580–1730 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2010); Wim van Mierlo ‘The Archaeology of the Manuscript: Towards Modern Palaeography,’ in Carrie Smith and Lisa Stead, eds., The Boundaries of the Literary Archive: Reclamation and Representation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 15–29; Jonathan Gibson, ‘‘Dedans la plie de ma fidelle affection’: Familiarity and Materiality in Elizabeth’s Letters to Anjou,’ in EFC, 63–89. 70. Jeffrey F. Platt, ‘The Elizabethan Clerk of the Privy Council,’ Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 3 (1982): 123–42. 71. E.I. Kouri, Elizabethan England and Europe: Forty Unprinted Letters from Elizabeth I to Protestant Powers (London: University of London—Institute of Historical Research), 13. 72. SP 12/289. See The Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I: The Queen’s Translation of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, Noel Harold Kaylor and Philip Edward Phillips (eds.), MRTS, 366 (Tempe,

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Arizona: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2009). For a facsimile see Pryor, 112. 73. Cf. Florence M. Greir Evans, The Principal Secretary of State: a Survey of the Office from 1558 to 1680 (Manchester: Manchester University Press; London: Longman Green, 1923), 20–21; Kouri, Elizabethan England and Europe, 13–18; Jeffrey F. Platt, ‘The Elizabethan ‘Foreign Office’,’ The Historian 56/4 (1994): 725–40; Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 17–19; 25–28. 74. Cf. e.g. SP 70/5, fol. 7; Folger X d 138 items 1–2. See also Kouri Elizabethan England and Europe, 13. Ascham’s register for the ten years he served as Latin Secretary to Elizabeth is now BL, Royal MS 13 B. This manuscript presents both holograph transcripts and a number of copies in other hands; see Ryan, Ascham, 327. A list of the letters written to the European heads of State is in BL, Lansdowne MS 98/102, fol. 101v. On Ascham’s letters and works see Peter Beal’s introduction in the online Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700, . 75. For examples of Wolley’s hand (which Kouri, Elizabethan England and Europe, 14, believes, erroneously, to be that of Cambridge University Library MS Dd 3.20) see, for example, BL, Cotton MS Caligula C VIII, fol. 220; Lansdowne MS 18/64, 23/69 and 61/165. For an example of a final copy produced by one of Wolley’s scribes, complete with Elizabeth’s signature and her signet seal, see CP 147/82. For further instances of scribal copies written under Wolley’s supervision see below. 76. Wolley, who seems to have enforced the use of this style from the mid-1570s, may have been inspired by the mise en page of some (but by no means the majority) of Ascham’s letters; see, for example, Sir Roger’s holograph file copies in BL, Royal MS 13 B I, fols. 16–24 and Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, HausarchivFamilienakten, Karton 21 (formerly Karton 15), Konvolut 4, Faszikel 5, fol. 131. 77. See, however, Parkins’s holograph copy of a Latin letter from Elizabeth to Emperor Rudolph II, SP 80/1, fol. 181. Even if acting as Latin Secretary after Wolley’s death (28 February 1596), Parkins was officially appointed only in 1601; cf. Kouri, Elizabethan England and Europe, 14; Glyn Parry, ‘Wolley, Sir John,’ in ODNB. 78. Cf. Kouri, Elizabethan England and Europe, 13.

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79. See, however, Christopher Parkins’s note appended to one of the missives he worked on: ‘I send the English I had for the Turk’s letter, with two Latin letters for choice; the first is the English, word for word’ (CSPD, CCLVI, 18; see also Andreani, ‘Manuscripts, Secretaries and Scribes,’ in EFC, 22, note 33), which may suggest a clearer protocol had been established for the Latin correspondence. As will be shown below, this was not always the case with the Italian missives. 80. Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, Hausarchiv, Familienakten, Karton 21 (formerly Karton 15), Konvolut 4, Faszikel 5, fols. 124–25. 81. Cf. e.g. Cf. Disertissimi viri Rogeri Aschami, Angli, Regiae maiestati non ita pridem a Latinis epistolis, familiarium epistolarum libri tres (a ‘collected letters’ edition, which includes much more than merely ‘familiar’ topics. It was published in 1576, 1578, 1581 and 1590 (the latter two with a variant title). See also Rogeri Aschami epistolarum, libri quatuor, ed. William Elstob (Oxoniæ: typis Lichfieldianis, prostant venales apud Henricum Clements, 1703); Giles, Works of Ascham; Vos, Letters of Roger Ascham. No Italian letters are included in another short compilation of letters written by Ascham for Elizabeth now in BL, Lansdowne MS 98 (item 12, fols. 69–102v). 82. As noted above, this manuscript is evidently not in Wolley’s hand; cf. e.g. BL, Lansdowne MS 18/64 and Cotton MS Caligula C IX, fol. 220. 83. On this manuscript see A. E. B. Owens, ‘Sir John Wolley’s LetterBook as Latin Secretary to Elizabeth I,’ Archives 11 (1973–4), 16–18, and below, Letter 7. The watermark found in this volume is almost identical to Briquet 12751 (Gravell Pot.448.1), found in documents dated 1594 and 1596. Cf. also Robert Cecil’s note of March 1596: ‘Such Latin letters as were in Sir John Wolley’s custody would not be neglected, but rather be committed to some fit man who is like to look them over, that he may be readier for all occasions’ (Salisbury, VI, 92; my emphasis). 84. Salisbury, IV, 576. 85. That Parkins dealt almost exclusively with the Latin correspondence is further suggested by his statements concerning some letters to Venice. In 1599 he sent Robert Cecil what appears to be a detailed answer to a query: ‘I haue not certayne memorye yf hyr majesty hathe at any tyme writen any more than hyr name simply vnder hyr letters to the Duke of Venice. but I remember well the matter hathe byn in

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questione yf hyr highness myght conueniently vse the same manner of writinge to hym as to other Princes. wherof my opinione ever was that forasmuche as the Duke of Venice is commonly no Prince by byrthe, and rather in effecte the head of a commonwelthe then a monarche he shold haue some difference. Uppon which reason I think it convenient hyr hyghness write hyr name simplye with owt additione of bona soror etc. […] wheras to other monarches hyr majesties tytle in the beginninge of suche letters as I have writen hathe byn fratri et consanguineo carissimo. but to Venice I never used the word fratri or consanguineo’ (CP 69/37; cf. the summary in Salisbury, 9, 122). Parkins is here just touching on matters of Latin diplomatic style, as if Italian had never been used in the correspondence. 86. In the mid-1580s Cecil received a series of letters in Italian connected with the peace negotiations in the Netherlands, which he annotated in his hand; cf. e.g. SP 77/1, fols. 179, 194, 194v. See also above, 1. Ascham’s role was evidently quite different during the reign of Mary, when he would be drafting, at times, a significant number of Latin letters in a very limited period of time; cf. Ryan, Ascham, 204. 87. Cf. Ian W. Archer ‘Smith, Sir Thomas (1513–1577)’ in ODNB; Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle, 224; Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters 23–25. 88. Interestingly, the only Italian letters composed during Smith’s tenure of the secretaryship appear in the letter-book of the Latin Secretary Sir John Wolley (Cambridge University Library, MS Dd 3.20), who would later actively collaborate with the Cecils; see below. Wilson had, nevertheless, good knowledge of Italian, and some of his holograph letters composed in this language connected to his position are extant: cf. e.g. SP 70/141, fol. 121. 89. See Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, 86–88; Read, Walsingham, vol. I; Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle, 258–59. 90. Mark Taviner, Robert Beale and The Elizabethan Polity, unpublished PhD. dissertation, University of St. Andrews, 2000, 116. 91. See Wallace T. MacCaffrey, ‘Cecil, William, first Baron Burghley (1520/21–1598)’ in ODNB; Doran, Elizabeth I and Her Circle, 279; Christopher Maginn, William Cecil, Ireland, and the Tudor State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 59–60; 78. 92. William Petre, appointed under Mary, was retained as a councillor by Elizabeth. He does not seem, however, to have held any office

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lxix

of state, apart from a brief spell as acting secretary when Cecil was in Scotland in the summer of 1559 (cf. e.g. Evans, The Principal Secretary of State, 45, 156; C. S. Knighton, ‘Petre, Sir William (1505/6–1572),’ in ODNB.). On what has been termed an ‘escalation’ in the number of documents either penned or amended by Robert Cecil in the mid-1590s see Andreani, The Letters of Queen Elizabeth I, 98–100 and Id., ‘Manuscripts, Secretaries, and Scribes,’ 16. 93. See the apparatus to no. 20, below. I identified Windebank’s hand shortly after the publication of my ‘Editing Elizabeth’s Italian Letters,’ in which his work was attributed to the unidentified scribe ‘A’. Windebank was known to be proficient in Italian (see the Italian missives from Andreas de Loo, SP 12/231, fol. 121 and Niccolò Sinibaldi, SP 70/70, fol. 112) and French (cf. the messages received from Beauvoir la Nocle, SP 78/22, fol. 157 and Daniel de Burchgrave, SP 84/20, fol. 94, and Jael, Lady Killigrew, SP 12/279, fol. 192: see also Windebank’s holograph letter to Lady Killigrew in this language, SP 12/279, fol. 193). 94. Evans, Principal Secretary of State, 21, 171; see also Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 27. 95. Evans, Principal Secretary of State, 169 and 171; Pauline Croft, ‘Cecil, Robert, first earl of Salisbury (1563–1612),’ in ODNB; A Monarchy of Letters, 27. 96. ‘B’ was clearly influenced by Jehan de Beauchesne and John Baildon’s A Booke Containing Divers Sortes of Hands (first published in 1570). His capital ‘A,’ ‘P’ and his ‘ch’ ligature, in fact, are strongly reminiscent of the style which appears in this book, the majuscules being quite similar to the capital letters on sig. G2v in the 1571 edition (STC2 6446; ESTC S118239: British Library copy via EEBO). The fact that other scribes of the Elizabethan ‘foreign secretariat’ seem to have been similarly influenced has invited caution, and suggested the revision of some of the statements put forward in my ‘Editing Elizabeth I’s Italian Letters,’ Journal of Early Modern Studies 3 (2014): 41–68. In general, the principles for hand identification in this study follow Tom Davies’s ‘The Practice of Handwriting Identification,’ The Library, 7th series, 8;3 (2007): 251–76. 97. As a comparison of the two versions can prove, Windebank had better Italian; he punctuated with care and abundantly. ‘B,’ while generally copying out what was in front of him, frequently omitted what

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he evidently perceived as superfluous commas, and tended to turn Windebank’s ‘o’s into ‘u’s. 98. Cf. forms such as ‘ricognosceremo’ and ‘dismenticaremo,’ or even ‘verzo’. I am grateful to Luca Serianni for this suggestion.   99. Cf. BL, Cotton MS Nero B VI, fols. 250–51. For a history of the negotiations see León Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, Prince de Parme, Gouverneur Général des Pays-Bas (5 vols., Brussels: Librairie Nationale d’Art et d’Histoire, 1933–57), V, 85–113; F. G. Oosterhoff, Leicester and the Netherlands: 1586–1587 (Utrecht: Hes, 1988), 167–69; 171– 79. On Grafigna’s role in the negotiations with Parma see SP 84/9, fols. 112–13 and Grafigna’s account of his interview with the Duke in his letter to Lord Cobham, CP 163/68. See also Parma’s letter to Philip II in AGS, Secretaría de Estado, Negociación de Flandes, 590, fol. 47. 100. Cf. below and Windebank’s endorsement of his transcript of letter 26 (SP 98/1, fol. 113) ‘the 25th of Octobre | Copy of a letter from Her Majesty to the Duke of Florence in Italian the instructions given me by Her Majesty’s self at Richmond’. 101. See Letters 10–13 below. On these letters see also Taviner, Robert Beale, 169–70. 102. See, for example, Platt, ‘The Elizabethan Foreign Office’,’ 730: ‘The secretaries of the French and Latin tongues translated all the Queen’s, Council’s, and Principal Secretary’s formal foreign correspondence. ... There four Signet clerks transformed the Queen’s ­foreign correspondence and formal instructions to ambassadors into Signet letters.’ 103. This manuscript presents a watermark similar, though not identical, to Briquet 13982. 104. Read, Walsingham, I, 426. 105. Cf. Platt, ‘The Elizabethan Clerk of the Privy Council,’ 124; Id., ‘The Elizabethan Foreign Office,’ 728–30; Jacqueline D. Vaughan, ‘Secretaries, Statesmen and Spies: the Clerks of the Tudor Privy Council, c. 1540-c.1603,’ unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of St. Andrews, 2006, 64. 106. See Vaughan, ‘Secretaries, Statesmen and Spies,’ 41–42; 194. A specimen of the handwriting of the second Thomas Smith is visible in CP 46/20. For a recent brief biographical sketch on and a list of the books owned by Hampton see also Dennis E. Rhodes, ‘Barnard Hampton and His Books,’ The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 15:3 (2014): 343–46.

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107. On the clerks of the Privy Council see Vaughan, ‘Secretaries, Statesmen and Spies.’ For a complete list of their appointments and tenure see ibid., 194–98; for a list of both these and of the clerks of the Signet, see the on-line publication prepared at the Institute for Historical Research, Office Holders in Modern Britain [http://www.history. ac.uk/resources/office]. Faunt’s discourse is printed in Charles Hughes, ‘Nicholas Faunt’s Discourse Touching the Office of Principal Secretary of Estate, &c. 1592,’ The English Historical Review 20:79 (1905): 499–508. On Henry Cheke see above, 1.2-3. See also Kenneth R. Bartlett, ‘Tremayne, Edmund (c.1525–1582)’ and Roger Lockyer, ‘Lake, Sir Thomas  (bap.  1561,  d.1630),’ in  ODNB. On Windebank see Richard C. Barnett, Place Profit and Power: A Study of the Servants of William Cecil, Elizabethan Statesman (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 146–54, the old DNB entry related to him, and ODNB, s.v. ‘Windebank, Francis.’ 108. Cf. Stephen Alford, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 305 and passim. On Cecil’s secretariat and, in particular, Hicks, Skinner and Maynard see Alan G. R. Smith, ‘The Secretariats of the Cecils, circa 1580–1612,’ The English Historical Review 83 (1968): 481–504, Id., Servant of the Cecils: The Life of Sir Michael Hicks (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977). A comparison between their surviving holograph documents has failed to associate their hands to Elizabeth’s Italian letters. 109. Cf. Kouri, Elizabethan England and Europe, 4–5; 12–13; Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 148–56; my ‘Tracing A ‘Lost’ Context: Henry Cheke’s Freewyl’ and my ODNB entry on Cheke; Carole Levin, ‘Faunt, Nicholas (1553/4–1608),’ in  ODNB; Vaughan, ‘Secretaries, Statesmen and Spies,’ 43; Gary M. Bell, ‘Beale, Robert (1541– 1601)’ in ODNB. On Cecil’s secretariat and servants see also Barnett, Place Profit and Power. 110. Cf. CSPF, XIV, 442 (that the main body of the text is in Walsingham’s hand seems, however, incorrect). On Tomson see Luke MacMahon, ‘Tomson, Laurence  (1539–1608),’ in  ODNB and I. Backus, ‘Laurence  Tomson and Elizabethan Puritanism,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 28 (1977): 17–27.

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111. Jonathan Goldberg, Writing Matter: from the Hands of the English Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 265. 112. ‘A Treatise of the Office of a Councellor and Principall Secretarie to her Majestie,’ BL, Additional MS 48149, fols. 36–96, printed in Read, Walsingham, I, 423–43. Some significant excerpts are also included in Geoffrey Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary ([1960]; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 125–28. 113. Goldberg, Writing Matter, 266. 114. Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity, 11. See also Vaughan, ‘Secretaries, Statesmen and Spies,’ 50: ‘Had the clerks worked merely as stenographers or secretaries their work experience would have been irrelevant and the position could have been filled by any Oxford or Cambridge graduate. The participation in events and proximity to power of the office itself required the selection of multi-talented clerks, and the importance of their selection and placement is reiterated by the change of clerks after a change of regime.’ 115. Kouri, Elizabethan England and Europe, 15; Vaughan, ‘Secretaries, Statesmen and Spies,’ 21–23. As Vaughan notes, ‘being clerk did not exclude these men from holding other government positions, frequently including posts outside of England, a situation that ... became more frequent during Elizabeth’s reign. ... The clerkship often led to promotion, both in diplomatic office and in central government. This is true of most of the clerks, and holds true even for those who remained clerks until retirement or death’ (‘Secretaries, Statesmen and Spies,’ 14). 116. Vaughan, ‘Secretaries, Statesmen and Spies,’ 79. Another, earlier, example is that of Hampton, a man ‘well versed in the Spanish tongue,’ who, together with Armagil Waad, translated documents from this language. Indeed, Hampton was so talented that he served as Spanish secretary to Queen Mary during his clerkship of the Privy Council’ (Vaughan ‘Secretaries, Statesmen and Spies,’ 78). On a specialist in Polish affairs who does not appear to have been part of the English ‘Foreign Office’ see Sebastian Sobecki, ‘‘A man of curious enquiry’: John Peyton’s Grand Tour to central Europe and Robert Cecil’s Intelligence Network, 1596–1601,’ Renaissance Studies 29:3 (2014), 394–410.

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117. A comparison has been carried out between the holograph letters of these men (on whose career in England see Wyatt, Italian Encounter, ad indicem, and Andrew Ashbee, ‘Lupo, Thomas (bap. 1571?, d. 1627/8?),’ in ODNB) and the drafts, duplicates and final copies of the Italian missives. One may want to remember that John Florio’s career at court started in the Jacobean era; cf. Frances A. Yates, John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), 246 ff. 118. For a reproduction of this manuscript see my Editing Elizabeth I’s Italian Letters: 60. 119. Elizabeth began writing the text herself; at book 3 prose 1, however, probably for reasons of time (cf. Translations: 1592–98, 50) she began dictating to Windebank. On the schedule imposed by such a short period of time see Windebank’s memorandum, which is attached to the original manuscript, SP 12/289, fols. 9–19; cf. also Translations: 1592–98, 49–53. One may also want to remember that Windebank had collaborated with Wolley between 1587 and 1590, when, during Sir Francis Walsingham’s frequent bouts of ill health, Wolley had taken on most of the routine work of the office of the Secretary; cf. Parry, ‘Wolley, Sir John,’ in ODNB. 120. Cf., for a comparison of the hand in these notes and Windebank’s hand, BL, Cotton MS Nero B I, fol. 179. Windebank, in fact, seems to have annotated many of the holograph drafts by Elizabeth which he happened to handle; cf. e.g. his note to the Queen’s translation of Plutarch’s ‘On Curiosity’ (SP 12/289, fols. 90r–99v): ‘her Maiestes translation of a treatise of Curiositie written by Plutark, and putt into English miter. begon the iijde of this Nouember, and ended the ixth of the same monith, and copied out by her Maiestes [order] to me the xiijto of November.’ [3–9, 13 November 1598]. 121. See, also below, Letter 26, for another possible similar case. In a letter to Robert Cecil, Windebank stated that the reason why he had not sent some ‘letters sooner was the taking copies of them, for making entryes’ CP 88/102). As witnessed by Gui (the register now at the London Metropolitan Archives), and in much other surviving evidence, including the Italian manuscripts mentioned in this section, he was frequently busy preparing file documents of this sort. His italic hand can be seen in ten copies of Elizabeth’s missives to James VI of Scotland datable from the late 1580s to 1603 (CP 133/24, 82, 86,

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87, 88, 90, 91, 95, 142; 134/19). As a comparison between Elizabeth’s 1588 holograph letter to James (BL, Additional MS 23240, art. 22, fol. 71) and the file copy in CP 133/34 can show, Windebank was extremely accurate when transcribing: only one mistake in about 410 words (an error ratio of 0.2 percent) can be found in the latter document. Windebank occasionally added, when necessary, some punctuation to his original (in two instances in this case), and normalized Elizabeth’s spellings quite consistently. In CP 133/34, he almost invariably amended the Queen’s distinctive use of ‘hit’ to ‘it,’ and most of her typical ‘ar’ endings to ‘er’. There seems to be little reason why he did not act similarly when—if at all—copying out the Queen’s Italian holographs. One may want to remember that Windebank’s copy of Letter 4 was taken from a lost intermediate copy; see the introduction to this missive below. 122. Lambeth Palace Library, MS 658, fol. 88; Heather Wolfe and Alan Stewart, Letterwriting in Renaissance England (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2004), 55. 123. Robert Cecil to Windebank, 14 May 1602: SP 12/284, fol. 21 (CSPD, 1601–1603, 190). Cecil is here mixing vernacular and Latin in his ‘al more solito’ (‘in the usual style’), and half-quoting a wellknown maxim from Ulpian, found in the digest of the Justinian laws ‘Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem’ (Digesta 1.4.1), ‘what a Prince has determined, has the force of a statute’; cf. The Digest of Justinian, transl. Charles Henry Monro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904), I, 23. The letter, not attached to Cecil’s, could be one of Elizabeth’s letters to James VI dating from this period. In May 1602 (as he had done in the past at least since 1588) Windebank copied and sent Sir Robert one of the Queen’s missives transcribed from Elizabeth’s holograph, which is still extant among the Cecil Papers, CP 133/90. 124. Read, Walsingham, I, 439. 125. Elton, The Tudor Constitution, 304. 126. Cf. Mary Hill Cole, ‘Monarchy in Motion: An Overview of Elizabethan Progresses,’ in The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I, ed. Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring and Sarah Knight (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007), 27–45. Quite significantly, both the first draft of the missive to Brutti and the final version of the 1595 letter to Ferdinando I bear the same Eagle watermark (similar to Briquet 224) found on Elizabeth’s holograph translation of

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Cicero’s Pro Marcello, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS 900, probably written c. 1592; cf. Translations: 1592–98, 3–10; cf. also Woudhuysen, ‘The Queen’s Own Hand,’ 27 and below, nos. 20 and 24b. This watermark was in use at the English Court even before the 1590s: cf. Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, England-Hofkorrespondenz, Konvolut 2, fols. 20–21, a letter from Elizabeth to Rudolph II, dated 17 July 1582. 127. Cf. Wyatt, Italian Encounter, 144–45, and below, letter 21. 128. Even if a native of Genoa, one should add, Palavicino was in a position to have a good understanding of the situation in central Italy, and Tuscany in particular, as he and his family had been dealing in alum from at least the 1570s until the early 1580s; cf. Lawrence Stone, An Elizabethan: Sir Horatio Palavicino (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 41–64, in particular 47–49; 63. See also below, Letters 14 and 21. 129. See Hughes, ‘Nicholas Faunt’s Discourse’: 500. 130. This work could have been made less troublesome also by consultation of selected sources. As Mark Taviner notes, Beale’s ‘various textual and personal sources for the answers to his queries’ were ‘a list of recognizably English books such as the ‘Bible in Inglish,’ the unnamed ‘Boke of presidentes,’ ‘The boke called the Register’ and ‘The boke of Statutes,’ as well as a wide variety of volumes of examples of Italian and French letters and books on notarial practice. ... These little notes and reminders that Beale made in the first months of his service show the multiplicity of the textual and personal sources for authority and information on proper practice that a budding Clerk of the Privy Council needed to become familiar with’ (Taviner, Robert Beale, 132–33). 131. Cf. Heather Wolfe, ‘Neatly Sealed, With Silk, and Spanish Wax or Otherwise’: The Practice of Letter-Locking with Silk Floss in Early Modern England,’ in S. P. Cerasano and Steven W. May, eds., ‘In the Prayse of Writing’: Early Modern Manuscript Studies in Honour of Peter Beal (London: British Library, 2012), 169–89; Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 28–35. 132. For colour illustration of these letters see my ‘Editing Elizabeth’s Italian Letters,’ 61–62. 133. Cf. Valentina Bricchi, ‘A Better Understanding for a Better Nation: The Italian Experience of William Thomas,’ Textus 24:3 (2011): 513.

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134. Andrea Da Mosto, L’Archivio di Stato di Venezia, 2 vols. (Rome: Biblioteca d’Arte, 1937–40), I, 16. See also Id., I dogi di Venezia nella vita pubblica e privata (Milan: Martello [1960]). 135. AsVe, Collegio, Lettere Principi 33, fol. 7. 136. On Walsingham and Beale’s role in this section of the letter see the introduction to nos. 10–13 below. 137. CSPF, VIII, 558, no. 2563. Cf. also Brendan Simms and D. J. B. Trim, Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 43–44. 138. SP 70/102, fol. 107. This document was brought to my attention by Guillaume Coatalen, who has discussed it in his paper ‘Quelques lettres bilingues de la reine Élisabeth Ière’ delivered at the SAES conference in 2011. 139. CP 83/48; cf. Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 26. 140. Salisbury, V, 12–16; on the context see Wernham, Return of the Armadas, 17–18. 141. CP 31/20; cf. Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 26–27. 142. Robert Beale, ‘A Treatise of the Office of a Councellor,’ BL, Additional MS 48149 (fols. 3v–9v), fol. 8. 143. Pryor, 7. In this, Elizabeth’s attitude appears to be very different from that of her father, Henry VIII: cf. David Starkey, ‘Court and Government,’ in Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration ed. Christopher Coleman and David Starkey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 47–50 and Seth Lerer, Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 87–89. 144. Cf. Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 26. Windebank himself once noted that when Elizabeth was interested in the contents of a missive being read to her, she would grab it; cf. ibid. and CP 83/48. 145. Iannaccaro and Petrina, ‘To and from the Queen’: 70. 146. Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 27. 147. On this topic see Andreani, ‘Manuscripts, Secretaries, and Scribes,’ 6. 148. Hughes, ‘Nicholas Faunt’s Discourse’: 503–4; see also E. John B. Allen, Post and Courier Service in the Diplomacy of Early Modern Europe (Nijhoff: The Hague, 1972), 127. Robert Beale gave similar advice, cf. Daybell Material Letter, 180 and Taviner, ‘Robert Beale and the Elizabethan polity,’132–33. 149. Faunt, Discourse, 504–5.

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150. See Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga 578 E. XII. 1 (‘Corrispondenza estera, Inghilterra e Scozia, Lettere Reali ai Principi di Mantova’), which only preserves a letter from 1597. 151. Respectively, BL, Royal MS 13 B I, fols. 101v, 129, 193 and AsFi, Mediceo del Principato 4183, fols. 16, 17, 18r–v. 152. Gui, pp. 400–1 and 458, and 187; ASVe, Collegio, Lettere Principi 33, fols. 16 and 22. 153. Cf. AsNa, MS Museo 99.c.32, fol. [7v], which states that what was once a volume of holograph missives from ‘Princes, Emperors and various Monarchs’ (including Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots) to Margaret is now incomplete. The volume is now MS Farnesiano 258, and no such letters are contained in it. 154. Cf. for example, AsGe, Archivio Segreto, 2827, which contains a minute of a letter to Elizabeth, 5 July 1580. See also Archivio Segreto, 1868, fols. 19–20v (3/13 September 1591) and 21v–22 (24 July/3 August 1591), and 1870, fol. 198 (10/20 August 1596), all Latin letters to the Queen, also found in SP 79, items 4–6. AsGe, Archivio Segreto, 1868, fol. 62r–v, a missive from the Doge addressed to Horatio Palavicino makes explicit mention of the receipt of a letter from the Queen, who appears to be ‘very well disposed’ towards the Genoese Republic (‘Dalla lettera della Maestà di cotesta Regina e dalla vostra parimente habbiamo ueduto e conosciuto ... la bonissima inclinatione sua verso questa Repubblica’). 155. AsGe, MS 349. Two entries on fol. 82r–v of this manuscript, to cite but one example, acknowledge receipt of the letters from James I now in Archivio Segreto, 2782/7, fols. 252–55. 156. John Harington, Nugae Antiquae, ed. Thomas Park, 2 vols. (London: J. Wright, 1804), I, 115; cf. also Harrison, xiii and Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 20 157. See above, note 1.

LETTER 1

To Katherine Parr 31 July 1544 Holograph

I

Date and Occasion

nternal and external evidence, including a watermark similar to Briquet 11262, assigns this letter (dated simply ‘from Saint James, the 31 of July’) to the summer of 1544, when Katherine Parr was Regent during Henry VIII’s absence due to the siege of Boulogne.1 This was a new situation indeed for the young Elizabeth. Between the death of Jane Seymour and the marriage to Katherine Howard there had been no queen’s household for her to join. She had been attached to Howard’s for the brief period it lasted; in 1543 she had joined Parr’s household. Elizabeth, however, had not taken part in the prolonged Progress of that year, when the King and his newly wedded wife travelled through Surrey, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire.2 The King left for France on 11 July of the following year. Prior to this date, arrangements had been made for the then eight-year old Prince Edward to set up his own household (7 July) and end the ‘royal nursery,’ moving from Whitehall to Hampton Court. Here he was joined by his sister, Mary, and his stepmother on 21 July.3 Elizabeth evidently felt she should not let pass such an opportunity to re-enter the royal household just as Mary—who had already joined the Court fully in 1542—had managed to do. That said, her use of terms such as ‘exile’ and ‘envious fortune’ to refer to her separation from Katherine should not be taken literally. She had just been reinstated to the succession during the 1544 spring Session of Parliament, and it was merely © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_1

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due to a series of coincidences that she had not met her stepmother during her last visit to Court a month before this letter was written.4 On 26 June 1544, she had taken part in a grand dinner at Whitehall which Katherine does not appear to have attended. The dinner was followed by a ‘void,’ a somewhat less formal ‘standing’ reception, intended to introduce Henry’s children and successors to the Court.5 No matter how significant on a symbolic level, this could not, however, alter the fact that, by virtue of the 1536 Succession Act, Elizabeth (and Mary) had not been legitimized.6 The hyperbolic language of this missive expresses Elizabeth’s desire to be reunited with the Queen, but also shows her will to re-establish a relationship with her father.7 This was something Katherine also sought to achieve in her letters to her husband, as the writer gratefully acknowledges; significantly, Elizabeth’s message closes with her wish that they can jointly rejoice in Henry’s hoped-for return from his enemies. Elizabeth’s use of Italian may well have been a deliberate choice, a means to attract attention to her text. Katherine’s interest in Italian language and culture is witnessed by an entry in the inventory of her books (which mentions one on vellum in this language), and by her patronage of the Venetian Court musicians, the Bassano brothers.8 In addition to this, it is worth noting that, either in 1543 or in this very year, Katherine came into possession of a copy of Petrarch’s Canzoniere and Triumphi with the lengthy introduction and learned exposition by Alessandro Vellutello (printed in Venice in 1543).9 The choice of language was timely indeed. If there is a possibility that Elizabeth had heard about Katherine’s Petrarch volume, it seems equally probable that some of the Court tutors recommended the use of Italian—and perhaps helped the would-be princess in her composition.10 Texts The holograph of Elizabeth’s first letter (BL, Cotton MS Otho C X, fol. 235)11 was damaged in the fire which threatened to destroy the Cotton collection in 1731; fortunately, a copy of it had been made prior to this date, and is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Smith 68, fol. 50 (Sm68).12 The text in angular brackets is taken from this source; given the rather poor quality of the Sm68 transcript, occasionally, alternative conjectural readings have been provided and noted in the apparatus.

To Katherine Parr 

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The translation below draws freely, with occasional corrections, from the one presented in CW, 5–6. 1. L’inimica fortuna inuidiosa d’ogni bene, et voluitrice de cose humane priuò per un’anno intero della Illustrissima presentia vostra, et non ess anchora contenta di questo, vn’altra uolta me spoglio del mede bene: la qual cosa a me saria intollerabile, s’io non pensassi be di goderla. Et in questo mio exilio certamente conosco la cle sua altezza hauer hauuto cura, et sollicitudine, della sanità m quanto fatto haurebbe la maiestà del Re. Per la qual cosa n sono tenuta de seruirla, ma etiandio da figlial amore reuer 4 ben tosto] bien tosto Sm68  5 conosco] conostò Sm68 6 sollicitudine] solicitudine Sm68  7 maiestà] majestà Sm68  Per] Par Sm68

1 L’inimica... inuidiosa: cf. Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae 2.3, where Fortune looks at the speaker ‘liventi oculo’ (‘with an envious eye’; much later in her life, Elizabeth was to translate this as ‘with a heavy eye,’ Translations: 1592–98, 132). The theme of envious fortune, however, is a well-known classical topos (see e.g. Virgil, Aeneid, XI.42–44), and knew a number of variations in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; see Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927), esp. 48–49. Interestingly, the expression ‘fortuna, a me sempre nemica’ is found in Petrarch (Canzoniere 259), whose work, as seen above, Katherine might have been reading just at that time. 1 voluitrice... humane: cf. Elizabeth’s translation of Cicero’s Pro Marcello, where Fortune is called ‘the leadar of all worldly haps’ (Translations 1592–98, 20). The idea that Fortune rules and overthrows ‘all things’ (Translations: 1544–89, 255) figures prominently in Calvin’s Institutio Christianae Religionis (1536), the first chapter of which Elizabeth translated from the French edition (1541) and presented to Katherine in December 1545. Florio 1611 has an entry for ‘Volutrice fortuna,’ translated as ‘fleeting or changing fortune.’ 2 anno intero: the marriage between Henry and Katherine was celebrated on 12 July 1543, and the couple left on the progress a few days later; Elizabeth, who might have accompanied them only for the first part of the tour, was certainly back to continue her schooling by 13 August; Starkey, Six Wives, 717–18. 3 vn’altra uolta... bene: Katherine was not present at the dinner at Whitehall, which took place on 26 June 1544; Elizabeth, however, may as well refer to the fact that she failed to see her during the autumn, when the Royal Court and the households of the royal children were in close proximity; cf. Starkey, Six Wives, 740–1.

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intendendo vostra Illustrissima Altezza non me hauer domentic volta che alla maiestà del Re ha scritto: il che a me ap quella prieghare. Pero infino a qua non hebbi ardire d per il che al presente uostra Eccellentissima altezza humilmente che scriuendo a sua maistà si degni de raccommend gando sempre sua dolce benedettione, similmente pr l signore Iddio gli mandi successo bonissimo acquis soui inimici, accioche piu presto possia uostra a me con Lei rallegrarsi del suo felice retorno. N dio, che conserui sua Illustrissima altezza alla cui gr asciando le mani m’offero et raccomm Jacobo alli 31 di Julio.

12 Eccellentissima] Eccelentissima Sm68  13 maistà] majestà Sm68  reccommendarmela] ~ first altered to reccommendarmelo and later to reccommendarmeli Sm68 16 possia] possio Sm68  18 conserui] conserve Sm68  20 alli] alla Sm68 21 figliola] filiogla, Sm68

Letter 1—Translation Inimical Fortune, envious of all good, she who revolves all things human, has deprived me of your most illustrious presence for an entire year; and

9 domenticata: rather than being an error, this form of ‘dimenticata’ / ‘dimenticato’ is found in a number of contemporary sources, including Pietro Bembo’s Lettere (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1562, sig. F1) and in Girolamo Muzio’s Lettere Catholiche (Venice: G. Andrea Valvassori, 1571, sig. 2H3). 11 quella prieghare: i.e., ‘quel pregare’ or ‘quella preghiera.’ Elizabeth is here stressing the fact that Katherine was so attentive to her stepdaughter’s needs as to even anticipate her pleading to her father. In fact, in her extant letters to Henry, the Queen repeatedly mentioned the fact that all of his children were well and in good health; cf. Letters no. 7, 10, 12, 13 and 15 in Katherine Parr: CWR, 58–69. 15 il signore... inimici: Mueller suggests a possible precedent for this appeal in Katherine’s translation of John Fisher’s ‘A prayer for the King’ (‘that he may vanquish and overcome all his and our foes,’ Katherine Parr: CWR, 363–64), which is possible; similar phrases, however, are very common in Renaissance devotional texts.

To Katherine Parr 

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still not being content, has divested me of that same good, which would be intolerable to me if I did not think to enjoy it again soon. And in this my exile I know surely that your highness’ clemency has had as much care and solicitude for my health as His majesty the King would have had. For which I am not only bound to serve you, but also to revere you with daughterly love, since I am aware that your most illustrious highness has not forgotten me every time you have written to His majesty the King, which would have been for me to do. This is why, heretofore I have not dared to write to him, and why at present I humbly entreat your most excellent highness that when writing to his majesty you will deign to recommend me to him, ever entreat his sweet benediction and likewise entreat the Lord God grant him every success in gaining victory over his enemies so that your highness, and I together with you, may the sooner rejoice at his happy return. I entreat nothing else from God but that He may preserve your most illustrious highness, to whose grace, humbly kissing your hands, I offer and commend myself. From Saint James on the thirty-first of July. Your most obedient daughter and most faithful servant. Elizabeth

3 divested: rather than ‘to rob,’ this may be the meaning for ‘spogliare’ Elizabeth had in mind, similar to the OED, ‘divest,’ v. 2a: ‘To strip (a person or thing) of possessions, rights, or attributes; to denude, dispossess, deprive’ (the first occurrence given here, however, is the Myrrour for Magistrates, 1563). 4 soon: cf. Vocabolario Treccani, s.v. ‘bentosto.’ 10 This is why: the Latinate sense of ‘però,’ deriving from ‘per hoc’—‘for this’—is well attested in Italian (Cf. Vocabolario Treccani, ‘però,’ cong., 2; see also the Vocabolario della Crusca, which notes the similarity between this and Latin ‘ideo,’ ‘idcirco.’). It is present in a well-known line of Petrarch’s Canzoniere ‘tempo non mi parea da far riparo Contra colpi d’Amor: però m’andai Secur, senza sospetto’ (III, ll. 5–7). This meaning makes very good sense in Elizabeth’s letter instead of ‘however,’ which would undermine the rhetorical (and logic) crescendo of her text. One may also want to note that she used ‘però’ in this way in her letters to Maximilian II (nos. 5 and 6 below).

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Notes 1. Cf. CW, 5; ACFLO, 5–6. The watermark presents affinities also with Gravell Hand 047.1, datable to the mid-late 1540s. 2. See Simon Adams, Elizabeth I (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, forthcoming), and the note to line 2 in the letter, below. For a different chronology and interpretation of these events see Starkey, Six Wives, 718–19. 3. SP 1/189, fols. 184–86; see also LP, XIX, i, 864; 943, 954. See also Starkey, Six Wives, 738–40 and Katherine Parr: CWC, 51–52. 4. Starkey, Six Wives, 719 (citing PRO OBS 1419); Id., Apprenticeship, 30–32. 5. Starkey, Apprenticeship, 31. 6. The 1536 Succession Act could not be repealed, though the King had the power to name any of his blood to titles, which he did in 1544 (also, as a first instalment of his will—which he was empowered by the 1536 Act to use to establish the succession); cf. Michael A. R. Graves, Henry VIII: A Study in Kingship (London: Pearson Longman, 2003), 121–22. Mary would later solve the problem by having her mother’s divorce overturned in 1553, and Elizabeth followed suit in 1559. I am indebted to Simon Adams for this note. 7. As noted by Starkey, Apprenticeship, 36 one should remember that it would have been considered unseemly for Elizabeth, for reasons of etiquette and ‘royal good manners,’ to dare to write to her father directly. The rule that no one, excluding the King’s ministers, wives (and/or mistresses) and ambassadors, could initiate an unsolicited correspondence applied to the royal children as well. 8. Linda Porter, Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr (London: Macmillan, 2010), 133, 156. Compare also, for a recent analysis on the significance of Anne Boleyn’s books, G. W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 98–108. 9. James P. Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and his Wives (London: British Library, 2004), 138–39. The printed book, now British Library (C.27.e.19), is Il Petrarcha con l’espositione d’A. Vellutello; con le figure a i triomphi et con piu cose utili in varii luoghi aggiunte (Venice: Trino di Monferrà for Giolito da Ferrara, [1543]). Notwithstanding the 1544 date on the frontispiece, the book was actually printed in 1543, as witnessed by the variant colophon bear-

To Katherine Parr 

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ing the date ‘MDLIII’; cf. Salvatore Bongi, Annali di Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari (2 vols., Rome: Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, 1890–1895; repr. Rome 1965) I, 80; Angela Nuovo and Christian Coppens, I Giolito e la Stampa nell’Italia del XVI Secolo (Geneva: Droz, 2005), 133 note 31. 10. On Elizabeth’s early Italian teachers and tutors see the Introduction, 1.1. 11. For a facsimile see Pryor, 16. An examination of the original has enabled me to correct the transcription presented in ACFLO, 5–6. 12. A transcript from this manuscript, which Thomas Hearne inherited from the scholar Thomas Smith of Magdalen College, Oxford (cf. ODNB, s.v.), was published in Hearne’s edition of the Vita Henrici Quinti of Tito Livio Frulovisi (Oxonii: e theatro Sheldoniano, 1716), 164–65. The text, which is evidently derived from this source, has not been collated.

LETTER 2

To Girolamo Priuli, Doge of Venice March 1560/1

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Date and Occasion

here had not been an English ambassador to Venice since 1556, when Pietro Vanni (Peter Vannes, then ambassador to the Republic) had left.1 It may have seemed quite appropriate, then, that Elizabeth should send at least an envoy to the Republic to re-establish diplomatic relations. At first glance, Letter 2 may well appear to be a piece of standard diplomatic correspondence. However, a careful analysis of its background reveals that this is, instead, connected to a complicated story of murder and international intrigue. Two drafts of this missive are found in the Cecil Papers among documents dating from the early 1560s. Both were evidently penned by a skilled scribe, quite likely a native speaker, and possibly, judging from the peculiar Italian use, a man from Northern Italy. The bifolium on which these texts (and that of the next letter) are preserved was probably once endorsed ‘1560,’ as the Salisbury calendar states.2 The date certainly affirms it was penned at a time when diplomatic relations between Venice and England were rather tense, and the letter itself is evidently attempting to address a delicate issue. Vanni had left Venice quite hurriedly, possibly because of his involvement in the death of Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon.3 Now, having chosen the Venetian Marcantonio Erizzo as her new envoy, Elizabeth was dismayed to discover that this man was, in fact, an exile, and was trying to get the Republic to grant him permission to return to his native land. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_2

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Marcantonio, son of Francesco, was a descendant of one of the heroes of the Republic, the courageous Podestà of Negroponte (modern Evia, Greece), Paolo Erizzo, who had perished at the hands of the Turks in 1470.4 Marcantonio had been residing in England long enough to be considered a respectable, if somewhat unscrupulous merchant by the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign.5 His personal record in his native country, though, was far from spotless. In December 1546 he had been accused of having plotted, in collaboration with his brother Lodovico and his friend Lodovico da l’Armi, the assassination of his uncle Maffeo Bernardo in order to inherit his wealth. On 11 May 1547 Erizzo was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment (Lodovico and da l’Armi were not so fortunate, and were executed the next day), but this was amended to a life banishment on the islands of Cherso and Ossero, from where he managed to escape a few years later.6 Interestingly, Maffeo Bernardo had denounced Cesare Fregoso (who was murdered in 1541), and the latter was discovered to have passed confidential information concerning the Republic to the French. Lodovico da l’Armi, on his part, had been carrying letters to and from England, and was involved, together with the English agent Guido Giannetti (to whom Elizabeth’s next letter is addressed), in an anti-imperial plot in Venice, supported by Henry VIII.7 That Marcantonio himself was to some degree involved in the English intelligence network is evidenced by a request for safe passage made on his behalf in 1555.8 Whatever his role under the earlier Tudors, Erizzo was certainly known to Elizabeth since the early years of her reign. He first exchanged gifts with her on New Year’s Eve 1558/9 (when he presented the Queen with ‘two peire of Parfumed Gloves,’ and received a rather customary gilt bowl), and his name appears regularly, with the exception of the years 1564 and 1565, in all of the extant lists until 1568.9 Erizzo’s services were evidently appreciated. His motive for travelling to Italy in 1560/1, in fact, was quite probably not wholly diplomatic in nature. It seems to have been related to his offer, in early-mid-March, to sell 20,000 bowstaves, 6,000 bows, as well as a large quantity of brimstone and saltpetre from Naples to the English State at a reasonable price.10 The Venetian government clearly had enough reasons to be suspicious of Marcantonio and consider him a persona non grata. The double draft printed below, which presents both a quite direct and a more elaborate text, reveals the difficulty on the writer’s part to find appropriate words to justify the choice of an envoy who was a convicted accomplice to a murder, and whose real purpose in returning to the Venetian dominions (even if, evidently, not stated here) was that of purchasing weapons. While

TO GIROLAMO PRIULI, DOGE OF VENICE 

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in all likelihood largely composed by someone other than the Queen,11 a touch of Elizabeth’s style may nonetheless be found in the candid request to grant her the first favour she has ever asked of the Doge. Typical for Elizabeth’s correspondence, such a request was best expressed in Italian. Texts Both of the drafts printed below appear on the same folio in Cecil Papers 153/64, followed, on the verso, by the text of Letter 3. Letters 2a–b and 3 were penned by the same hand. This scribe has not been identified, and his handwriting does not appear in any other Italian letter written for Elizabeth, which may be in itself significant (cf. the Introduction, 2.4). While constituting ideal candidates, both Erizzo’s and Peter Vannes’s hands are radically different from the one in this document.12 The appearance of a number of Northern Italian features in this text (including the use of ‘alchune,’ ‘ocaxione,’ ‘donque’ and ‘longo’) does not seem to fit Vanni, who was from Lucca, in central Italy, but it could be compatible with both Erizzo’s and Giovan Battista Castiglione’s provenance. The latter was at Court in 1559, and appears in the same New Year gift list as Erizzo.13 Given the differences in wording, both versions have been translated separately below. 2a. Serenissimo Principe El non esser nata prima ch’hora occaxione di scriuere, é dichiarare la buona uolonta et mente nostra uerso cotesta Republicha, si come hanno sempre hauto, tanto la felice memoria del Re Henrico nostro padre, quanto tutti 1 Serenissimo Principe: while Elizabeth’s later letters to Venice regularly present the Latin opening, ‘Illustrissimo Principi, Domino’ followed by the Doge’s name and surname, James I’s letter-writing formulary, Folger V a 603, fol. 32, gives ‘Serenissimo Principi ac Domino’ as the correct form for the incipit of a letter to the highest public figure in Venice. In fact, the Italian address found here was the standard salutation in the sixteenth century; cf. Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato, ed. Eugenio Albèri, series 1, vol. 1 and series 3 vol. 1 (Firenze: Tipografia all’insegna di Clio, 1839–40), passim. 4 hauto: far from being an error, the form ‘hauto’ for ‘havuto’ is well attested in sixteenthcentury Italian: see, for example, the letters from correspondents as diverse as Cosimo and Alessandro de’ Medici, Innocenzo Cibo, Antonio Sardi, Cosimo Bartoli in ASFi Mediceo del Principato 181, fol. 66 (1534); 3716, fol. 88 (1539); 345, fol. 187 (1540); 5, fol. 520 (1544); 521a, fol. 1085 and 3080, fol. 104 (1567).

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ELIZABETH I’S ITALIAN LETTERS

li nostri antecessori ci muoue al presente di non solo certificar la ­serenita uostra, che la medesima resta in noi conseruata, ma con desiderio de continuarla, et ampliarla. et per darle occaxione di prometerssj di noi de magior cose ci mouiamo hora à dirle ch’hauendo deliberato di mandar in coteste parte d’Ittalia et specialmente nel uostro dominio, uno agente per negotiare alchunne cose di qualch’importanza et parendoci ben atto è suficiente assai Marc’Antonio Erizzo Nobille di cotesta citta, per la longa experientia, che di lui s’è hauto, lo habbiammo eletto, il qual scusandossi in questo non poter’ seruirci, essendo esule, impero sperando che per esser questa la prima richiesta, di poter’ con sua buona gratia obtenerla, maxime non dimandando di torre à uostra serenita ma di renderle un suo gientilhuommo di cossi buone qualita adottato, che ne sforcia à dimandaruilo in special dono è piacer’, de restituirlo nela pristina liberta, afermandole che ne terremo particular’ memoria, quanto piu sara fauorito da uoi per nostro rispetto. – Letter 2a—Translation

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That no previous occasion has arisen until now to write and declare our good intentions and disposition towards this Republic—which both our father King Henry of happy memory and all of our predecessors have always maintained—prompts us at this present time not only to make manifest to your Serenity that the same has been preserved in us, but that we desire to continue and extend them. And to give you occasion to expect greater things from us, we will now tell you that, having resolved to send to those parts of Italy—and, in particular, to your dominions—an envoy to 9 Ittalia: a sixteenth-century variant spelling of ‘Italia,’ as witnessed by Girolamo Ruscelli’s version of Ptolemy’s Geography, La Geografia di Claudio Ptolomeo Alessandrino (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1561), sig. K1, Giovanni Luigi Da Milano (ed.), Historia della vita e morte di S. Martiniano e di santo Innocentio (Tortona: Bartolomeo Bolla, 1599), sigs. O2v (two occurrences) and Q1. Title-pages featuring this spelling include USTC 842588 – EDIT 1669312 (Milan, 1576) and USTC 838262—EDIT 1631499 (Turin, 1525). 11 Nobille: the Erizzo family would provide the Republic with a Doge in the seventeenth century. See, however, the reference to Marcantonio as simply a ‘gentleman’ in the second version of the letter. 4 maintained: the English verb suits the contextual polysemy of ‘avuto’ in the Italian text – which could be interpreted both as ‘possessed’ and (by effect of the reference to ‘memoria’) ‘retained [in mind].’ 5 Serenity: both ‘Serenissimo’ and ‘Serenità’ were included in Florio 1598 (sig. 2H3) with specific reference to the title of honour given to reigning princes, a meaning recorded in the OED (‘serenity,’ n., 4; however, with no quotation from this source).

TO GIROLAMO PRIULI, DOGE OF VENICE 

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deal with certain matters of some importance; since Marc’Antonio Erizzo, a Nobleman of that city, seemed to us perfectly suitable and adequate given the extensive experience we have had of him, we have chosen him for this role. The latter declared he was, unfortunately, unable to serve us, because he is an exile. We hope, however, this being our first request, that this favour we ask of you shall, in your benevolence, be granted. And this, in particular because the request is not to remove, but to return, a gentleman endowed with such good qualities to your Serenity—which obliges [us] to ask you, as a special gift and favour, to restore him to his former freedom. We declare that we will keep such proper memory of this as is commensurable to the favour you will bestow on him, out of respect for us.

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2b. La fede, et sinciera amoreuolezza, ch’ ha sempre regnato non solo tra la felice memoria del Re Henrico nostro padre, ma con tuttj li altri antecessori nostri, et uostra serenita ci persuade conseruarci nell’istessa opinione conoscendo quella da i uiui effettj conseruatrize d’ogni uera amicitia, occorendoci donque mndar’ in Ittalia uno agente per negotiare alchunne cose d’importanza, et specialmente nel uostro dominio, et hauendo conosciuto à tal’ maneggio attissimo, et di molta nostra satisfatione Marc’Antonio Erizzo gientil’huomo dela uostra citta, qual’si truoua qui, habbiamo fato ellettione dela persona sua per negotiare doue sara bisogno, il qual s’escusa non poter in questo seruirne, essendo egli in essilio: onde confissa nellà cortesia di vostra serenita ne mouiamo à instantemente chiederle in singular piace d’esser contenta à nostra satisfatione, accio in tal’caso si possiamo preualer del detto, di restituirlo nela prestina liberta, che lo terremo per segnalato fauore, et quanto piu sara da uoi per nostro rispetto fauorito, ci sara tanto piu gratto. –

9 deal with: on this meaning of ‘negoziare’ cf. Florio 1598, sig. V5v. 11 chosen: cf. Vocabolario Treccani, ‘elezione,’ 1. 15 in particular: cf. ‘massime,’ ‘massimamente’ in Florio 1598, sig. T1v. 19 commensurable... him: reciprocity of actions and consequences is here clearly hinted at by means of the use of ‘quanto più’ (literally, ‘the more’) in the Italian text. A much more evident reference to this will be found in the 1580s Venice letters (cf. e.g. no. 11b below).

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Letter 2b—Translation

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The trust, and sincere affection, that has always reigned not only between our father King Henry of happy memory, but also between all of our predecessors, and your Serenity, convinces us of the need to preserve the same opinion, aware as we are of its deep effects as the preserver of every true friendship. Thus, we have occasion to send an envoy to Italy to deal with certain matters of importance, in particular to your dominions, and knowing Marcantonio Erizzo, a Nobleman of your city now living here, to be very adequate, and much to our satisfaction in such business, we have selected him to negotiate [on our behalf] where necessary. Unfortunately, the latter has declared that he is an exile, and as such cannot pay us any service in this matter. Thus, entrusting ourselves to your Serenity’s kindness, we now earnestly ask you, as a special favour, to condescend to gratify our request—so that we might make use of the said person—to restore him to his former freedom. This we will remember as a notable kindness, and the more you bestow favour on him, out of respect for us, the more will we be pleased.

1 affection: ‘kindness’ is the meaning presented in Thomas for ‘Amorevolezza’ (Principal Rules, sig. B3v); see, however, also Florio 1598, sig. B3. 8 in such business: cf. ‘maneggio’ in Florio 1598, sig. S5v. 12 earnestly: cf. Vocabolario Treccani,’instante’ / ‘instantemente,’ 3 and Florio 1598, sig. Q3. 14 notable: cf. ‘marcare’ in Florio 1598, sig. S6v.

TO GIROLAMO PRIULI, DOGE OF VENICE 

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Notes 1. Cf. L. E. Hunt, ‘Vannes, Peter (c.1488–1563),’ ODNB. The Venetian ambassador in England had followed Philip II to the Netherlands in 1556 and the Republic did not replace him. For an account of the pressures from Rome to avoid a resumption of diplomatic relationships between Venice and London see CSPVen, VII, xi–xxii. 2. Unfortunately, the manuscript has suffered some damage, and a portion of it, where the date may have once been, is now missing. Part of the original endorsement, however, is visible and perfectly legible (‘Minute of a lettre for marc Antonio Erizzo. / to be resorted to his Countrey’). 3. Queen Elizabeth, however, disregarded any such ‘unsavoury rumours, and allowed Vannes to retain his livings after 1558’ (Hunt, ‘Vannes, Peter’). 4. On Paolo Erizzo and the legendary aura of his death see DBI, s.v. 5. See, for example, the deliberation of the Privy Council of 3 December 1558 in PC 2/8, fol. 202 (CSPF, I: 1558–1559, 19). 6. CSP Venice, VI: 1555–1558, 72, note 1. 7. See CSP Venice, V: 1534–1554, 179–87; 213–19; Giuseppe Tassini, Alcune delle più clamorose condanne capitali eseguite in Venezia sotto la Repubblica (Venezia: Gio. Cecchini, 1867), 187–89; see also LP Henry VIII, XXI, part 2: 1546, 382. M. Anne Overell, Italian Reform and English Reformations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 37; Aldo Stella, ‘Guido da Fano, eretico del secolo XVI al servizio del re d’Inghilterra,’ Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 13 (1959): 196-238; in particular 201, 207–9. 8. CSP Venice, VI: 1555–1558, 72. 9. Lawson, New Year’s Gift Exchanges, nos. 59.166, 59.391, 62.173, 62.360, 63.344, 67.164, 67.340, 68.164 and p. 646. Erizzo’s first gift stayed with the Queen, which was at least a sign that it had caught her eye. 10. Cf. SP 70/24, fols. 3–5; SP 12/16, fol. 77 (dated, respectively, 2 and 15 March 1560/1). See also David Cressy, Saltpeter: The Mother of Gunpowder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 51. 11. See the Introduction, 2.4.

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12. Cf. Erizzo’s holograph letter, SP 70/24, fols. 3–5. For a significant example of Vanni’s hand, see the Latin letter he penned for Henry VIII, sold at Christie’s on 4 June 2008 (Sale 7590, Lot 76). 13. Lawson, New Year’s Gift Exchanges, no. 59.176. The letter, however, does not appear to be in Castiglione’s hand; cf. CP 4/15 (written at Westminster in 1568). See also the Introduction above, 1.1 and (for a note on another ‘double version’) 2.2.

LETTER 3

To Guido Giannetti [1560/1]

T

Date and Occasion

he request for a pardon for Erizzo (Letter 2, above) was meant to be presented to the Doge by Guido Giannetti, an Italian protestant who had been acting as an English agent first in Germany and later in Venice.1 Unfortunately, Giannetti, a friend of Peter Vannes’s and, as once described by the Queen, ‘a faithful servant of Henry VIII and Edward VI,’2 had been incarcerated by the local authorities in February 1560/1 at the request of the Inquisition. The Queen had to write to the Doge on 18 March asking for his release.3 It seems quite improbable that Guido could have done much for Erizzo’s case. Both men, equally embarrassing because of their involvement in the da l’Armi affair, quietly disappeared from the Queen’s international correspondence after this date. Texts CP 153/64v, in the same hand as the items printed above. 3. Al Magnifico Messer Guido giannettj Carissimo la presente si fa per notificarle, che s’è receuuto diuerse uostre lettere, è che restiamo satisfattj del uostro seruitio, nel qual haremo caro © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_3

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5

10

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ELIZABETH I’S ITALIAN LETTERS

che continuuiate, et in oltre che subbito à l’hauta di questa non manchiate d’appresentar’ in nome nostro l’inclusa littera diritta al serenissimo Principe, quando ui pagia pero tempo opportuno, et insieme procurarne la risposta et quanto per essa desideriamo, il qual conoscerete per la copia d’essa lettera che sia con questa usando quei termini tanto in pubblico, che in priuato, che giudicherete conuenientj; é quando pur fate le debite experienze, ui fusse negato di uoler’ restituir esso Marc’Antonio Erizzo nella prestina liberta, prochurare almeno, che li sia concesso libero saluo conduto di poter’ ritornare alla patria, et in ogni altro luogo del suo dominio per quel tempo che hara de negotiare quelle cose che da noij li saranno imposte, tornandoci molto à prepositto l’opera sua, che di ragione non ci douera esser’ negato cossi honesta richiesta, tenendo per fermo, che quando fia meglio conosciuto, non li sara fatta molta dificulta, in conciederli la total gratia, la qual cosa potrete certificarle, che in uero ne sara gratissimo, donandoci notitia d’ogni seguito. – Letter 3—Translation

5

10

To the Right Worshipful Master Guido Giannetti Well beloved, this is to inform you that various letters have been received from you, and that we remain satisfied with your service, which we would be keen for you to continue. Moreover, as soon as you receive this, [we ask] that you will not fail to present the enclosed letter addressed to the Most Serene Prince when you will deem opportune, and obtain both an answer to it and what we desire to attain through it—which you will know by the copy of the letter enclosed herewith—using what public and private means you consider appropriate. And, having attempted all that is necessary, should it turn out impossible for you to have Marcantonio Erizzo restored to his former freedom, you will at least ensure that he is granted safe conduct to return to his native country and to pass through any of its 4 hauta: i.e, avuta. 1 Right Worshipful Master: cf. Thomas, Principal Rules, sigs. T3v and U3v. 4 as soon as: clearly, ‘subbito’ is not meant here as ‘immediately’ (which would contradict what is stated in the next lines), but as in Vocabolario Treccani ‘subito,’ 2, 1b. 6 when... opportune: literally, ‘when the time will seem to you appropriate for this,’ again, reminiscent of the Latin ‘per hoc’ (cf. above, Letter 1). 9-11 And... freedom: the almost untranslatable personal construction of the original with its ‘denied to you’ and the reference to ‘voler restituire’ emphasizes Giannetti’s active role in the dialogue with the authorities.

To Guido Giannetti 

19

dominions for such time as will be necessary for him to deal with those things which we will require of him. His work, in fact, is of great usefulness to us. Reasonably, such an honest request should not be denied us, being confident that, when better known, it will not be difficult to grant him a full pardon. That he will indeed prove most grateful you can be certain. Let us have news of what will follow.

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Notes 1. See Guido Dall’Olio, ‘Giannetti (Zannetti), Guido (Guido da Fano)’ in DBI. Stella, ‘Guido da Fano, eretico del secolo XVI,’ 196– 238; Overell, Italian Reform and English Reformations, 29–30. 2. BL, Royal MS 13 B I, fol. 45. 3. Giannetti was freed in September of the same year. He apparently had much less contact with England after this; cf. Dall’Olio, ‘Giannetti,’ par. 8. The Queen’s letter, in Latin, is preserved in Ascham’s letter-book, Royal MS 13 B I, fol. 45. Ascham himself wrote to ask his friend Jacopo Ragazzoni to intercede for Giannetti on the same date (Giles, Works of Ascham, II, 34).

LETTERS 4–6

To Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor

A

t a difficult point in her life, in the mid-1560s, during the crisis in the Austrian marriage negotiations, Elizabeth decided to write in Italian to Maximilian II, brother to Archduke Charles, her possible future husband. She wrote these lines with extreme care, which is hardly surprising: the situation was delicate indeed, and the risk that her words might be quoted back at her was far from remote. It is evident from her corrections—some of which were done currente calamo—that she paused at various stages during the writing process, and subsequently revised her drafts carefully (and/or, at least in part, had these texts revised for her, possibly by Roger Ascham or William Cecil, who added the date in the final version of Letter 4).1 The Queen was equally attentive to the choice of vocabulary and the mise en page of these texts. The final versions (now in the Vienna State Archive) are, in fact, three exceptional examples of her best hand.2 Interestingly, these holograph copies present a number of substantial amendments from the draft versions. These alterations provide a unique window onto the Queen at work on her foreign correspondence. While some revisions are substantial,3 most concern matters of style, spelling, corrections of syntax and fine tuning of consecutio temporum. To quote but one example, Elizabeth’s draft phrase ‘ó ch’io non tengo per honorata offerta quella della parte dell fratello vostro Anzi mi reputo felice che habbiate quella bona oppinione di me che desiderate della mano mia si stretto nodo’ becomes, in the letter that was sent, ‘Ó Ch’io non tenessi per honorata offerta quella della parte del fratello suo. Anzi mi reputai felice che 21

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haveuate cosi bona oppinione di me per ricerchar della mano mia si stretto nodo.’ Revisions such as these are compatible with Elizabeth’s practice in her English letters. One of the few surviving examples of a holograph draft and copy of a letter in Elizabeth’s own hand shows that she would take the time to go over her choice of vocabulary and revise her wording in many places. Approximately six hundred words in Cecil Papers 133/80 (fols. 120–22, an English letter to James of Scotland, May 1594) were corrected in no less than thirteen places when transferred to the final twopage text, now British Library, Add MS 23240, fol. 132r–v. The final copy itself contains seven alterations, two of which appear to be afterthoughts and two currente calamo revisions.4 The corrections in the missives to Maximilian II show the great care that Elizabeth took in shaping the final text of her letters, possibly with the help of her secretariat.5 Scribal copies of these, in fact, bearing some of the corrections, and other alterations, are to be found among the State Papers at the National Archives and the Cotton manuscripts at the British Library. Rather than using ‘standard’ diplomatic Latin (or Spanish, the language employed by Maximilian in his correspondence with her), she resorted to Italian, probably as a means to establish a more intimate, almost affectionate rapport with the Emperor at a time when the negotiations seemed to be irremediably stalled.6 Just as in her letter to James quoted above—which was written in May 1594, at a time when she could have been suspected of having supported the Earl of Bothwell’s abortive coup7—she was clearly weighing up every word in order to be as effective as possible. In January 1593 Elizabeth complained to James that he had never welcomed her warning that he was surrounded by ‘wicked Conspirators’ as a sincere gesture of friendship. On the contrary, she declared, it ‘was thought an Italian invention to make you hold me dearer.’8 In the same vein, in her letters to Maximilian almost thirty years earlier, she protests her sincerity. Indeed, if her missives did not contain elements of deceit and ‘inventions’ they were certainly full of rhetorical inventio and clever turns of phrase, and her elaborate courteous sentences often concealed a polite, but firm request. It appears, then, that by the 1560s Elizabeth could already transform Italian courtesy into a sharp political tool.

To maximilian ii, holy roman emperor  

23

Notes 1. Cf. ‘Aprilis’ in this document and ‘Aprill’ / ‘April’ in Burghley’s journals, CP 229/2, fols. 5, 8 and CP 229/1, fol. 18 (see also below). Cecil could certainly read Italian, as witnessed by his numerous endorsements and notes to letters in this language. In the mid1580s he received a series of letters in Italian connected with the peace negotiations in the Netherlands, which he annotated in his hand; cf. e.g. SP 77/1, fols., 179, 194, 194v (see below, Letters 16-17). Cf. also Wallace T. MacCaffrey, ‘Cecil, William, first Baron Burghley (1520/21–1598)’ in ODNB. On Elizabeth’s remark, some two years earlier than Letter 4, that she was ‘half Italian,’ see the first paragraph of the Introduction. 2. See the Introduction, 2.1. 3. Cf. e.g. Letter 4, draft 1, and the final version, below, where ‘ho fatto Electione di questo gentilhuomo chi mi e molto fidele et molto sauio chi al quale spero non vi dispiacera la Maestà Vostra dar audientia fauoreuole et sia colpa se sia fatto nell suo credito a me sia dato alla colpa et non il biasimo all messangier nel quale possiat confidar come a mstessa’ becomes ‘ho fatto Electione di questo gentilhuomo chi mi è molto fedele et di molto compiuto ingenio[.] Alquale piacera La Maesta Vostra dar benigna audientia, Et se la piacera crederlo Come me stezza mi compiacera molto[.].’ 4. This are, respectively, ‘letter 90, draft’ and ‘letter 90’ in ACFLO, 102–3; 100–2. On Elizabeth’s revisions see also the Introduction, 2.2. 5. While Castiglione, Elizabeth’s former Italian teacher, might in theory have contributed the corrections to the Maximilian letters, both the text and the handwriting of his holograph letter to William Brooke, Lord Cobham (who, significantly happened to be the brother of the bearer of Letter 6; cf. the introductory note below) seem to deny the plausibility of this hypothesis. Cf. also the Introduction, 1.1. 6. On other occasions (cf. e.g. SP 70/91, fol. 104), Elizabeth resorted to much more traditional Latin—the language in which she wrote her missives to Archduke Charles—and, at least once (BL, Cotton MS Nero B IX, fol. 115), to Spanish, the language chosen by Maximilian when writing in his own hand (cf. below). One wonders if the notoriously anti-Spanish Maximilian had chosen Spanish to

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set a more relaxed tone—in this case, Elizabeth’s Italian may have been responding in kind (I am grateful to Simon Adams for this suggestion). 7. Cf. CW, 378 note 13; David Harris Willson, King James VI and I (second impression, London: Jonathan Cape, 1956), 110–15. 8. BL, Add. MS 23240, fol. 108v. The spelling has here been modernized. Cf. the text also in ACFLO, 97–98.

LETTER 4

February–April/May 1566 Holograph drafts and final version

F

Date and Occasion

rom as early as 1563, after Elizabeth’s promise in Parliament to consider matrimony seriously, William Cecil had been attempting to revive negotiations for a marriage between her and Charles, Archduke of Austria, brother to Emperor Maximilian II, thereby reviving a plan which was first conceived in 1559.9 By the end of November 1564, the Spanish ambassador, Diego Guzman de Silva, wrote to Philip II to announce that ‘they have set a person at me to get me to broach the subject of the Queen’s marriage with the archduke Charles, and she herself has given me to understand several times that she wishes to get married, and shows a desire to have this question revived.’10 In the Spring of the following year the negotiations were doing well; by 15 March Guzman had no doubts: ‘all eyes are fixed on the Archduke Charles, and well informed people tell me that negotiations about him are actually going on through Robert [Dudley]’—the latter apparently having renounced, as the Queen informed the Spanish gentleman, his long-standing suit. The Austrian match could finally become a reality.11 Adam Zwetkovich, the Emperor’s envoy, arrived in England on 6 May 1565, officially with the purpose of bringing back the insignia of the Garter once worn by Ferdinand I, the Emperor’s father.12 Even if the marriage negotiations did not move ahead with great speed, by early June there seemed to be reasonably good hopes that some agreement could be reached.13 However, some serious disagreement between the two sides, © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_4

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especially on matters of religion,14 could not be ignored. In mid-July the Emperor instructed his envoy to make his conditions very clear: his brother and household must be allowed ‘the free exercise of their religion.’ Cecil, in turn, replied that ‘no-one in this realm’ could be allowed to ‘publicly or privately practise or confess religious rites that are contrary to the laws of this land.’15 By August, all seemed doomed to end in stalemate. On his departure earlier that month, however, Elizabeth decided to entrust Zwetkovich with a new message (together with a Latin letter asking Maximilian to reward him for his zeal).16 A response to this message, which is referred to in the letter printed below, was very slow in coming: it was only on about 20 or 24 December 1565 that Roger Lestrange returned with a missive in Spanish from the Emperor (dated 27 November).17 Maximilian had penned the text personally;18 he stated that he had received the Queen’s letter through Zwetkovich, and he would deal plainly with her: in such an ‘uncertain matter’ he desired her ‘to consider that it cannot but seem very difficult’ for his brother ‘to undertake this journey.’ However, ‘having some certainty there would be no such inconvenience,’ he asked for some assurance that Charles and his train ‘be not troubled in their religion, and also that he be not driven to live wholly upon his own.’19 The Italian text in SP 70/77 is clearly a reply to this. It is likely Elizabeth took some time to respond.20 Her reply, in fact, seems to echo a conversation she had with Guzman on 27 January 1565/6. On that occasion she mentioned that it was true that the Emperor had written to her with his own hand and in Spanish and she was rather sorry that after delaying his answer so long—and she had sent word that she would not entertain any other proposals until his reply came—he should write now doubtfully and undecidedly raising the three issues ... namely, about the Archduke’s expenditure in this country, the question of religion and the Archduke’s coming. Respecting the first point she said the Emperor wrote that no reasonable person would consider it just that whilst the Archduke was so far away from his own country he should be maintained by it. On the subject of religion he said the Archduke and his household could only continue in his own, and, as regarded his coming, it was neither reasonable nor convenient that a person like his brother should come without some assurance. How could she marry, she said, with a man whom she had to feed, and let the world say she had taken a husband who could not afford to keep himself [?].21

As Guzman relates, just a few days later, on 2 February, he was shown the very letter received from the Emperor, and had the opportunity to

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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discuss its contents with the Queen. With the excuse of explaining the Emperor’s Spanish, the ambassador offered to reply to Elizabeth’s questions—literally, voicing Maximilian’s thoughts:22 Since she had told me in substance what the letter contained, I said, if she would allow the letter to be shown to me I could, in case the matter were discussed in my presence, reply in accordance with the Emperor’s own words. She did this, and ordering a desk in which she kept the letter to be brought to her, read the letter to me.23

In a quasi-theatrical dialogue, the Queen went through the text of the missive, commenting on it and pausing for Guzman’s reply at the end of each of its three main points: On the first point, namely, the coming of the Archduke, [the letter] says the matter was so important that it could not fail to present some difficulties as she would understand. The Queen said it was impossible that this could refer to the coming of his Highness, although I endeavoured to show her that the Emperor did not refuse this but only said it could not be without difficulty. She seemed somewhat tranquillised on this point. As regards the religious question and the clause which says that the Archduke and his household shall enjoy their own religion, and will offer no impediment to others enjoying theirs, the Queen said, ‘The Emperor does not declare himself in this either.’ I asked her if she understood what religion the Archduke professed, to which she replied that she did not but would like to know. I then asked her jokingly whether she knew what her own religion was and would tell me, since her understanding could not fail to see which was the true one. She laughed at this and passed the matter off. On the third point, where the Emperor says that as his brother, being so far away from his dominions, it would not be reasonable that he should defray all his expenses himself; she wished to make out that the Emperor’s meaning was that the Archduke would not bring any money for his own expenditure. I assured her that such was not the meaning, but that it was not reasonable to expect him to bear the whole of the expense caused by his living in this country away from his dominions. I told her that I did not think the Emperor had written to her so dubiously as she had given me to understand the previous day, and begged her to make up her mind on the business and send a fitting answer to the Emperor .... The Queen resolved that she would write decidedly to the Emperor and send one of her gentlemen with the letter, by which it would seem that she had changed her mind about writing through Christopher Mundt the German, as she told me she would, and I wrote to your Majesty.24

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A set of instructions for Thomas Sackville was drafted about mid-February.25 On 30 April 1566, however, the Queen appointed Thomas Dannett as her special ambassador. The latter, accompanied by Christopher Mont, the experienced German-born diplomat who had served under Henry VIII, had an audience with the Emperor on 25 May.26 Elizabeth’s draft may have been written at any time between early February (after her conversation with Guzman) and 2 April 1566, the date found on the holograph and the copy in the Augsburg archives. This final version must have been given to the Ambassador together with his written set of instructions, which he must have received either at the end of the month or on 1 May 1566, as evidenced by the note found on a duplicate, BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C XI, fol. 243r–v and on a note by William Cecil in SP 70/84, fol. 2 (‘primo Maij 1566 / Copy of the Queen Maiesties lettre to / themperor Maximilian / sentt by Thomas Dannett,’ to which no letter follows).27 Texts Letter 4 is extant in three holograph versions: two drafts, SP 70/77, fol. 173v (hereafter 70/77/A) and fols. 173, 174r–v (70/77/B), and the final sent version, now in Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, HausarchivFamilienakten, Karton 21 (formerly Karton 15), Konvolut 4, Faszikel 5, fol. 7r–v (hereafter V1).28 Later copies in Thomas Windebank’s hand are found in SP 70/77, fol. 175r–v (70/77C), and BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C XI, fol. 243r–v (CV11C), a manuscript damaged by fire in 1731. Another version of the letter is in Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, HausarchivFamilienakten, Karton 21, Konvolut 4, Faszikel 5, fols. 6r–v, 9 (V1C). Textual evidence suggests that drafts 1 and 2, 70/77/A and 70/77/B, were conflated into a corrected transcript (α), and two independent textual traditions stem from this lost copy. This was the document which Elizabeth used for her holograph missive to the Emperor, V1. This letter was later duplicated (and corrected) by the Imperial scribe who penned V1C.29 In England, α was copied in 70/77C, from which the rather mechanical transcription in CV11C (which, however, mentions the name of the envoy, Dannett) was probably taken. The existing differences between the holograph witnesses have prompted the need to print three separate transcriptions of the two earlier drafts present in 70/77 and the final copy now in Vienna, V1 (collated against the transcriptions found in 70/77C, CV11C and V1C). The latter is the text translated at the end of the present section.

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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4a—Draft 1 (70/77/A) Che la risposta mia a la lettera scritta da Vostra Maiestá e stato tanto in lunga tirata non e stato ó per non hauer pigliata in bona parte quello che gli ha piaciuto scriuermi ó ch’io non tengo per honorata offerta quella della parte dell fratello vostro Anzi mi reputo felice che habbiate quella bona oppinione di me che desiderate della mano mia si stretto nodo / Solamente ho risparmiata questo tempo di molestarvi con questo negotio intendendo delle grande facende vostre et cose d’importanza si per le provicione contra il commun inimico della Christianitá si anchora per le conventioni de i stati della Germania hora rispondero vn poco a la li litera con questo prologo ch’io faro profession Mi pareua cosa strana che dopoi vna il ritardar d’un m cinque mezi al manco Io non di non poter recever ni messagio ni scritto di vostra 4 honorata] honerata altered to ~   5 Anzi] Anʒi altered to ~ 6 che] written in left margin   16 recever] recevia altered to ~

7 stretto nodo: an expression related to ‘stretto nodo del matrimonio’ (‘the tight knot of marriage’), a commonplace phrase in sixteenth-century Italian: it was used, among others, by Ariosto, Orlando Furioso 46.20 (a text Elizabeth knew; see the Introduction, 1) and Matteo Bandello (Novelle, 2.41). 11–12 le provicione... Christianitá: the Ottoman Empire was, in 1566, launching yet another attack against the Habsburg dominions. Its final phase, the siege of Szigetvár (5 August–8 September 1566), would in fact result in a pyrrhic victory for the Turks—and in the death (from natural causes) of the by then ageing Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Elizabeth could have received direct intelligence of these preparations via Pietro Bizzarri (who wrote to Cecil on 19 January 1565/6, SP 70/82, fol. 28) and Christopher Mont in April 1566, cf. SP 70/83, fol. 157, but a number of earlier reports and advices are extant; cf. e.g. SP 70/82, fol. 24 (9 January 1565/6); SP 70/83, fol. 21 (March 1565/6). 12–13 le conventioni... Germania: quite probably the Diet held at Augsburg in March 1566, during which, significantly enough, the Catholic princes of Germany acknowledged the decrees of the Council of Trent (1559–63); cf. Cirillus Sabinus’s letter to Mont in SP 70/81, fol. 49 and Mont’s letter to Cecil in SP 70/84, fol. 160. News of the preparations for the Diet had already reached England (again, via Mont, who evidently wanted Burghley to get his message as soon as possible, and wrote ‘cito, cito, cito’ [quick, quick, quick] on the back of it) by mid-November 1565, cf. SP 70/81, fol. 21.

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Maiestà alhora pensai che mi fussi dato la baia et che che piu ferri ch’uno si mettessi in fuoco ta talche m

enai sprezzata ó almanco tenuta in bilancio in a aspetio di miglior peso. dopoi hauer ricevuta la lettera vostra 4b—Draft 2 (70/77/B) Con speranza che queste lineae otteneranno perdono se troppo chiaramente le saranno scritte ho determinata q di slassia slachiar slacchiar la 3 determinata] determinato altered to ~

17–18 che... la baia: the phrase ‘dare la baia’ is found in Florio 1598 (sig. H6v) and 1611 (sig. M2v) as ‘to giue a mocke or flout.’ 18–19 piu ferri... fuoco: proverbial; cf. also ‘battere due ferri, o chiodi a un caldo,’ Vocabolario della Crusca, s.v. ‘battere.’ Of course, this could simply derive from a phrase in use at least since the mid-1560s; cf. OED, ‘iron,’ n.1, P5a. During the audience of 20 May 1565, Elizabeth told Zwetkovich that she had received two letters from the King of Spain, the first complimenting her on her marriage to the Archduke, the second lamenting that he could not come. This had been done, Elizabeth thought, ‘in mockery of her’: in fact she knew, she said, that Charles had proposed to Mary Queen of Scots, and she had heard rumours that ‘the Archduke Charles had promised to give the Queen of Scotland an answer in two years’ time; and this she took to mean that if the Queen of Scotland did not wish to have the Archduke, she, the Queen of England, was to be the jester to the Queen of Scotland.’ (Klarwill, 214). In fact, since 1565 and probably at this very time, Elizabeth was lending an attentive ear to the marriage proposals coming from France; cf. CSPSp, I, 407. See also McCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 91; Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 77. 19 talche... sprezzata: Zwetkovich had been instructed to ‘learn, not from conjectures but from sure judgements and from the general opinion that the integrity of the morals and life of Her Highness is not such as becomes a Princess.’ He could later report that Elizabeth ‘would fain vindicate herself ... against all the slander that had been cast at her.’ She hoped, in fact, that Maximilian ‘would find that she all the time acted in all matters with due decorum and attention.’ The ambassador was later to witness that he had ‘through several persons made diligent enquiries’ and had ‘found that she has truly and verily been praised and extolled for her virginal and royal honour, and that nothing can be said against her’ (Klarwill, 207, 217, 231). As Luis Montrose notes, at about this time Guzman ‘was reporting to King Philip that the French ambassador had sworn to him that the Queen had slept with Dudley on the prior New Year’s night’; cf. CSPSp, I, 520; Louis Adrian Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006, 277, note 18). See also Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King, 66–90.

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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la briglia della voglia mia et dar il freno in in bocca della mia penna / Mi parse strana cosa Sacra Maiestá che cinque mezi fussino spesi senza ch’io ricevessi ó messagij ó linea della Maestà Vostra. Io pensai da douero ó che mi fussi dato la baia ó che piu ferri ch’uno si mettessi in fuoco talche mi pensai sprezzata ó almanco tenuta in bilancio con espettatione di miglior peso Ma dopoi il ritornar di Strange Io mi sbigottai come quella che recevea honorata certo ma invero incerta risposta Non posso negar che in quella non sieno parolle corteze et humile per le quale come debbo cosi la rendo gratie infinite ma pensando della mia resolutione data al Signor Swetkowitz non aspettai piu dubbie senon o il si ó il no / Ora per toccar i tre punti chiusi d nella lettra sua il primo e dell viaggio dell fratello con sicurtá Vostra Maesta ha da saper che non mi tengo per si di poco tal che potri 5 penna /] ~. altered to ~   11 sprezzata] spretzata altered to ~ 12 espettatione] Elizabeth apparently first wrote asptt, which she altered currente calamo to aspet and later changed aspettatione to ~ (the first e written over what appears to be cancelled a) 13 sbigottai] sbigottii altered to ~   18 la] written in left margin   21 toccar] toccae (?) altered to ~

4 dar il freno: meaning, again, the bridle as in the expressions ‘a freno sciolto,’ ‘a freno abbandonato’: cf. ‘a freno abbandonato cavalcando’ (Boccaccio, Decameron X,9); ‘Fuggono i Franchi allora a freno sciolto’ (Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, Canto IX). This, in fact, is the meaning provided in Thomas, Principal Rules (sig. 2N4 in both the 1550 and in the 1562 edition). 13 Strange: Roger Lestrange, who had brought the Emperor’s letter (see above). 19 Signor Swetkowitz: Adam Zwetkovich (or Swetkowitz), Baron von Mitterburg, Chamberlain and Vice-President of the Austrian Exchequer (?-1573), the Emperor’s envoy (cf. Klarwill, 236 and BL, Cotton Nero IX, fol. 105). 22–23 il primo... sicurtá: in his letter Maximilian had stated that ‘en cosa incierta no es possible sino que nos haga dificultoso a mi hermano de hazer este camino’ (‘in such an uncertain situation, it is probable that it will be difficult for my brother to make this journey’; SP 70/81, fol. 51), thus clearly indicating that Charles would only come to England if some assurance of the marriage was provided. Elizabeth cleverly takes such uncertainty also to a different level, that of personal ­liking— which allows her, in the next paragraphs, to address the topic of religion less bluntly.

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far dishonor all Archeduca di venir a ricercarmi non per dignitá che in me sia p ma per l’honor il del luogo vue qualle mi tengo. Mi par che sarebbe megli per tutti duoi di vedersi Chi sa se aluy piacera la electione fatta per l’orecchie occhi di altrui /. tot capita tot sensus[.] quel che a vn piace a vn altro non conuiene A me toccher toccarebbe la vergogna ugualmente con esso luy se la venuta sua sarebbe indarno per esser le opinioni lle gente incerta se limpedimento si trovasse in me che gli donassi causa di’ habandonar tal pensiero cosi bene che il rifiutar fussi per non m’hauer compiaciuto tal patto talche se vi piacera bilanciar con mano dretta questa causa mi par che tal obiectione di gia hanno ha la sua risposta. Quanto ala Religion Confidomi tanto nell’iudicio suo che non havro

32 toccher / toccarebbe] tocchere first altered to tocchera and then cancelled; the final e, however, was clearly meant to be retained 32 vergogna] the second g deleted and later reinstated by means of a stet mark 35 habandonar] l’abandonar altered to ~   38 se] ce altered to ~   39 tal] tai altered to ~ 40 la sua] le sue altered to ~

29–30 electione... altrui: the issue of personal liking had been raised in the 1559 negotiations as well (I owe this information to Simon Adams). Cf. also Carolly Erickson, The First Elizabeth (London: Robson, 2001), 189–90. 30 tot capita tot sensus: ‘Many heads, many views.’ A common medieval Latin proverb, probably derived from classical sources such as Cicero’s De finibus, I.5.15 and Terence, Phormio, 454: ‘Quot homines, tot sententiae’ (quoted also by Erasmus in his Adagia, 30). Cf. also Porphyry, ‘quot homines, tot esse sententias’; Horace: ‘quot capitum vivunt, totidem studiorum milia’ (Satirae, II.1.27–8). Common variants of this adage are ‘Ad numerum capitum sententia multiplicatur,’ ‘Quot vivunt capita, tu tot sensus fere narra,’ ‘Tot homines, quot sententie’ and ‘Quot capita, tot sensus’; see Carmina Medii Aevi Posterioris Latina, ed. Hans Walther (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1959), II/1, no. 416, II/4, nos. 26211b, 26227C, II/5, nos. 31477a, 31481. 38 bilanciar con mano dretta: in a French letter to Anjou of 1581, Elizabeth used the expression ‘poiser en droictes balances,’ which may be behind the Italian phrase as well; see CP 135/19 (I owe this information to Guillaume Coatalen). For a detailed discussion of the ‘metaphor of the scales’ see Iannaccaro and Petrina, ‘To and from the Queen: Modalities of Epistolography in the Correspondence of Elizabeth I,’ 69–89; 71–77.

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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bisogna di riplicar le mille inconveniente che son accidentali alla variete delle conscientie dell marito et moglie, et molti piu mali che possono avenir in vn regno diviso in doue parte l’vna banda per lui et l’altra per lei. Rassomigliarebbe all giogo di doui animali variando i passi in doui canti chi mai tirarebbono in dretto sentiero et farebbe che la voglia che debitamente sarebbe vna si convertisse con Metamorphose in odio di tutti doui. Vltimamente per parlar del viuer qui solamente dell souo Vostr[a] Maestà itenda che il stato nel quale adesso viue Come mi fanno credere non e molto inferiore all Caricho che questo luogo lo darebbe talche penso che non habbia si poco di spender che non possa honoratamente guardar la parte sua della famiglia. Ma di questa cosa non spendero piu parolle come di cosa di niente quando

45 in vn] in deleted and later reinstated by means of a ‘stet’ mark   46 doue] diue altered to ~ 47 Rassomigliarebbe] Rassomigliirebbe altered to ~  53  Vostra] Vosta altered to ~. 62 di] e altered to ~

47–49 giogo... sentiero: reminiscent of Deuteronomy 22:10, in the Vulgate version: ‘non arabis in bove simul et asino’ (‘Thou shalt not plowe with an oxe and an asse together’ in the Bishops’ Bible version). Significantly enough, this—as many early Bible commentaries clearly stated—is echoed in 2 Cor 6:14: ‘nolite iugum ducere cum infidelibus’ (‘And beare not ye a straunge yoke with the vnbelevers,’ sig. 5O4); cf. Robert M. Grant, Paul in the Roman World (Lousiville, KY.: John Knox Press, 2001), 68. Elizabeth may be just stating here that the marriage of two people who serve different religions is like the yoking of a donkey and an ox to pull a cart, who are bound to be pulling in different directions. However, the implicit Pauline reference, if deliberate, would be highly significant, and indeed indicative of the Queen’s real feelings concerning this marriage.

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le altri dubbij saranno risoluti Et accioche vostra Maestà sia meglio instrutta dell l’animo mio pianamnete in tutta questa facenda ho fatto Electione di questo gentilhuomo chi mi e molto fidele et molto sauio chi al quale spero non vi dispiacera la Maestà Vostra dar audientia fauoreuole et sia colpa se sia fatto nell suo credito a me sia dato alla colpa et non il biasimo all messangier nel quale possiat confidar come a mstessa * Secondo l’ordin vsanza ogni anno I Cauaglieri del ordine del Gartiere hanno fatto Electione della Maiesta Vostra alla quale ho molto voluntieri concessa la mia voce come quella che che aspetto tanto honore et amista della parte vostra quanto amore et affectione o ill zio ó il padre vostro dovea giamaj al mio predecessor. pero rechiedo della mano sua che mi dia la risposta sua se g lo gli piacera pigliarla in bona parte accioche in temp commodo lo possi mandarlo a la Maestà Vostra * non lasciero per questo messangiere di significarla il buon animo che dimora ne i compagni dell mio ordine del Gartier verso la Maestà Vostra i quali questo anno l’hanno eletto Uno dell ordine suo 63 altri] altre altered to ~  73–74  ordinaria vsanza] l’ordine usato altered to ~ 78 concessa] contessa altered to ~  79  honore] honere altered to ~

63 risoluti: Dannett’s instructions (on which see above) contained the hint that Elizabeth might be prepared to meet Charles’s further expenses.

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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4c—Final Holograph Copy (V1) Che la risposta mia a la lettera scritta da Vostra Maiesta e stata tanto in lungo tirata non è stato ó per non haver pigliata in buona parte quello che gli ha piaciuto scrivermi, Ó Ch’io non tenessi per honorata offerta quella della parte del fratello suo. Anzi mi reputai felice che haveuate cosi bona op= pinione di me per ricerchar della mano mia si stretto nodo. Solamente ho risparmiata questo tempo di non molestarvi di questo negotio intendendo delle grande facende Vostre et cose d’importanze si per le provitione contra il commune inimico della Christianitá Si anchora per le conventione de i stati della Germania. Hora con speranza che queste linee otteneranno perdono se troppo chiaramente saranno scritte ho determinata di slachiar la briglia della Voglia mia, et dar il freno in bocca della mia penna[.] Mi parsi strana cosa Sacra Maestá che cinque mezi fussino spesi senza ch’io riceuessi ó messagio ó scritto di Vostra Maestá Io pensai da dovero che mi fussi dato la baia ó almancho che piu ferri ch’vno si mettessi in fuoco talche mi pensai sprezzata ó tenuta in bilancio in aspettazione di miglior peso. Et dopoi il ritornar di Strange piu mi sbigottai come quella che ri=

1 Addressed on fol. 8v, in a scribal hand, Alla Maestà dell’Imperadore, V1 1 Che] preceded by The coppie of the Queens maiestie letter to the emp Maximilian sent by Thomas Daniell [sic]. / and in left margin 1. Maii the Queen to the Emperor by Master Thomas Danett, CV11C 2 tirata] ~, 70/77C, CV11C   ó] o 70/77C, CV11C 3 piaciuto] piaciato CV11C  Ó] o 70/77C, CV11C 4 suo. Anzi] Suo, anzi V1C  reputai] riputai 70/77C   bona] buona 70/77C, CV11C 4–5 oppinione] openione 70/77C; CV11C opinione V1C  ricerchar] ricetchar 70/77C; ricehchar CV11C  nodo. Solamente] nodo, Solamente V1C  6 negotio] negocio V1C 7 Vostre] ~, 70/77C, CV11C   d’importanze] ~, V1C  provitione] prouisione 70/77C, V1C  provisione CV11C 8 Christianità] Christianita. 70/77C, CV11C; Christianita, V1C  de i stati] d’istati V1C 10 troppo] stroppo CV11C  12 mezi] mesi V1C 13 ó] o 70/77C, CV11C  Maestá] Maesta 70/77C  Io] ~: CV11C 14 baia] ~, V1C  ó] o 70/77C, CV11C  fuoco] ~, V1C 15 aspettazione] aspettatione 70/77C, CV11C, V1C 16 ritornar] ritornare 70/77C, CV11C  Strange] Straunge CV11C

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ceuea honorata certo ma invero incerta risposta. Non posso negar che in quella non sieno parolle corteze et humile per le quale come debbo cosi la rendo gratie infinite[.] Ma pensando della mia risolutione data al Signor Switkowitz non aspettai piu dubbij seno il Si ó il No[.] Adesso toccheró i tre punti principali della lettra[.] Il primo é del Viaggio del fratello con sicurtá[.] Vostra Maestá ha da saper che non mi tengo si di puoco che potria far dishonor al Archeduce di venir a ricercharmi non per digna cosa che in me sia ma si ben per l’honor del Luogo chi m’appartiene Pare a me che per tutti duoi sarebbe il meglio il vedersi[.] Chi sa se a luy piacera la elettione fatta per gli occhi d’altrui. Tot Capita tot sensus Quel chi a vn piace a vn altro non conviene. A me toccarebbe la vergonia vgualmente con esso luy se la venuta sua fussi indarno per esser le opinione delle gente varie et incerte se l’impe= dimento si trovassi in me chi gli donassi causa d’habandonar tal partito cosi bene che di pensar ch’il rifiutar procedesse per non m’haver compiaciuto tal patto talche se vi piacerà bilanciar con mano dretta questa causa mi pare che tal obiectione di gia

16–17 riceuea] ricevia CV11C  invero] in vero 70/77C, CV11C, V1C   che in] ch’in V1C 18 sieno] siena altered to ~ 70/77C; siena CV11C   parolle] parole V1C  corteze] cortese 70/77C, CV11C, V1C   gratie] gratis CV11C 19 infinite[.] Ma] ~, ma V1C; ~^ Ma 70/77C, CV11C  Switkowitz] Schwitkowitz V1C 20 dubbij] dubbii altered to ~ V1   il Si ó il No] il si ó il no 70/77C; il si o il no// CV11C; il Si, ó il No V1C   toccheró i] toccaro j 70/77C, CV11C 21 lettra.] lettera. 70/77C; lettera^ CV11C  sicurtá] ~; V1C; sicurta. 70/77C, CV11C 22 Maestá] Maesta 70/77C  puoco] poco 70/77C, CV11C  potria] patria CV11C 23 a ricercharmi] a richercharmi 70/77C; à richercharemi CV11C   sia] ~, V1C 24 Luogo chi m’appartiene] luoco chi mi appartiene 70/77C, CV11C; luogo chi m’appartiene V1C  a] à V1C 25 vedersi.] ~^ 70/77C, CV11C; ~, V1C;  Chi sa] Chisa CV11C  se a] se à CV11C; s’à V1C  luy] lui V1C 26 d’altrui.] ~, CV11C  Capita] capita CV11C, V1C  sensus.] ~^ 70/77C, CV11C  a vn piace a] à vn piace à V1C, CV11C 27 conviene.] ~^ 70/77C, CV11C  vergonia] vergogna V1C  luy] lui V1C 28 fussi] fusse 70/77C, CV11C  indarno] ~, V1C  le opinione] l’openione 70/77C, CV11C; l’opinione V1C  29 trovassi] trouasse V1C  d’habandonar] d’habendonar CV11C; d’abandonar V1C 30 bene] ~, V1C    31 patto] ~, V1C  32 talche] tal che CV11C 33 piacerà] piacera 70/77C, CV11C  pare] par V1C  obiectione] obiettione 70/77C, CV11C, V1C

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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ha la sua risposta[.] Quanto della religione[.] Confidomi tanto nel iudicio suo che non havró bisogna di replicar i mille inconvenienti chi sono accidentali ale variete delle Conscientie del marito et moglie et molti piu mali chi possono advenir a vn regno diviso in duoe parte l’una banda essendo per luy et l’altra per lei[.] Rassomigliarebbe al iugo di duoi animali variando i passi in duoi canti chi mai tirarebbeno in dretto sentiero et farebbe che la voglia chi debitamente sarebbe vna si convertissi con metamorphose in odio di tutti duoi[.] Vltimamente per parlar del viuer qui solamente del suo Vostra Maesta intenda ch’il stato nel quale adesso viue (come mi fanno credere) non é molto inferiore a quei spezi che questo luoco lo darebbe talche penso che non habbia si poco da spendere che non possa honoratamente guardar la parte sua della famiglia[.] Ma in questa parte non spendero piu parolle come di cosa di niente quando gli altri dubbij saranno risoluti[.] Et Accioche Vostra Maesta sia meglio instrutta dell L’animo mio pianamente in tutta questa facenda ho fatto Electione di questo gentilhuomo chi mi é molto fedele et di molto compiuto ingenio[.] Alquale piacera La Maesta Vostra dar benigna audientia, et se la piacera crederlo Come me stezza mi compiacera molto[.] Non lasciero per questo messangiero di significar a lei il buono animo chi dimora ne i Com=

35 risposta.] resposta, CV11C  religione.] ~, V1C  Confidomi] confidmi CV11C  iudicio] iuditio 70/77C, CV11C 36 havró bisogna] hauro bisogno 70/77C, CV11C; haueró bisogna V1C  i] j CV11C 37 ale] a le 70/77C, CV11C, V1C  38 variete delle Conscientie] ~ ~ conscientie 70/77C; varietà ~ ~ (with conscientii altered to ~) CV11C   moglie] moglia altered to ~ V1 39 a] à V1C  regno] Regno 70/77C, CV11C, V1C   duoe] due V1C  luy] lui V1C 40 lei.] ~^ CV11C; ~, V1C   41 chi] che V1C  42 vna] ~, V1C   conuertissi] convertissi CV11C 44 suo] ~, V1C  45 adesso] ad adesso 70/77C 46 a] à V1C  spezi] spesi 70/77C, CV11C, V1C   luoco] loco V1C 49 quando gli] quandogli CV11C  50 Accioche] accioche 70/77C, CV11C, V1C 51 instrutta] instructa CV11C  dell L’animo] dell’animo 70/77C, CV11C, V1C   pianamente] ~, V1C  52 Electione] elettione 70/77C, CV11C, V1C 53 ingenio.] ~^ 70/77C, CV11C; ~, V1C  La Maesta CV11C; la Maesta Vostra dar V1C  Et] et V1C

Vostra

dar] la Maesta [omitted] dar 70/77C,

54 crederlo Come me stezza] crederla come me stesso 70/77C, CV11C; crederlo come me stessa V1C 55 a] à V1C  dimora] dimpra V1C  55-56 Compagni] compagni V1C

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pagni del mio Ordine del Gartiere verso la Maesta sua iquali questo anno l’hanno eletta vno di Questa Compagnia a i quali ho molto voluntiere concessa la mia voce Come quella chi aspetto tanto honore et amista della Maesta Vostra quanto Amore Ó Affectione il Zio O padre di buone memorie dovean a i predecessori meij. Pero Rechiedo della mano sua che gli degna mandarmene il suo piacere accioche in tal modo possi accommodar le circonstantie di quella Ceremonia[.] 2. Aprilis. 1566 Affectionatissima Sorella della Maesta Vostra / Elizabeth R Letter 4—Translation

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If my response to the letter written by Your Majesty has been so long delayed, this has not arisen from any unwillingness to take in good part what it has pleased Your Majesty to write, or that I did not regard as honourable that offer made to me by Your brother. On the contrary, I consider myself happy that you had such a good opinion of me that you desired my hand for such a close bond. I forbore until now to trouble you

56 Ordine] ordine 70/77C, CV11C, V1C   iquali] iguali CV11C 57 Questa Compagnia a] questa Compagnia a 70/77C, CV11C; questa compagnia, à V1C 58 Come] come 70/77C, CV11C, V1C   59 Maesta] omitted 70/77C, CV11C 60 Vostra] vostra, 70/77C, CV11C   Amore Ó Affectione Il Zio O padre] amore ó affettione il zio ó padre 70/77C, CV11C; amore ó affettione il Zio ó padre V1C   buone] bone V1C 61 a] à CV11C, V1C   meij.] miei. 70/77C, CV11C; mei, V1C  Rechiedo] rechiedo 70/77C; rechiedi CV11C; recchiedo V1C   62 piacere] ~, V1C 63 Ceremonia] Ceremonie altered to ~ V1; Ceremonie 70/77C, CV11C 63 2. Aprilis. 1566] in William Cecil’s hand, V1; omitted 70/77C, CV11C; followed by A tergo. | Alla Maesta dell’Imperadore V1C  64 Affectionatissima] Affettionatissima 70/77C, CV11C 66 Elizabeth R] no signature 70/77C, CV11C; imitation of signature V1C

6 close bond: literally, ‘a tight knot’; but the meaning of ‘bond’ is clearly attested in contemporary Italian; see Vocabolario Treccani, s.v., ‘nodo,’ 4a; see also above, Letter 4 draft 1, ll. 7–8.

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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with this business only because I was aware of your important affairs and matters of great consequence concerning, on the one hand, the preparations against the common foe of Christianity, and, on the other, the convention of the Estates of Germany. Now, in the hope that these lines will obtain pardon if too plainly written, I have resolved to loosen the bridle of my will and give free rein to my pen. It seemed strange to me, Sacred Majesty, that five months should have elapsed without receiving either a line or a message from Your Majesty. I seriously thought that I had been jested with, or that more irons than one were in the fire, so that I considered myself slighted, or at least kept in the balance, in expectation of some better weight. And, after the return of Strange I was even more perplexed, as one who received an honourable, indeed, but exceedingly uncertain answer. I cannot deny that this contains courteous and respectful words, for which, as I am duty bound, I humbly thank Your Majesty. Yet, thinking of my resolution conveyed through Master Zwetkovich, I was expecting no more doubts, but only a Yes or No. Now I’ll touch upon the three main points contained in the letter. The first concerns your brother’s journey, and the purposefulness of it. Your Majesty must know that I do not hold myself of such small account that the Archduke would be dishonoured in coming to ask for my person; not for what I am in myself, but for the honour of the position which I hold. It seems to me that it would be better for both to see each other. Who knows whether he will approve the choice made through the eyes of another? Tot capita tot sensus. What pleases one may not be acceptable to another. Should his coming bear no fruit, the shame would be no less mine than his; because in popular opinion it would not be clear whether the impediments were to be attributed to me—having given him cause to

19 this: the answer, the message received from Vienna. 24 purposefulness: the text of Elizabeth’s missive and of Maximilian’s letter makes clear that ‘sicurtá’ here is not meant in the sense of ‘safety’; see above, Letter 4 draft 2, line 23. 26 coming... person: cf. Vocabolario Treccani ‘ricercare,’ 2, 2d. 27 for what... myself: literally, ‘for any worthy thing in me.’ 27 position: cf. Vocabolario Treccani, ‘luogo,’ 5b. 32 it ...clear: the Italian (in the final version, ‘per esser le opinione delle gente varie et incerte’) stresses the idea that people will also differ as well as be uncertain as to the correct interpretation of the events.

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abandon the idea—or if one should think that the refusal were on account of his unwillingness to comply with the agreement. Therefore, if you will weigh this matter with an even hand, it appears to me that such a concern has been already addressed. As regards religion, I have such trust in your judgment that I do not need to repeat the thousand inconveniences which are incident upon there being differences of conscience between husband and wife, and the many more evils which may arise where a kingdom is divided into two parts, one for him and the other for her. This would be akin to two beasts yoked together, but who, varying in their paces and pulling in different directions, would never pull straight. Thus it would be that what should be one united will, would, on both sides, be transformed by metamorphosis into hatred. Lastly, to speak of the abode of Your [brother] here, Your Majesty should understand that his present position (as I am led to believe) is not much inferior to that which this position would ask of him. Therefore I believe that he does not have so little to spend that he cannot honourably look to his own family. On this subject, however, I will waste no more words: it is, after all, something easily agreed once other doubts have been resolved. And so that Your Majesty may fully and plainly understand my mind in this matter, I have chosen this gentleman, who is very faithful to me and possesses a very accomplished mind, to whom your Majesty will vouchsafe to grant a favourable audience; and if you vouchsafe to trust him as you would trust me, you will please me exceedingly. I will not leave it to this messenger to make known to you the goodwill which the Companions of my Order of the Garter bear you. This year, they have elected you to their Order; to theirs, I added my vote, as that of 34 or: interpreting Elizabeth’s ‘così bene’ as an imperfect form of ‘sibbene’ or ‘sì bene.’ 39 incident: possibly, this was the English word which Elizabeth had in mind when writing ‘accidentali’; cf. OED, ‘incident,’ adj.1, I.3 3. Interestingly, on the other hand, the Italian form has a specific juridical connotation, cf. Vocabolario Treccani, ‘accidentale,’ agg. 2a. 42–44 like two beasts... straight: see above, Letter 4, draft 2, ll. 47–49. 51 On this subject: cf. OED, ‘part,’ n., 1, III, 16b. 61 vote: cf. Vocabolario Treccani, ‘voce,’ 3c; the choice of vocabulary, however, may reflect also the English ‘voice’ as in the OED, I.3a, ‘expression of choice or preference given by a person.’

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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one who expects from Your Majesty no less honour and friendship than that which your Uncle or Father of good memory showed to my predecessors. However, I beg a reply from your hand, as to whether you be pleased to accept, so that I may arrange the details of the ceremony. 2 April 1566 Your Majesty’s most affectionate sister Elizabeth R.

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Notes 9. Cf. Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 60-65; 73–74. 10. CSPSp, I, 395; cf. also McCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 91. For a wider perspective on the negotiations see Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity and Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony. 11. CSPSp, I, 407. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was far from sincere in his talk with Guzman. As Susan Doran has noted, his ‘public stance on the marriage varied according to the circumstances and the person to whom he was talking at the time, but the proHabsburg group felt sure that he was secretly working to scuttle the project’ (Doran, ‘Religion and Politics,’ 908). See also Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 77–78. 12. Cf. CSPSp, I, 431 and 429. 13. Cf. Zwetkovich’s letter to Maximilian, CP 147/41, and the enclosed articles agreed with Cecil, CP 155/112. It should be noted that the 1559 negotiations had not got as far as serious discussions on religion, though the Austrian envoy (at this time, Baron Bruner) had hinted—in fact, of his own initiative—that Charles might not be inflexible; cf. Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 73. 14. These were, in fact, to prove fatal to the negotiations; cf. Doran, ‘Religion and Politics,’ 915–16; 921–26, and below. 15. Cf. Klarwill, 239–41, 248, 251–52; Doran, ‘Religion and Politics,’ 915; Id., Monarchy and Matrimony, 78–83. 16. This Latin letter of compliments on the Baron’s diligence and trustworthiness is now in Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, Hausarchiv-Familienakten, Karton 21 (formerly Karton 15), Konvolut 3, Faszikel 4, fols. 136–37. The document is dated 5 August 1565. See also Ascham’s letter-book, BL, Royal MS 13 B I, fol. 133 and the copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Clarendon MS 35, item 181. 17. A copy of this is now SP 70/81, fol. 51. William Cecil indicated the date of receipt as 24 December on the back of the letter (fol. 51v); see also CSPF, VII: 1564–1565, 427 (no. 1373) and 526-27 (nos. 1696–99). In his journal for 1543–96, however, Cecil (probably writing at a later date) inserted a note just above an entry dated 20 December: ‘Roger le strang brought lettres from Emperor Maximilian to the Queen’s Majesty, dated 27.

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

43

November for answer to that his Ambassador Swecovytz retorned, concerning the mariadg with the Archduke Charles’ (CP 229/1, fol. 32). 18. Cf. CSPSp, I, 512 and below. 19. SP 70/81, fol. 51. The translation is the one found in CSPF, VIII, 526-27 (except for one correction: the Emperor only refers to his brother’s journey to England and not to his; see the notes to Letter 4 draft 2, line 23 below). 20. Elizabeth did, however, briefly acknowledge the receipt of the Emperor’s letter in a Latin missive dated 14 January 1565/6 (BL, Royal MS 13 B I, fol. 173v; a copy is in Bodleian Library, Oxford, Clarendon MS 35, item 235). 21. Guzman to Philip II, CSPSp, I, 512–13. 22. Elizabeth spoke to Guzman sometimes in Latin, sometimes in Italian, as had happened, in fact, also on the day of their first meeting: cf. Guzman to Philip II, 27 June 1564, CSPSp, I, 364. Clearly, far from merely resolving a language problem (Elizabeth could certainly read Spanish), this stratagem had the additional ­advantage of allowing Elizabeth to hear, even if indirectly, the opinion of Spain on this matter. 23. Interestingly, Maximilian had actually sent a copy of his letter to Philip II. I owe this information to Simon Adams. 24. Guzman to Philip II, 4 Feb 1565/6, CSPSp, I, 519–20. 25. BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C XI, fols. 228–32, which analyses in detail the three points dealt with in Elizabeth’s letter, and is dated 15 February 1565/6. 26. Cf. Bell, Diplomatic Representatives, 57, no. E70. On Mont see Luke MacMahon, ‘Mont, Christopher (1496/7–1572),’ in ODNB. He had been in Augsburg, since at least 17 April 1566, when he wrote to Cecil, cf. CSPF, VIII, 41–58. 27. Dannett’s instructions, dated 30 April 1566 (SP 70/83, fols. 252–55), mirror the main points of Elizabeth’s letter. He was ‘to go to the Emperor and deliver to him a letter from the Queen, written in her proper hand, briefly answering his and signifying his nomination to his father’s place in the Order of the Garter’ and ‘to direct his answers and speeches according to the following forms, being the inconveniences mentioned in the Emperor’s letter, with the answers to the same: 1. It seems difficult for the Archduke Charles to undertake the journey, the matter being so

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uncertain. Answer. The matter is not so uncertain if the three principal points contained in the writing given to the Emperor’s ambassador may be performed. 2. That the Archduke nor his shall be troubled in their religion. Answer. No cult in religion should be by him professed openly or privately in England contrary to the laws. 3. That the Archduke be not driven to live wholly upon his own. Answer. It is reason that with his patrimony he should maintain the family that he should bring with him.’ A more detailed set of ‘Replies for the three above-mentioned difficulties’ followed (SP 70/83, fols. 256–58). Cf. also BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C XI, fols. 228–39; 245–46; CSPF, VIII: 1566–1568, 57–58 (no. 333). Dannett probably left on about 12 May, cf. Cecil’s diary, CP 229/1, fol. 33v. 28. Interestingly, all of these manuscripts present a watermark apparently of German origin, similar, though not identical, to Briquet No. 143. Cf. also Gravell, Eagle 224.1. 29. One noticeable mistake proves that, notwithstanding the many corrections of Elizabeth’s Italian and its occasional concordance with the London copies, V1C is nothing more than an ‘improved’ copy taken from V1. The word ‘dimora’ in Elizabeth’s sent version, in fact, becomes ‘dimpra’ in the copy as a result of careless reading (the otiose flourish of the capital N in the preceding line, in fact, touches the o in the line below making it resemble a ‘p’).

LETTER 5

May–June 1567 Holograph Draft and Final Version

W

Date and Occasion

riting on 8 June 1566, Guzman could boast he had been informed that Dannett, the Queen’s envoy, had sent ‘a courier with a letter to the Queen from the Emperor, in his own hand.’30 He was correct; Maximilian had replied in a letter dated 29 May.31 However, with the excuse of his hasty move from Augsburg to Vienna, the Emperor’s letter made reference only to his acceptance of the order of the Garter and postponed all further details to a later time.32 His second holograph letter of 19 June 1566 added little other than a wordy, if very kind, confirmation of the interest in the plan, and a note on the religious problem.33 In September 1566, Parliament urged Elizabeth to give an answer to the vexed question of succession and of her marriage. While she decidedly refused to settle the first, on the latter point she was more cautious, and managed to be sufficiently vague as to arouse some hope (though no explicit assurance) that the Austrian match was still being considered.34 In fact, Elizabeth’s words were ‘I will marry as soon as I can conveniently.’35 Unsurprisingly, things moved slowly. It was only in late June 1567 that Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, was sent as special ambassador to Vienna, taking the Garter with him.36 Elizabeth’s letter was clearly intended to accompany the honorific title and insignia, to justify the delay and announce that the Earl would discuss in detail the various issues relating to the marriage. Sussex’s instructions and the official warrant, on parchment, for Maximilian’s admittance to the © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_5

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ELIZABETH I’S ITALIAN LETTERS

order were issued on 20 May 1567.37 The draft letter should reasonably date from about this period to the date found on the sent holograph copy, which was signed at Richmond on 22 June (‘Giugno’ in the letter, clearly not ‘January’ as marked at the top of the manuscript in the Vienna State Archive). As in the case of the preceding letter, this date should perhaps not be taken for granted. Once again, as she had done with her previous message—which had come in tandem with her request for a reward for Zwetkovich—Elizabeth accompanied her missive with a petition in Latin, which was dated 24 June.38 Any last minute amendments to the text, however, must have preceded Sussex’s departure, which occurred on 26 June.39 Texts The letter is extant in two holograph versions, a draft presenting a series of currente calamo corrections and insertions (SP 70/141, fol. 252, henceforth 70/141) and the final sent copy, in Elizabeth’s best hand (Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, Hausarchiv-Familienakten, Karton 21 [formerly Karton 15], Konvolut 4, Faszikel 5, fol. 40r–v; hereafter V2). The latter clearly descends from an amended intermediate copy, which is now lost.40 As in the case of Letter 4 above, the holographs have been transcribed separately. 5a—Draft (70/141)

5

10

Hauendo intesa Sacra Maiestá delle facende varie di grande importanza che vi interveniuano dopoi la Ritornata Vostra sua dall commune inimico dell Christianitá per la cui ritornata felice humilmente ne rendo gratie infinite all signor Iddio molte volte son stata impedita et ritardata di non mandar questa mia imbasciata non volendo impedir le cose piu grande con mescolarle piu con le piu piccole et pero la Maesta Vostra havra per scusata la tardanza sua mia / Adesso sperando ch’il tempo s’accommodera alla mia Voglia ricordandomi come g di buo animo l’ordine l’election vostra all ordine mio 2 interveniuano] intervenn altered to ~  5  stata] stati (?) altered to ~ 8 mescolarle] meschiarle altered to ~

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

47

di San Giorgio fu gratamente ricevuto hora per questo Conte mio Cugino a Vostra Maestà con tutto il cuore lo mando come quella che se piu honorata cosa hauessi cosi voluntier la mandareiebbe / Et per non hauer vdito che mai questo ordine inanzi questo tempo manchess quello l’honor d’hauer vn imperator del ordine spero et priieg lo desidero che ne i giorni mei non ne sia altro che voi al quale ogni felicita non mi parera troppo / Quanto alla lettere honorate et amichevole che Vostra Maestà mi scrissi dalla sua mano propri non hauriebbeno manchete risposte lungo tempo fa s’io il tempo l’ hauessi non havessi piu havuta piu rispetto di Vostra Maestà che irresolutione del mio negotio et quantunque Io pensai che quel ch’io mandai per Danet mandai fuss ben chiaro bastassi per far dichiaration del l’animo mio nondimeno per esser da Vostra Maestà richiesta di far le cose piu chiare indubitate ho dato il carico a questo Conte di far dichiaration de risoluer tutti i punti de chi habbiamo fin qui trattati prieghando la Maestà Vostra di darlo amoreuole audienza

13 gratamente] gr written over two unreadable cancelled letters (perhaps, ‘ce’?) 17 vdito] vdita altered to ~  24  dalla] della altered to ~  26  s’io] se altered to s’ 28 mio] written in left margin   30 dichiaration] The MS reads dichidichidiclarationaration. In a rather confused series of corrections, Eli zabeth amended this word many times as if she could not decide between diclaration and dichiaration.

14 questo... Cugino: Thomas Radcliffe, third Earl of Sussex (1526/7–1583), was the son of Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk. This made him a relative of Elizabeth’s via the Howards’ connection with the Boleyns. 23–24 lettere... propria: the missives sent by Maximilian on 29 May (CP 147/41) and 19 June (BL, Cotton MS Vespasian F III, fol. 127); see above.

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ELIZABETH I’S ITALIAN LETTERS

con credito tale quale a me stezza s’io fussi presente darebbe sperando per lui di riceuer dichiaratione vltima risposta piena di quel che vostra Maestà risolvera di far tal che non si faccia traga sempre il nodoso filo che mai ha fine et cosi et l’un et l’altro si contentera d Questo bastara per questa volta hora per non molestar troppo la Maestà Vostra riferendomi alla sufficienza del presente Supplicando il Signor Iddio ch’e vi in ogni felicità li prosperai con lunga vita et buona sanita / 43 filo] fno altered to ~ (Elizabeth, perhaps with the word ‘fine’ in the same line in mind, probably began writing fino, which she amended currente calamo) sanita /] followed by Priegan | Quemadmodum | Qu written 45 volta] perhaps vulta altered to ~  51  in Elizabeth’s best italic hand, the last two in left margin.

5b—Final Version (V2)

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15

Havendo intesa, Sacra Maiestá, delle facende varie di grande importanza ch’intervenirno dopoi la ritornata sua dall commune inimico della Christianitá, per La cui ritornnata felice humilmente ne rendo gratie infinite al Signor Iddio Molte volte son stato impedita et ritardata di non mandar questa mia imbasciata prima non volendo impedir le cose piu grande con mescolarle con le piu piccole et peró La Maiestá vostra havra per scusata la tardanza mia. Hora speranndo ch’il tempo s’accommoderá meglio a la mia voglia, ricordandomi come di buon animo L’elettion vostra al ordine mio di San Giorgio da se fu gratamente ricevuto pero per questo Conte mio Cugino a Vostra Maiestà con tutto il cuore lo mando come quella chi se piu honorata cosa hauessi cosi voluntiere la vi mandarebbe[.] Et per non hauer vdito che mai questo ordine per inanzi manchessi l’honor d’haver un Innperator di quello Spero et lo desidero che ne i giorni mei non vi sia altro che voi alquale ogni felicita non mi parerá troppo: Quanto ale lettere honorate et amichevole chi Vostra Maestà mi scrissi della mano sua non havrebbono manchate risposte 14 Innperator] Iimperator altered to ~

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

49

lungo tempo fa s’io non hauessi havuto piu rispetto alla Maestà Vostra che irresolutione del negotio mio: Et quantunque pensai che quel chi per Danet mandai bastassi per ampia dichiaratione del animo mio nondimeno per esser da la Maestà Vostra richiesta di far le cose piu indubitate della parte mia, Ho dato questo caricho al Conte di risponder a tutti i punti fin qui trattati et Priegando La Maestà Vostra di concederlo amorevole audienza con credito tale quale a me stezza s’io gli fussi presente darebbe[.] Sperando per lui di ricevere vltima risposta di quel chi Vostra Maestà si risolvera di far accioche non si traga sempre il nodoso file senza venirne mai al fine[.] Et cosi et l’un et l’altro tanto meglio si contentera[.] Questa bastera per hora non volendo troppo molestar La Maestà Vostra[.] Supplicando il Signor Iddio ch’in ogni felicità li prosperi con lunga et buona sanitá[.] Di Richamonte il 22 di Giugno

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Di Vostra Maiesta affectionatissima Sorella et Cugina Elizabetta R

35

Letter 5—Translation Having heard, Sacred Majesty, of the various matters of great consequence which occurred following your return from the common foe of Christianity (for whose return I happily and humbly give infinite thanks to the Lord God), I have been prevented many times and delayed from sending this message of mine initially, not wishing to hinder greater things by mixing them with lesser ones—and, for this reason, Your Majesty will excuse this delay of mine. Now, hoping that this period will better favour my wishes, and remembering how you have accepted gladly and in good part your election to my order of Saint George, I am therefore sending it to Your Majesty through this Earl my Cousin, with all my heart, as one who, had I anything more honourable, would gladly send it to you. And since I have

5 message: this is the second meaning for ‘ambasciata’ in Thomas’s Principal Rules, sig. 2Bv. 6 for this reason: the Latinate ‘però,’ deriving from ‘per hoc’; cf. the notes to the translation of Letter 1 above.

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never known this order to lack the honour of having an Emperor as one of its members, thus do I hope and desire that in my days there will be no other than you, for whom all happiness will never seem too much to me. As concerns the honourable and affable letters which Your Majesty wrote to me in his own hand, the replies would have come a long time ago had I not had more respect for Your Majesty than irresolution in my dealings. And even if I believed what I had sent you by Dannett should suffice as an ample declaration of my mind in this matter, nevertheless, having been asked by Your Majesty to act, on my part, more clearly, I have entrusted the Earl to answer all of the points which have been discussed thus far. I would ask that Your Majesty grant him a benevolent audience and afford him as much credit as you would give me should I myself be present. Through him I hope to receive a definitive answer concerning what Your Majesty will resolve to do, so that the tangled thread will not be spun indefinitely. This will suffice for now, not wishing to trouble Your Majesty exceedingly. Begging the Lord God to favour you with every happiness and with prolonged good health. From Richmond, the 22nd of June. Your Majesty’s most affectionate Sister and Cousin Elizabeth R

18 dealings: this is the second meaning given for ‘negotio’ in Florio’s 1598 World of Words, sig. V5v. 27 will not be spun: literally, ‘will not be drawn.’ It may well be that Elizabeth was thinking of some kind of drawn-work, which would fit her embroidering skills; cf. Lisa M. Klein, ‘Your Humble Handmaid: Elizabethan Gifts of Needlework,’ Renaissance Quarterly 50,2 (1997): 459–93, in particular 476–82. The first occurrence of this meaning in the OED, however, is dated 1595. One may also wonder if Elizabeth was aware of the expression ‘trarre il filo della camicia a qualcuno,’ ‘to make one do what one pleases with him’; cf. Vocabolario Treccani, s.v. ‘camicia’; Boccaccio Decameron IX.5: ‘tu m’hai con la piacevolezza tua tratto il filo della camiscia.’ 28 trouble: cf. Thomas’s, Principal Rules, s.v. ‘molestare,’ sig. X1v.

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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Notes 30. CSPSp, I, 556. As Guzman clearly stated, the letter’s main point was Maximilian’s acceptance of the Order of the Garter. 31. CP 147/41, which should be dated 29 May 1566 and not, as tentatively indicated in the catalogue, 1565. 32. The Queen (via Thomas Dannett) probably sent at least a reply to this in July 1566, as stated in Sussex’s instructions for his 1567 mission; cf. SP 70/91, fol. 79 which mentions ‘a writing delivrd in July last to our servant Thomas Danet’ (on this set of instructions see also below, Letter 6); cf. also Dannett’s letter to Elizabeth, SP 70/85, fol. 2. 33. This letter, in Spanish, is now in BL, Cotton MS Vespasian F III, fol. 127. No year date is provided in the Cotton MSS catalogue. 34. Cf. McCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 93–99. 35. CW, 95. Elizabeth’s earlier commitment to consider the question of marriage in 1563 evidently placed her in a very difficult position at this stage; cf. Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 85–87. 36. McCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 99; Doran, ‘Religion and Politics,’ 918. On the earlier appointment of Thomas Sackville (who was spared this mission because of his father’s ill health), and the reasons for the delayed departure of the Earl of Sussex, see Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 83–84; 88. Sussex was still in Antwerp on 5 July 1567; cf. SP 70/91, fol. 123 and 70/92, fol. 18. The always wellinformed Florentine agent in Venice, Cosimo Bartoli, wrote to Francesco I de’ Medici that, through some letters from Antwerp, he had known of the arrival of Sussex in Vienna, bringing the Order of the Garter (‘Per lettere di Anversa li 6 di luglio: [...] Giunse il Conte di Susex mandato dalla Regina di Inghilterra a Sua Maestà Cesarea il quale porta l’ordine della Garattiera’; Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato 3080, fol. 108). Via Ulm (22 July) and Augsburg (24 July) he arrived in Vienna on 5 August, cf. the diary of Sussex’s journey, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 50, fols. 190-200 and Sussex’s letter to Leicester, in which he acknowledges the receipt of a letter on this date, SP 70/93, fol. 41. Cf. also SP 70/92, fols. 90, 78, 81. 37. Respectively, SP 70/91, fols. 77–88 and Vienna, Haus-, Hof- undStaatsarchiv, Hhsta Ur Fuk 1370.

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38. Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, Hausarchiv-Familienakten, Konv. 4, Fas. 5, fols. 44–45. This time she asked the Emperor to pardon a German nobleman, the Earl of Rockendolf, who had been ‘declared by all the States of the Empire guilty of lese-majesty, a perjurer and traitor to his country’ (SP 70/39, fol. 3; CSPF, V, 142). 39. Sir Gilbert Dethick, who in his quality as Garter King of Arms accompanied Sussex to invest the Emperor with the Order of the Garter (see Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Hhsta Ur Fuk 1370), compiled a detailed diary of their journey. On 26 June the party arrived at Gravesend ‘and laye at the Angelle that nighte’; thence they moved to Canterbury and Dover, where they ‘toke shipe’ on the following Monday, 29 June; cf. Henry Ellis, Papers Relating to the Proposed Marriage of Queen Elizabeth with the Brother of the Emperor (London: John Nichols and Sons, 1853; originally published in Archaeologia 35 (1853): 202–12 from an unidentified item from the BL Cotton Fragments collection), 4; cf. also Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 50, fols. 190-200; CSPSp, I, 652; CP 229/1, fol. 36v. 40. See, for example, the last sentence before the final salutation in 70/141 and in V1, which adds a series of words (‘tanto meglio si contentera[.] Questo bastera per hora non volendo troppo molestar La Maestà Vostra’) and leaves out a whole phrase ‘riferendomi alla sufficienza del presente.’

LETTER 6

7 November–10 December 1567 Holograph Draft and Final Version

S

Date

and

Occasion

ussex’s first audience with Maximilian took place on 8 August 1567.41 By late October the Emperor’s final conditions to the marriage were clearly laid down: Charles was to be allowed to profess his religion in private—which would entail separate worship.42 Henry Cobham (later Sir Henry) was sent back to England for further instructions; he arrived in London on 7 November.43 Elizabeth’s draft reply might date to any time between this and 10 December 1567, the date found on the Vienna holograph (Figure 3, below), on a copy now in London, on a letter in Spanish to the Emperor’s consort, as well as on a further set of instructions for Sussex.44 That the final version was written on or about 10 December thus appears more than plausible. Furthermore, this date is compatible with those found on the back of the copy now in the Vienna archives, which was delivered by Cobham ‘on Newe-yeares-day’45 and was endorsed by one of the Imperial secretaries: ‘Regina Anglie ad Cesarem | 1 Januarii 1568’ (fol. 115v) and ‘3 Januarij 1568’ (ibid.). As confirmed by a draft letter in Latin, addressed to Archduke Charles (again, dated 10 December 1567), and attached to the instructions for her ambassador, Elizabeth clearly intended to maintain a very polite, but firm, attitude.46 The Queen’s Italian missive barely attempts to mitigate what Sussex was meant to tell the Emperor: Elizabeth, quite simply, refused to act against her conscience. The wellbeing of her reign might very well depend on her choice of religion, and thus the proposal to grant the Archduke ­permission © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_6

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to profess his Catholic faith (and permit Mass to be celebrated in her own palace) would certainly have been highly dangerous for her position, and for the peace of her country.47 It is not surprising, then, that the December letter was the last of the elaborately wrought Italian missives to Maximilian. Texts Letter 6 is extant in Elizabeth’s draft, SP 70/141, fol. 254 (70/141/254), the sent holograph version, Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, HausarchivFamilienakten, Karton 21, formerly Karton 15, Konvolut 4, Faszikel 5, fols. 115–16 (V3), and a later copy dating from the mid-late 1590s, BL, Cotton MS Nero B IX, fol. 11548 (Cnb9, probably an independent transcript from a lost corrected copy of 70/141/254, from which V3 appears to descend). Both 70/141/254 and V3 have been transcribed below. The latter text, collated against Cnb9, has provided the source for the translation. 6a—Draft (SP 70/141/254)

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Intendendo che ha piaciuto La Maestà Vostra di riceuer et intertener L’imbasciator et Cugino mio cosi honereuolmente con infinite carezz et amoreuolissimi modi non posso piu dir senon che le parolle sue vostre scritte et i fatti suoi visti si rassomigliano tanto ch’una pittura ben all viuo conterfatta non rassomiglia tanto l’essempio suo essendo l’uno morto et l’altro in og nell tutto il medesimo / pero tanto me ne tengo obligata alla Maestà Vostra che mai me ne mostrero dismentichevol anzi lo tenero scritto non in tauole che mai si fra casseranno / Nella lettera sua mi scriue ch[e] l’importanza della causa ha fatto il prolungar della risposta le cose toccando cose si alte che la sacra religione laquale ragione che spero mi tenera anchor per 6 tanto] written in left margin 8 mai] Elizabeth appears to have started writing no (for ‘non’; cf., six lines below, ‘non posso’) and having later changed no into m.   12 risposta] rispossa altered to ~  toccando] toccanto altered to ~ 2 L’imbasciator et Cugino mio: cf. Letter 5a line 14 above. 5–7 ch’una pittura... il medesimo: this rather convoluted hyperbole is evidently intended to exalt Maximilian’s constancy in words and deeds. One may note, incidentally, that the relationship between the object and its artistic representation—a typical Renaissance topic—was dealt with by Elizabeth’s tutor Roger Ascham in the second book of his Schoolmaster (published posthumously in 1570); see Vickers, English Renaissance Criticism, 141–61.

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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scusata se in tutto non posso all presente sodisfar la richiesta fattomi della parte dell Archeduca tenendo piu il rispetto della conscientia et il per= petuar questo mio pacifico regnar incomminciato et continuato che tutti ifauori de Principi dell mondo ó tutti i reami chi mi potrebbono dar Spero pero che la Maestà Vostra non pigliara in mala parte la risposta che si dira per il Conte di Sussex come quella che non riusce dell petto della una persona che non l’estima come fratello et che non l’honora come strettizz strettissimo amico anzi da tale que ha in reverenza la Casa Austriaca et in in estimatio intrinsicha la reale sua persona facendogli voto di fidelissima affectione come a chi gli merita il piu / Et se qualche zezania si mischiera nelle parolle d’alcuni maligni che questi mei rispetti son che per hauer bel’ modo di schifar questa causa del tutto mi confido tanto nella Maestà Vostra che vi farete il buon padrone di casa chi le lasciaua crescere fin alla consumatione della vendemia et alhoro fece la sep[ar]atione di quelle dal buon frumento conoscendo conoscerete per la fine la verita del tutto et fin a tanto raccommando la sua sanita all etterno Iddio che molti anni la vita sua continui 17 pacifico] pacifice (?) altered to ~   23 estima] essima altered to ~  32  padrone] patrone altered to ~ 34 conoscerete] conoscererete first altered to ~ and then cancelled

18–19 che tutti... dar: interestingly, the phrase is reminiscent of Luke 4:1–13, the wellknown description of the temptation of Jesus in the desert. 21 la risposta: cf. SP 70/95, fol. 129. Sussex’s instructions mention the Queen’s ‘doubtfulness in her own conscience,’ and the fact that what the Emperor demanded, that Charles be free to worship in private, was ‘contrary to her laws, which cannot be altered without the consent of the Estates of her realm’ (CSPF, VIII, 377, no. 1857). 21-23 come quella... che non l’estima: the person, as the subsequent lines make abundantly clear, is Elizabeth and not Sussex. The gender-free phrase, though, makes clear that the messenger is one with the message he is delivering. As in the preceding letter, Maximilian is implicitly invited to trust the Earl as he would trust the Queen. 32–35 vi farete... tutto: the reference is to the Parable of the Tares also known as the Parable of the Weeds (Matthew, 13:24–30).

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Fig. 3  Letter 6b—Elizabeth’s last Italian missive to Emperor Maximilian II (1567). Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und- Staatsarchiv, Hausarchiv-Familienakten, Karton 21, Konvolut 4, Faszikel 5, fol. 115. Reproduced with the permission of the Austrian State Archives.

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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6b—Final Version (V3) Intendendo che ha piaciuto a La Maiesta Vostra di ricevere et intertenir L’imbasciador et Cugino mio con infinite Carezze et amorevolissimi modi non posso piu dir senon che le parolle suoe scritte et i fatti suoi visti si rassomigliano tanto ch’vna pittura all viuo fatta non imita cosi l’essempio suo, Essendo l’uno morto et l’altro il medesimo[.] Peró tanto mi tengo obligata alla Maiestà Sua che mai mene mostreró dismentichevole anzi lo guardero scritto in tavole chi mai si fracasseranno[.] Nella lettera sua mi scrive che l’importanza della causa ha fatto il prolungar della risposta, le cose della religione essendo di tanto importanzá, Laquale ragione spero mi tenerá anchora per scusata se in tutto non posso all’presente sodisfar la richiesta dell Archeduca tenendo in piu stima la sodisfattione della conscientia et il perpetuar questo mio pacifico regnar incomminciato et continuato che tutti i fauori di principi mondani ó tutti i Reami chi mi potrebbono dar[.] Spero pero che la Maestà Vostra non pigliera in mala parte quel ch’il Conte gli dira della parte mia come la cosa che non riusce dall petto della persona chi non l’estima come fratello et non l’honora come stretto amico, anzi da tale chi ha in Reuerenza la Casa Austricha et in estimatione intrinsicha la reale sua persona facendogli voto di fidelissima affectione Come a quella chi ben la merita[.] Et se qualche Zizania si meschiera nelle parolle d’alcuni maligni dicendo che questi mei rispetti sono che per hauer bell modo di schifar questo negotio mi Confido tanto nella Maestà Vostra che vi farete il buon padrone di casa che le lasciava crescere fin a la Consumatione della vindemia et alhora far la seperatione dal buon fromento provando per la fine 1 Maiesta Vostra] Maiestate vostra Cnb9 2 L’imbasciador] le Imbassador Cnb9  Carezze] carezze Cnb9 3 suoe] Sue Cnb9   5 Essendo] essendo Cnb9 6 Peró] Pero Cnb9  obligata alla Maiestà] obligato a la Maesta Cnb9  mostreró] mostrero Cnb9 7 chi] che Cnb9  8 prolungar] polungar Cnb9 9 religione] probably relegione altered to ~ V3   importanzá, Laquale] importanza^ laquale Cnb9 10 tenerá] tenera Cnb9  14 ó] o Cnb9  mi ] mi si Cnb9 15 Maestà] Maiestate Cnb9   16 dall] dal Cnb9 18 Reuerenza] reuerenza Cnb9  Austricha ] Austrichia Cnb9   20 Zizania] Zizamia Cnb9 21 che] ~, Cnb9  bell] bel Cnb9  22 negotio mi Confido] negotio, mi confido Cnb9 23 di] de altered to dj Cnb9  a la Consumatione] ala consumatione Cnb9 24 seperatione] separatione Cnb9  buon] omitted Cnb9

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la sincera verita dell tutto Et fin quell Raccommanderó la sua sanita et honore al Eterne Creatore che molti anni La Vita sua Conserva[.] Di Hamptoncourt a li.x.di dicembre M.d.lxvij.

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Di Vostra Maiestá affettionatissima Sorella et Cugina Elizabeth R 25 dell] del Cnb9  tutto] ~. Cnb9  quell] quelz Cnb9  27 Hamptoncourt] Hampton Court Cnb9  31 Elizabeth R] omitted Cnb9

Letter 6—Translation

5

Having heard that it has pleased Your Majesty to receive and entertain the ambassador my Cousin with infinite tenderness and most affectionate manners, I cannot now but say that the words written and the deeds done by you are so alike that a portrait of a living object does not so resemble its subject, the former being dead, and the latter like itself. For this I feel such indebtedness to Your Majesty that I shall never prove myself forgetful thereof; better, I will keep this written on tables that will never be destroyed. 2 tenderness: Thomas’s Principal Rules, sig. 2F3 translates ‘carezzare’ with ‘to cherish.’ Elizabeth probably meant ‘con infinita carezza’; the noun form ‘cherishing’ was in use in English as early as 1400; cf. OED, s.v. 3-5 now I... itself: Elizabeth’s first version amplified her hyperbolic sentence, emphasizing the ‘good quality’ of the portrait and the fact that the model is ‘its very self’; see also the note to lines 5-7 in the draft, above. 5 For this: again, as in Letters 1 and 5 above, this must be interpreted as a Latinate form deriving from ‘per hoc.’ 7 better: cf. Vocabolario Treccani, ‘anzi,’ prep. e avv. 2.c. Thomas’s Principal Rules (sig. 2 B4v) gives also ‘rather,’ ‘so’ and ‘truly’ as possible translations. 7 tables: this use of ‘tavola’ quite probably derives from the Latin Tabulae publicae, tablets (of wood, marble or bronze) on which official writings and proclamations were recorded (cf. Vocabolario Treccani, ‘tàvola,’ s.f., 3a). Given the reference to portraiture that immediately precedes the reference to this, one may wonder if the word might also possess overtones of ‘table’ in the Elizabethan sense of ‘painting’ or ‘picture’ (I owe this suggestion to Elizabeth Goldring).

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

59

In your letter, you write that the importance of the matter has been the cause of the delay in giving an answer, the questions of religion being of such importance. However, for this very same reason, I hope, I will be excused if I cannot at present satisfy in full the request made by the Archduke, as I prize a quiet conscience and the continuation of peace in my realm—which I have begun and maintained so far—over any favours which may be granted me or all the kingdoms which may be conferred upon me by the Princes of this world. I hope, therefore, that Your Majesty will not be offended by the answer which the Earl of Sussex will utter on my behalf, as though it were one which came from the heart of someone who does not esteem you as a brother and who does not honour you as a very close friend. On the contrary [it comes], from one who holds in reverence the House of Austria and in intimate esteem your Royal self—to whom she proffers a vow of most loyal affection as to one who well deserves it. And although some malignant tongues may attempt to sow discord by claiming that these compliments of mine are just a polite means to avoid this business, I am confident that Your Majesty will act as did the good husbandman, who let the tares grow until the end of the harvest, when he then separated them from the good wheat, and will establish in the end the sincere truth of it all. And until then I will com11 However: ‘ancora’ is quite probably used here as a concessive conjunction (as in Vocabolario Treccani, ‘ancóra,’ 3). Thomas translates ‘anchora che’ as ‘albeit’ (Principal Rules, sig. 2B3v). 13 a quiet conscience: literally, ‘the satisfaction of [my] conscience.’ The meaning of this is made even clearer by the draft, which has ‘il rispetto della conscientia,’ ‘the respect of [my] conscience’ (line 16). 19 someone: i.e., Elizabeth; see draft, 1, line 22 above. The double negation has here been ignored for reasons of clarity. Even if common in Renaissance Italian, the rather clumsy repetition of ‘non’ may be, nevertheless, significant—perhaps only as a sign of the Queen’s feelings at this stage of the negotiation. 22 intimate: this use of ‘intrinseco’ reflects its Latin origin: intrinsecus, ‘situated within; interior, inner’; see also the OED, ‘intrinsic,’ A., adj. 1.a. 26 to avoid: this is the first contemporary meaning—‘schivare,’ in modern Italian—given by the Vocabolario Treccani (‘schifare,’ 1a), which quotes well-known examples from Tasso, Boccaccio, Guicciardini and Petrarch. It is not recorded in Thomas’s Principal Rules, but appears in Florio 1598, sig. 2Gv.

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mend your good health and honour to the Eternal Creator who may grant you many years of life. From Hampton Court, the 10th of December 1567

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Your Majesty’s most affectionate Sister and Cousin Elizabeth R

TO MAXIMILIAN II, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR 

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Notes 41. Ellis, Papers Relating to the Proposed Marriage of Queen Elizabeth, 5. For a (conjectural) date in mid-August, see Bell, Diplomatic Representatives, 57. 42. BL, Cotton MS Julius F VI contains a memorandum (dated 24 October 1567) of the five conditions which Charles ‘would have to accept as limitations on his freedom of worship’ (cf. Doran, ‘Religion and Politics,’ 917–18). Sussex’s letter to Elizabeth describing the compromise he had reached with the Emperor (again, dated 24 October, SP 70/94, fol. 161) is summarized in CSPF, VIII, 360 (no. 1788). On this document see also Doran, ‘Religion and Politics,’ 918-19. For the other conditions (e.g., Charles would have to pay for his train of servants and courtiers and enjoy the same limited powers and title as Philip II when married to her sister Mary), see Klarwill, 279–82 and BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C XI, fols. 240–42v. Sussex’s letter to Elizabeth was followed by yet another to Cecil on 27 October, SP 70/94, fol. 172, in which he reported what the Emperor had told him, that is, that since the Queen proceeded bona fide, he could see ‘no cause why she should not yield somewhat to satisfy his brother’s conscience, when he [had] yielded in all other things wholly to her will’; CSPF, VIII, 362. 43. CSPSp, I, 683, no. 450. Cobham had also brought back a polite— if evasive—Latin letter from Archduke Charles (dated 25 October 1567) which reached William Cecil on 10 November, as witnessed by his endorsement on the back of his copy of it, SP 70/94, fol. 168. Cobham was back again in Vienna by 1 or 2 January 1568; cf. Rome, Vatican Library, MS Urb. Lat. 1040, fol. 475. Given the circumstances, it seems that the anecdote concerning Cobham having told his ‘postilion to sound the horn all the way … crying, ‘[Long] live Austria and England!’’ is either an exaggeration or was simply related to his being in a hurry to get to London (cf. CSP Rome, I, 267). 44. Respectively BL, Cotton MS Nero B IX, fol. 115r–v (see below for details); ibid., fol. 116 (a mid-1590s copy of the letter, in Spanish, to Maria, wife of Maximilian), SP 70/95, fol. 129 (CSPF, VIII, 377, no. 1857); a draft addition by Cecil is on fol. 133 (CSPF, VIII, 378–79, no. 1858).

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45. Ellis, Papers Relating to the Proposed Marriage of Queen Elizabeth, 8. 6. SP 70/95, fol. 125. Burghley’s draft version is on fol. 126. 4 Charles’s reply to this is now CP 155/92. In the latter, the Archduke acknowledged receipt of the Queen’s letter of 10 December (‘Attulit mihi literas Serenitatis vestræ, familiaris ejus Henricus Cobhamus, decima die Decembris ad me datas’). 47. Cf. SP 70/95, fols. 125 and 129–31; McCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 99; Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 92–93. 48. The hand (probably Windebank’s) which transcribed this letter, in fact, is identical to that found on BL, Cotton MS Titus F XII, fols. 103–4, dated 1594; the same watermark visible here is also found on BL, Cotton MS Julius E II, fol. 82, a missive to Ferdinando, Duke of Tuscany, dated 11 November 1596.

LETTER 7

To Gian Luigi (Chiappino) Vitelli, Marquess of Cetona 2 March 1570/1

G

Date and Occasion

ian Luigi ‘Chiappino’ Vitelli (1520–75), Marquess of Cetona (Siena), was one of the commanders of the Duke of Alba’s troops in the Low Countries.1 He was well-known to Elizabeth: on 22 October 1569 he had had an audience with the Queen to request the restitution of a small fleet carrying a considerable sum of money which had been seized by the English. This event could have triggered an international crisis; indeed, this was the second mission which Alba had sent to England in order to find a peaceful settlement.2 Vitelli was still in England when the Northern Rising broke out on 14 November. In December he received Alba’s order to leave; almost at the same time, the English, suspicious about his possible involvement in the rising, asked him to depart as soon as possible.3 Vitelli had his final audience on 18 December and left England shortly afterwards.4 However, he had probably made a good impression on the Queen. In a letter to Philip II written just two days later, Elizabeth stated that, should Philip be prepared to negotiate on her terms, Vitelli would be an excellent envoy.5 Thereafter, the Marquess was to have more contact with the English. In August 1570 Henry Cobham, the diplomat who had accompanied Sussex to Austria, was sent as special ambassador to the Low Countries and Germany, with messages for Alba, for Philip II’s new wife, Anne of Austria, and for Anne’s father, Emperor Maximilian II, at Speyer. Cobham’s was,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_7

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in fact, far more than a mere courtesy visit to the Spanish and Habsburg royal families: he was meant to appeal to monarchical solidarity against the recent papal bull which had excommunicated, and therefore implicitly deposed, Elizabeth, and explore (possibly as mere captatio benevolentiae) the possibility of a revival of the marriage negotiations with Archduke Charles.6 To keep on the safe side in such dangerous times, however, the purpose of his journey also involved gathering and sending home intelligence on the Duke of Alba’s real intentions in outfitting a Spanish fleet, which Alba pretended was just meant ‘to transport the Emperor’s daughter into Spain.’7 At Antwerp, Cobham was welcomed by Vitelli, whom he had met the previous year at Court. Having attempted unsuccessfully to re-open the 1569 negotiations by writing to the Queen,8 the Italian nobleman was evidently now trying to gain favour with her through Cobham: on 28 August 1570 he went to him and offered him ‘any favour for Her Majesty’s sake,’ suggesting that ‘if it had pleased her to have answered his letter written from Dover he would have written often and have made good show how willing he is to serve Her Highness in the causes he dealt in.’9 Three days later, Vitelli came again, and kindly offered to lend the English some horses, and by the beginning of September ‘offered to assist’ in a further series of negotiations.10 Vitelli was apparently acting as a laudable man of peace, but Alba’s actions were suspicious. However, quite probably after Cobham’s return, the Queen was persuaded to write to the Marquess. The proposal to send a letter seems to have come from Guido Cavalcanti, the trusted Italian merchant who had acted as an English envoy on several occasions (including at the peace negotiations of Cateau-Cambrésis).11 In a letter to Cecil and Walter Mildmay, Cavalcanti offered to go to the Netherlands to continue the negotiations—but advised that a missive be sent first to Vitelli to thank him for his courteous treatment of the previous envoy.12 Clearly there was very little to lose in sending at least a letter of thanks, which could also serve as an opening for peace. If Spain could be kept at bay at this difficult time, all the better. Text Cambridge University Library, MS Dd 3.20(4), (Dd3.20), fol. 47 (corresponding to fol. 31r–v, no. 35, in the original foliation). This is a letter-book containing transcripts of about 300 letters from Elizabeth

TO GIAN LUIGI (CHIAPPINO) VITELLI, MARQUESS OF CETONA 

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chiefly to European monarchs, heads of state and dignitaries. As stated above (Introduction, 2.3), this volume originated within the office of the Latin Secretary Sir John Wolley, who commissioned two scribes to copy these texts, all dated between 1569 and the mid-1580s. Some patent errors seem to suggest that the scribe was copying the text in front of him rather mechanically (cf., e.g., ‘pui’ for ‘piu,’ ‘sono’ for ‘sano’ and, in Letter 2, ‘sinisuramente’ for ‘smisuratamente’ and ‘Sate’ for ‘State’). Transcriptions of this kind typically preserve a number of significant features of the copy text; interestingly, the paucity of punctuation, the use of figurative language, a few idiosyncratic spellings, the use of plural ‘e’ / ‘a’ forms instead of ‘i’ / ‘e,’ and of ‘z’ for ‘s’ (in ‘Marcheze’) seem compatible with the Maximilian letters (cf. nos. 4–6 above). No effort has been made here and below to regularize the spelling, but occasional emendations, noted in the apparatus, have been inserted where evident errors would hinder the understanding of the text. 7. Al Signor Chiappino vitelli. Non senza grandissimo piacere et contentamento Henrico Cobamo gentelhuomo nostro cj ha fatto intendere i molti lodeuoli et buoni officij molte volte fatte da Vostra Signoria per la sincera et calda sua diuotione verso di noi et la buona volunta indirizzata sempre all vtile et tranquillita delle cose communi. Cosa veramente d’vno nobil cuore degna, mostrarsi in tutti cosi diritto et veridico, rasserenando piu presto con bel modo le cose turbide, che astutamente con calonnie in bonaccia procurando nuoue tempeste: Non hauemo percio potuto presentemente far altro, che con queste lettere ingenuamente testificare. quanto cotesti vostri portamente vhanno dati tra tutti honore et appresso di noi gratia di quali et d[’]altri vostri offici et cortosie verso di noi dimostrate quelle gratie ne rendiamo che per noi si possono le maggiori promettendoui Signor Marcheze della parte nostra in ogni cosa tutto quello fauore ch la vera vostra virtu et valore, cj pare con giustissima ragione hauer meritata. state sano Da Grenuico alli duo di Marzo 1570

1 Al] preceded by Regina et caet. Dd3.20  6 piu] pui Dd3.20  8 tempeste] tempesta Dd3.20 11 offici] voffici Dd3.20  15 sano] sono Dd3.20

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Letter 7—Translation To Master Chiappino Vitelli

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Not without the utmost pleasure and satisfaction has our gentleman Henry Cobham made known to us the many laudable and good offices your Lordship has often performed out of your sincere and warm devotion for us, and of your goodwill, always directed to the purpose and tranquillity of the common weal. Such is indeed a thing worthy of a noble heart, to be so straightforward and truthful towards all, quick to eloquently clarify that which is turbid, rather than subtly and by means of calumny, generate new tempests from calm waters. We were unable at present to do more than, with these letters, frankly testify just how much these deeds of yours have brought you honour among all, and gratitude from us. For these and your other good offices and kind deeds shown towards us, we express our most heartfelt gratitude, promising on our part, my Lord, in everything, all the favour which your true virtue and valour seem to us most rightfully to deserve. Fare well. From Greenwich, the 2nd of March 1570.

7 towards all: interpreting ‘in’ as ‘per’, a meaning which seems more plausible here than a mistake for ‘in tutto’ (‘in all’). 10 frankly: this is the meaning recorded in Florio 1598, sig. Q1. 12-13 we... gratitude: literally, ‘we give you the most possible ample thanks’, an hyperbolic expression meant to reinforce the promises of the following phrase. 15 Fare well: the Italian form of salutation corresponds to the Latin ‘vale’ / ‘valete’; cf. OED ‘vale’, int. and n. 3.

TO GIAN LUIGI (CHIAPPINO) VITELLI, MARQUESS OF CETONA 

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Notes 1. On Vitelli see Roy Strong, ‘Zuccaro’s Visit to England,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 22 (1959): 359–60, 359; Wyatt, Italian Encounter, 146. DBI, s.v. ‘Cibo, Eleonora’; ‘Guicciardini, Giovan Battista’; ‘Minerbetti, Bernardo’; ‘Caldara, Polidoro’; Henry Kamen, The Duke of Alva (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 77, 82, 91, 108, 117; Maurizio Arfaioli, ‘Alla destra del Duca: la Figura di Chiappino Vitelli nel Contesto degli Affreschi Vasariani del Salone dei Cinquecento,’ Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 51, 1/2 (2007): 271–78. Vitelli had been a commander for the Medicis, and was one of the regular correspondents of the family; a large number of letters by him (though none relevant to these events) are preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze. For more news on the Vitelli Family see also ASFi, Raccolta Sebregondi, 5492 and 4450. 2. The money had been sent from Biscay to the Netherlands on six zabras and two ships. While three vessels reached the Netherlands safely, bad weather and an attack from some Huguenot privateers had forced the ships to repair to the ports of Fowey and Southampton; see J.B.M. Constantin Kervyn de Lettenhove (ed.), Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre, sous le règne de Philippe II (vol. V; Brussels: Hayez, 1886), xxiii; 200-6; 229–32; 488–91 (Vitelli’s narration of his first audience). On the complexity of the situation see Alba’s instructions to Vitelli, ibid., 466-73; see also 493. I am most grateful to Simon Adams for calling this source to my attention and for suggesting a wider context than the one presented in my ‘Elizabeth I, Chiappino Vitelli and Federico Zuccaro: two Unpublished Letters,’ Notes and Queries 258 (New Series 60), no. 3 (2013): 386-91. See also Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan, MS 47 (Lorenzo Borghesi, Vita di Chiappino Vitelli), fol. 72; Rome, Vatican Library, Urb. Lat. 1041, fol. 213; Levin, Reign of Elizabeth, 48-49; Strong, ‘Zuccaro’s Visit to England,’ 359, and the introduction to Letter 8 below. 3. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre, 476–78. Vitelli had written to Alba requesting whether he should help the rebels, but the Duke answered stating that he should not compromise his ambassadorial status. The Duke

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instructed him not to leave without his command, which he sent on 4 December. Vitelli left England shortly after his audience with the Queen; Alba was expecting his arrival in Brussels on the 28th; see ibid., xxiv and 533. On the rumour that the English had demanded as a condition that Philip would intercede for the restitution of Calais from the French and that the Queen had apparently forbidden Vitelli to leave, and was enraged when he did so without permission early in January 1570, see Vatican Library, Urb. Lat. 1041, fol. 213 and 215r–v; CSP Rome, I, 319–32 esp. nos. 628, 630, 632. 4. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre, 555–59. 5. Ibid., xxiii and 555; see also the introduction to Letter 8 below. 6. Bell, Diplomatic Representatives, 182, item LC59; Julian Lock, ‘Brooke, Sir Henry (1537–92),’ in ODNB. 7. CSPF, IX, 302, no. 1129; Bell, Diplomatic Representatives, 182. 8. Cf. SP 70/109, fol. 47. 9. SP 70/113, fol. 132 (Thomas Cobham to Cecil, 28 August 1570). 10. SP 70/113, fol. 152 and SP 70/114, fol. 5. 11. Notwithstanding his being very rich, Elizabeth granted Cavalcanti (probably for his service at Cateau-Cambrésis) a life pension of 100 pounds a year; cf. Calendar of Patent Rolls 1558-1560 (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1939), 254; Cavalcanti would have been William Cecil’s choice as negotiator of the embargo settlement of 1569 but Alba considered his French connections too strong; see G. D. Ramsey, ‘The Undoing of the Italian Mercantile Colony in Sixteenth Century London,’ in N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting (eds.), Textile History and Economic History: Essays in Honour of Miss Julia de Lacy Mann (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), 40–41; F. J. Levy, ‘A Semi-Professional Diplomat: Guido Cavalcanti and the Marriage Negotiations of 1571,’ Historical Research, 25,92 (1962): 211–20; Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 42–43, 45–46, 106; John Bossy, Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 88; 253. 12. SP 70/115, fol. 83, endorsed ‘1570,’ quite probably 1570/1, as this document mentions Cobham.

LETTER 8

To Chiappino Vitelli, Marquess of Cetona 3 August 1575

T

Date and Occasion

wo years after his meeting with Cobham, Vitelli was suspected of having been involved in the abortive Ridolfi plot, to the extent that some believed he had volunteered, in talks with Ridolfi, to assassinate Elizabeth.13 Nevertheless, given the tone of the letter printed below, it would appear the Queen was not party to such information—or, alternatively, all things past were quickly forgotten in consideration of certain new events. Elizabeth’s emphatic praise of Vitelli’s ‘services’ is probably not only related to his cordial behaviour towards the English ambassadors (Cobham, and later, Thomas Wilson)14 and visitors to Antwerp, such as the Earl of Pembroke, who is mentioned in this missive. After the recall of his commander, the Duke of Alba, in 1574, and the appointment of a new governor to the Netherlands, Vitelli was clearly looking for fresh employment. Thomas Wilson, then Special Ambassador to Antwerp, wrote to William Cecil in January 1574/5 that ‘the Marquisse Vitelli hath discharged hymself of his paye, which was 1000 crownes monthlie, and hath in rewarde 1500 crownes pension yerely during life. He woulde faine be gone into Italy if he might.’15 On 18 February 1574/5 he concluded his report to Burghley stating that he was ‘greatlie beholdinge to the Marquesse Vitelli,’ who being ‘very wyse’ had begun to dislike the Spanish government. ‘If any man maye be trusted upon his worde,’ Wilson stated, ‘he is verie wel affected to doe the Queene’s Majestie any service that he can.’16 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_8

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In fact, just four days earlier, the Marquess had written to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, informing him that he was sending him a man who was supposed to possess ‘the secret of tempering steel so as to make it ball proof.’17 Vitelli’s real ‘services’ were, predictably, those of a military expert; in addition to this, he certainly had first-hand knowledge concerning the Spanish troops in the Netherlands. Vitelli had also presented the Queen with quite a different kind of cortesia. The Florentine painter Federico Zuccaro, who visited England in 1575 (some time between the spring of 1574/5 and July),18 brought with him a letter of introduction, almost certainly intended for Dudley, written by the Marquess of Cetona.19 During his brief stay in England, Zuccaro painted one set of parallel portraits of Elizabeth and Leicester. As Elizabeth Goldring has convincingly suggested, these were quite likely meant to be unveiled in the course of the Queen’s visit to Kenilworth in July 1575.20 If they were at all, Elizabeth would have had additional (and recent) reasons to speak of Vitelli’s ‘diuotione et amoreuolezza.’21 Interestingly, an anecdote concerning the first meeting between the Queen and the Marquess is reported in Lorenzo Borghesi’s seventeenthcentury life of Vitelli. According to this, the Queen, having been informed prior to their encounter on how the Italian diplomat was dressed, decided to wear clothes of black velvet matching his, together with a short sword and an ivory cane similar to the ones he was reported to have with him. When Vitelli entered the Presence Chamber, the Queen spoke to him and made him understand that she knew his ways very well, and that he should not hope to ‘convince her’ as he had done with other Queens before her.22 While Borghesi’s report is not always accurate, the event described here suggests that the Royal image played a significant role in the meeting—a visual component which would certainly be consonant with the idea of sending a painter over to such a theatrical and imposing figure as the English Virgin Queen. In her letter, Elizabeth promised to reward the Marquess with more than mere words. Vitelli, however, did not live long enough either to receive money or this letter. He died, somewhat mysteriously, in July 1575.23 His death, however, did not put an end to his ‘cortesie’ towards the English monarch: Zuccaro’s beautiful compositional sketches still survive today in the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum.24 Vitelli, after all, did contribute—even if indirectly—to the glorification of the Queen’s image.

TO GIAN LUIGI (CHIAPPINO) VITELLI, MARQUESS OF CETONA 

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Text Dd 3.20, fol. 125 (108, no. 121 in the old foliation). Some verbal parallels suggest that the previous letter was consulted when writing this.25 8. Signor Marchese honorato. Accrescendosi di giorno in giorno infinitamente i vostri honoreuoli vfficij et cortesie verso di noi dimostrate saremmo del nostro douere troppo mancheuoli, se del canto nostro parimente fauore nostro in uerso di voi non si moltipliasse. Et certamente hauer uoi per ogni verso con infinite lodi sparso la fama del nome nostro c’ha dato vna contentezza di cuore incredibile, et v’ha anchora apportato fra tutti honore et fama di valorosa et gentilissimo caualliero et di tutte buone parti et vertú adorno et compiuto: Mai pero non comparira il giorno nel quale di questa vestra diuotione et amoreuolezza ci scorderemo. Al che tanto maggiormente ci trouiamo astrette quanto ogni di piu veggiamo rinuouarsi le vostre cortosie non bastandoui pocho fa hauer mostrato al nostro ambascia­ tore mentre che fu in Fiandra mille fauori, ma vltimamente intratenendo il nobilissimo di penbruch con i piu straordinarij honori che imaginar si postono. De quali vestre cortesie, infinite gratie ve ne rendiamo et siamo per haueruene obbligo perpeuto. Restate pero sicuro che mai saremo del nostro desiderio pienamente sodisfatte fin che per opere v habbiamo fatto intendere quanto queste vestre cortesie ci siano smisuratamente accette et chare. State sano Di Lichefildia agli 3 di d’Augusto 1575. 1 Signor] preceded by Regina et caetera 17 smisuratamente] sinisuramente Dd3.20  18 State] Sate Dd3.20  Lichefildia] Lichefildea altered to ~.

11-12 nostro ambasciatore: in this case, Thomas Wilson, who had returned to England by 30 March 1575 (Bell, Diplomatic Representatives, 182). 13 il nobilissimo di penbruch: Henry Herbert, second Earl of Pembroke (1538?–1601). His first wife Katherine was dying of cancer and they journeyed to Spa in the summer of 1575 for a cure; cf. Correspondance de Philippe II sur les Affaires des Pays-Bas, vol. III, ed. Philippe Gachard (Brussels: C. Muquardt, 1858), 334–36; Margaret P. Hannay, Philip’s Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 38. 18 Di Lichefildia... 1575: the reference is clearly to Lichfield, Staffordshire, which Elizabeth visited after Kenilworth on her 1575 progress. Cf. The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, ed. John Nichols (London: Nichols, 1823), II, 529–31 and Nichols’s Progresses, II, 332–34.

5

10

15

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Letter 8—Translation Honourable Lord,

5

10

15

Given the worthy offices and kind deeds you perform for us increase daily, we would be all too neglectful of our duty if, from our side, equal favour towards you should not multiply likewise. And, certainly, the fact that you have spread the fame of our name everywhere with infinite praise, has exceedingly delighted our heart, and, again, this has earned you among all the fame of valiant and most gallant gentleman, adorned with all good qualities and virtues. No day shall ever pass when we shall forget your devotion and affection. To which we feel all the more bound, as we witness the daily renewal of your kindness; it not being sufficient that you have shown our ambassador, while he was in Flanders, a thousand favours, but that you recently entertained the most noble Pembroke with the most exceptional honours that one can imagine. For such kind deeds of yours, we express our infinite thanks, and remain forever indebted to you. Rest assured, for this reason, our desire will never be utterly satisfied until we demonstrate to you the extent to which these kind deeds of yours are to us exceedingly dear and welcome. Fare well. From Lichfield, the 3rd of August 1575.

6 again: while ‘moreover’ is the principal translation suggested in Thomas’s Principal Rules, sig. B3v (under ‘Anchora’) and in Florio 1598, sig. B3v (‘againe’ was added in the 1611 edition), the text of the letter, and the explicit mentioning of the kindness shown to Cobham, seems to point to the fact that Vitelli’s previous noble deeds, which had brought him ‘honour among all’ two years before, were remembered; cf. Letter 7, above. ‘Ancora’ meaning ‘again’ is found in Italian texts as widespread as Petrarch’s sonnets (cf. Vocabolario Treccani, s.v., 1b). 8 qualities: cf. OED, ‘part’, II.15. 9 affection: ‘kindness’ is the meaning presented in Thomas for ‘Amorevolezza (Principal Rules, sig. B3v); see, however, also Florio 1598, sig. B3. 15 for this reason: cf. this use of ‘però’ (from ‘per hoc’) in Letters 1, 5 and 6, above. 16 these... of yours: the verbal repetition in the Italian (‘De quali vestre cortesie’... ‘queste vestre cortesie’) appears to be here no coincidence, but seems to be meant to establish a parallel between action and reward.

TO GIAN LUIGI (CHIAPPINO) VITELLI, MARQUESS OF CETONA 

73

Notes 13. See Augustus Jessopp, ‘Elizabeth I (1533–1603)’ in the first Dictionary of National Biography, now available via the DNB Archive [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/olddnb/8636]; Strong, ‘Zuccaro’s Visit to England,’ 359; Wyatt, Italian Encounter, 146. On the Ridolphi Plot see MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 135–44. 14. See Bell, Diplomatic Representatives, 182–83. 15. SP 70/133, fol. 81. 16. SP 70/133, fol. 128. On Wilson’s letter see also CSPF, XI, 19, no. 31 and Strong, ‘Zuccaro’s Visit to England,’ 359. 17. BL, Cotton MS Galba C V, fol. 99. 18. Cf. A. M. Crino, ‘Documenti relativi a Pietro da Cortona, Ciro Ferri, Pietro Tacca, Pier Maria Baldi, Il Guercino e Federigo Zuccaro,’ Rivista d’arte 34 (1959): 151–57; and J. A. Gere and P. Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Artists Working in Rome, c.1550– c.1640, 2 vols. (London: British Museum, 1983), vol. 1, cat. nos. 300 and 301. I am grateful to Elizabeth Goldring for bringing these sources to my attention. 19. Cf. BL, Cotton MS Galba C V, fol. 5; Strong, ‘Zuccaro’s Visit to England’; Elizabeth Goldring, ‘Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester for Kenilworth Castle,’ The Burlington Magazine 147 no. 1231 (2005): 654–60. The letter is simply addressed to an unnamed ‘Hillustrissimo signor’ at the English Court. While this might, in theory, be identified with the Earl of Sussex (whose correspondence Cotton obtained along with Leicester’s), Vitelli’s, and later Zuccaro’s, ties with Leicester make him the most reasonable candidate; cf. Goldring, ‘Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester,’ 656. For a more detailed discussion of Leicester’s interactions with Zuccaro see Id., Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the World of Elizabethan Art: Painting and Patronage at the Court of Elizabeth I (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), 100–14. 20. Their presence is recorded in an inventory of pictures at Kenilworth c.1578 (BL, Add. MS 78176, fols. 41v–42); Goldring, ‘Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester,’ 654–56; 660. See also Id., Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the World of Elizabethan Art, 100–14 and 184-88. On the 1575 Kenilworth

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festivities see Goldring’s edition of the materials relating to this event in Nichols’s Progresses, II, 231–332. 21. That Letter 8 was written from Lichfield, the next step of Elizabeth’s 1575 progress after Kenilworth, may be significant in this respect; cf. the note to the final salutation in this missive. Certainly, though, it would have caused Elizabeth some embarrassment to mention Zuccaro’s work of art explicitly in a letter addressed abroad: as any educated gentleman in Europe would know, pendant portraits normally depicted married couples; cf. Goldring, ‘Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester,’ 654; Id., Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the World of Elizabethan Art, 96–114. 22. Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan, MS 47, fols. 72v–73. On Elizabeth’s (and Mary’s) instrumental use of clothing to shape her identities before and after her accession see Maria Hayward, ‘Dressed to Impress,’ in Hunt and Whitelock, eds., Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, 81–94. In fact, Vitelli provided a detailed account of his first audience in 1569; see his letter to Alba of 23 October 1569 (Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre, 488–91) and his later report (ibid., 516–49). 23. Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri italiane (16 vols., Milan and Turin: 1839–46), X, fasc. 35, table II, states that he was betrayed by his Spanish troops and thrown from the ramparts of a fortification he was inspecting. Documentary evidence suggests his death was certainly due to such a fall, but little can be found to claim his having been murdered (I am grateful to Dr. Maurizio Arfaioli for this information). Borghesi’s almost agiographic Vita di Chiappino Vitelli gives a quite different—and almost too saintly to be true— version of his death (Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan, MS 47, fols. 132–33v). 24. See Goldring, ‘Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester.’ 25. See below, note to line 6 in the translation.

LETTER 9

To Don Antonio de Crato, Pretender of Portugal 8 October 1580

D

Date and Occasion

on Antonio, Prior of Crato, had only been King of Portugal for three months when he was defeated by the Spanish army of Philip II in August 1580. He fled to the North of Portugal; through his emissaries, he frantically sought to muster any support he could.1 His cause was clearly of interest to France and England, each of which could benefit from any curb on the increasing power of Spain.2 In many respects, especially for the English, Crato’s flag could also be, as Wallace MacCaffrey has justly noted, ‘a convenient cover for the growing fleet of privateers preying on Iberian colonial commerce.’3 While she would not hesitate to give Drake official recognition by knighting him in April 1581, Elizabeth, however, was probably at this time still hesitant to openly support the Portuguese pretender.4 Even when an English ship rescued Don Antonio and brought him to England in May of the next year,5 discussion over direct intervention in Portugal was, as the Latin secretary Sir John Wolley noted, ‘drawn along’ to the point that it seemed no military action would ever take place.6 Significantly, the Queen’s reply to this delicate issue was dealt with in the secretariat of Sir Francis Walsingham, one of her most trusted collaborators on international affairs. The final affectionate salutation, which may have been added later, may reflect, however, Elizabeth’s holograph addition to the final copy.7 The letter was endorsed by Sir Francis’s secretary Laurence Tomson (himself, just like

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_9

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his master, a man known for his excellent command of several languages) ‘1580 | Oct. 8 | Milord to don Antonio.’8 Text This draft letter, now SP 89/1, fol. 134 was evidently composed within Walsingham’s secretariat. The italic hand in which the body of the letter is written is, in fact, identical to the one in SP 78/6, fol. 45 (a letter in Italian signed by Walsingham of 8 October 1581).9 This letter provides some interesting examples of currente calamo scribal amendments to a non-holograph Italian draft; these have been preserved in the quasi-facsimilar transcription. The translation is based on the ‘final’ version of each line as visible in the manuscript. 9.

5

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15

Molto Honorato et Po Serenissimo Prenicpe Il Signor Illustrissimo Royz De Sousa portatore del presente vi ne puo dara Altezza ampio ragualio a Vostra Altezza di quel di quel che habbiamo risposto a quel alle cose che ci e stato da luy proposta nel nome vostro suo di Vostra Maestà assicurandoci che ley voy hauendo rispetto a i tempi presenti e alla relatione ch’egli fara del stato et conditione delle cose nostre accettara in buona la parte la nostra risposta., et et ui fara fede Quanto del infinito disspiacere che’ habbiamo sentiti hauuti per gli le nuoue hauute del infelice delli aspri colpi et trauersi della fortuna che vltimamente (per quel che la fama sparge) ui sono auenuti ne puo fare fede il detto portatore. Solamente ci siamo consolati d’una ferma openione conceuuta della uostra magnanimità il cui uirtu e uigore ci assicuriamo e bastante di ren vincer et render uana, la malignità della fortuna Et con questa speranza faciamo fine pregando iddio di accompagnare tutte le uostre azzioni con ogni felicità Serenissimo Prencipe vostra affettionatissima come sorella 11 auenuti] auenute altered to ~   18 sorella] followed by Al Re | Don Antonio /

3 Royz De Sousa: Joao Roiz de Sousa, the Portuguese ambassador to England.

TO DON ANTONIO OF PORTUGAL 

77

Letter 9—Translation Most Serene Prince, The most illustrious Master Roiz de Sousa, the bearer of this, will provide you with the details of our response to what he has proposed in your name. We rest assured that, when you consider the present state of our affairs and what he will relate to you concerning our situation, you will accept our answer in good part. Indeed, the said bearer can testify to the extent of our sadness on hearing of the severe blows and mishaps Fortune has dealt you (this is what is rumoured) lately. We are comforted only by our firm opinion of the high-mindedness of your spirit, whose virtue and vigour, we are sure, is enough to defeat Fortune and render fruitless her malignity. And it is with this hope we conclude, praying God may accompany all your actions with every happiness.

Most Serene Prince your most loving, as a sister

6 in good part: the Italian deleted text has ‘et ui fara fede’ (‘and will believe it’); cf. the insistence on believing the messenger (who, in this case too, brought a potentially unwelcome answer) in Letter 4. 9 rumoured: cf. Florio 1598, sig. L2v. This could, however, be a Latinism (‘fama’ in Latin means ‘rumour,’ ‘report,’ ‘tradition,’ as well as modern English ‘fame’).

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Notes 1. See SP 89/1, fol. 139, a letter from the Portuguese nobleman Antonio de Brito Pimentell to Joao Roiz de Sousa, ambassador to England. Philip II became de facto King of Portugal (with the rather confusing title of Philip I) only after the fall of Lisbon, on 12 September 1580, and was officially proclaimed King on 15 April 1581; see Anthony R. Disney, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 196–97. On Crato’s claims to the throne see A. H. De Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal (2 vols., London and New York: Columbia University Press, 1972) I, 311–13. 2. Support for Don Antonio, significantly, was discussed during the secret negotiations related to the Anjou match; see Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 178; 184. In a holograph French letter to Anjou of 1581, Elizabeth mentioned Henri III’s cynical attitude to the Portuguese situation (CP 135/27). 3. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 219. Hawkins’s 1580 commission ‘to have charge of a fleet of ships to be employed on a voyage of discovery on the coast of Africa and America’ included, in fact, his ‘authority to assist Don Antonio, King of Portugal, against any of his enemies’ CSPD 1547–1580, I, 678. 4. It was no coincidence that, in 1580, Don Antonio’s agents were admitted to the kingdom, but denied access to the Court; MacCaffrey, Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 318. 5. Disney, A History of Portugal, 196. Kamen, The Duke of Alva, 150. 6. Surrey History Centre, Loseley Letters, 6729/3/171, a letter from Wolley to Sir William More dated 27 June 1581. See also Read, Walsingham, II, 25-33. On the project, soon abandoned, for an expedition under the command of Don Antonio and Drake, see Burghley’s papers and notes in BL, Landsdowne MS 31, fols. 197– 203v and Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II, 170–71. 7. On Walsingham’s important role in the Portuguese affair see CSPF, XIV, 389–90. 8. On Tomson’s proficiency in languages see Luke MacMahon, ‘Tomson, Laurence (1539–1608),’ ODNB. 9. The Calendar entry states that this document is ‘in the hand of Walsingham’ with subscription, and address ‘in the hand of L. Cave’ and that it was ‘endorsed with date by L. Tomson’ (CSPF, XIV, 442). While the latter is probably true, neither Walsingham’s nor Cave’s hand could be detected here when comparing this letter to their holograph manuscripts.

LETTERS 10–13

To Doge Nicolò da Ponte and the Signory of Venice 1581–1584

T

Date and Occasion

homas Cordell, Edward Holmden, Paul Bayning and their associates were the chief importers into England of olive oil, sweet wines from Candia and dried currants.1 The latter in particular was a very lucrative business. Dried currants were widely popular in England at this time, not least because they were an essential ingredient in innumerable recipes—from pies and stews to pottages and large cakes, and common also in fish and meat dressings.2 The import figures were impressive: Fynes Moryson stated that ‘the ... delight in sweetnesse hath made the vse of corands of Corinth3 so frequent in all places, and with all persons in England as the very Greeks that sell them, wonder what we doe with such great quantities thereof, and know not how we should spend them, except we vse them for dying, or to feede Hogges.’4 This commerce had faced some difficulties in the past: in fact, both Venice and England had been carrying on a ‘war of tariffs’ on these imported goods since the reign of Henry VII. However, it was not until October 1575, when Elizabeth granted a ten-year monopoly on the import of these goods (and of some other goods typically imported from Venice) to the Italian Acerbo Vellutelli, that the conflict really escalated. Vellutelli started exacting dues from the Venetian cargoes in February 1576, eliciting protests from the Italian merchants resident in London.5 Having long tried, in vain, to obtain a revocation of the grant, the Venetians retaliated in 1580 by placing an import duty on English cloth, tin, wool, and on currants and wine exported from their dominions on foreign ships. The 79

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English merchants petitioned the Privy Council against these duties on 16 April 1581.6 The following September or October, Elizabeth wrote a rather conciliatory letter to the Doge (no. 10). While this made no reference to the Vellutelli grant directly, its finale did leave the way open for further negotiations when it stated that the requests from the Venetians in England would not be ignored. Indeed, Vellutelli’s patent was revoked in 1582 and later (even if for a limited period, and with reference only to the import of ‘currantes, sweete wynes and oyles’) transferred to the Venice Company through the concession of Letters Patent in April 1583.7 The transfer was effected on the understanding that the Signory would ‘ease them’ of their taxes.8 Until then, however, Holmden, Banning and their associates—now free from impositions at home—could exact a fee from foreign mercantile ships. The Venetians did not revoke their edict, and added new import taxes on other goods: in 1582 and 1584 the English were faced with new requests for payment when trading in the Venetian dominions at Zante (now Zakynthos, Greece).9 The letters printed below, all dated between 1581 and 1585/6 (see below, no. 15), recount in some detail the request of the English monarch and provide information on the negotiations which sought to address the import tax controversy. Unsurprisingly, their text was largely the fruit of the work of Elizabeth’s secretaries. In fact, a Latin version of Letter 10, two English drafts of Letters 11 and 15 (on which see below) and the sole surviving witness of the Italian text of no. 10 are preserved in the Yelverton manuscripts among the papers of Robert Beale. Beale’s long-standing working relationship and kinship with Walsingham had contributed to make him one of Elizabeth’s most trusted Clerks of the Privy Council, and probably the best collaborator Walsingham had.10 Significantly, the English draft of Letter 11 bears an important addition which Walsingham commenced and Beale concluded.11 Textual evidence indicates that various people collaborated in the shaping of these documents, and that their iter might not have been as straightforward as would at first appear. As evidenced by the textual introduction below, it is difficult to know whether a Latin or Italian version was sent for Letter 10. The English texts of no. 13 and 15 are stated to have been ‘translated out of the Italian Language,’ which indicates awareness of the differences existing between the original English draft and the text which was sent. Quite significantly, comparative analysis reveals that these Italian letters were generally revised versions, rather than mere translations.

TO DOGE NICOLÒ DA PONTE AND THE SIGNORY OF VENICE 

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Careful revision is evident in the final version of Letter 11, which alters the original English draft by adding specific points and detailed notes which presuppose a significant knowledge of the Italian language of commerce (cf. e.g., lines 11, 15-16, 32, 37, 42-45 in 11, translation). Not all revisions were of a technical nature, however. On one occasion, a much gentler tone was attempted in Italian: ‘your letter’ in 11a becomes ‘amoreuolissima lettera’ in 11b—something, incidentally, in tune with Elizabeth’s hyperbolic adjectivization in her holograph correspondence. While the Queen must have been little involved in the framing of the core text of these missives, the matter at stake was much more important to her than it may at first seem. First, Vellutelli was a protégé of Elizabeth’s dear ‘eyes,’ the Earl of Leicester, and was on good terms with Walsingham.12 In addition to this, one should not forget how important the relationship with Venice and the Italian States was for England, both commercially and from the point of view of international policy. It seems no coincidence, then, that while (understandably) the texts of nos. 11–13 and 15 show a crescendo of disappointment,13 their physical form is steadily magnificent (see Figure 4 below—Letter 12). If, on the one hand, the use of broadside vellum reminds one of the litterae ducales which had been addressed to Elizabeth in the previous years (some of which still survive among the State Papers), the use of various coloured inks and the elegant penmanship make them appear in deliberate competition with their model. This relationship between page and text is all the more interesting when one considers that Elizabeth and her secretaries were perfectly aware of the importance of details of form in diplomatic letter-writing: as early as 1569 Tsar Ivan IV complained that every letter he received from Elizabeth bore a different seal (something which, to the Russian monarch, evidently appeared suspicious or contrary to etiquette), and in 1570 he further observed that Elizabeth had not sealed her recent letters with the Great Seal.14 Form clearly mattered much for the Tsar: two of his letters (24/28 October, 1570 and May 1582) were richly embellished with floral patterns in gold ink, and with portions of text written in gold.15 Significantly, Elizabeth’s later missive to Ivan (5 June 1583, in Latin) was to be much more in tune with this style: it was, in fact, richly illuminated in gold and other colours with elaborate floral designs, including a large red Tudor rose.16 By the 1580s, it seems, the Elizabethan ‘Foreign Office’ had learnt its lesson. Interestingly, some years later, in the 1590s, the cost for the ‘limning,’ that is, embellishment, of some of the letters to the

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Tsar and the Ottoman Emperor was sustained by the Muscovy and Levant Companies.17 No documents, however, survive to prove that this was the case for the missives to the Republic as well. Just as the letters to the Eastern potentates, the beautiful missives to Venice (nos. 11–13 and 15) were clearly produced and penned by men connected with the English State, including scribe ‘C,’ who also wrote the text of Letter 14 (quite significantly, dealing with import taxation) and the first draft of no. 24.18 These letters—apart from the increasing traces of resentment they contain—clearly stress Elizabeth’s consideration of the Serenissima Repubblica as one of the most significant Italian partners in her international policy. That some of the most emphatic sections of these missives (see e.g., no. 11) were clearly the work of men such as Walsingham and Beale is yet more evidence of the collaborative nature of what was intended to be a splendid textual and visual achievement.19 No matter how multi-layered the artefacts, however, the Queen’s large and distinctive signature foregrounded her role as the ultimate authority behind these letters. The lavishness of the Venice missives was a message in itself: Elizabeth desired to re-establish a splendid relationship with the Republic. Texts Letter 10 survives only in a rather careless copy in BL, Additional MS 48126 (Yelverton MS. 141), fols. 175–76, dated ‘September 1581.’ A late copy of a Latin version, dated 14 October 1581, is in BL, Add. MS 48149 (Yelverton MS 161, part 1), fols. 62-63v; some notable features of this text (Y161) have been noted in the footnotes. Given that no copy survives in Venice, one cannot be sure which was sent. The existence of a reply (SP 102/64, fol. 1, dated 6 December 1581) to the English request, and Elizabeth’s mention of an answer in Letter 11, however, indicates that one of the two was in fact received by the Republic.20 After this, a further letter, in Italian, was sent; over such a short period of time it would have made good sense to maintain the same choice of language in all the letters, even if, admittedly, this is not always the case in the English diplomatic correspondence. The later date of the Latin version, in fact, argues in favour of Y161. An English scribal draft of Letter 11, bearing Beale’s amendments, is preserved in the same volume as Letter 10 (BL, Add. 48126), on fol. 178 (Y141). A contemporary English translation of Letters 13 and 15, copied

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by the same hand, is in SP 99/1, fols. 21–24 and 44–46 (SP99/1/21 and SP99/1/44). These texts have been printed below, together with a transcription of the sent copies, now preserved in the State Archive of Venice (respectively, Collegio, Lettere di Principi 33, fols. 7, 8, 9 and 10; LPr 7–10; all in the hand of scribe ‘C,’ who also penned no. 14 and the first draft of no. 24).

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Notes 1. Cf. BL, Additional MS 48126, fols. 172–207v; Cheyney, History of England, I, 386. These merchants were later to form the Venice Company, which received its charter in 1583; see Mortimer Epstein, The English Levant Company ([1908] New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), 20–23; Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 18–19; Maria Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Decline of Venice and the Rise of England 1450–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 48–57. 2. Cf. C. Anne Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain from the Stone Age to Recent Times (London: Constable, 1973), 333, 335, 357–58; Joan Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500-1760 (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), 9–10. 3. Currants took their name from Corinth, the principal place of their production. On the distinction and possible confusion among the contemporaries between ‘currants’ and ‘raisins’ see Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain, 342. 4. Fynes Moryson, An itinerary vvritten by Fynes Moryson, gent: first in the Latine tongue, and then translated by him into English (London: John Beale, 1617; STC2 18205; ESTC S115249; Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 18205 copy 2), pt. 3, vol. 3, p. 152, sig. 3R3v. The average import in this period seems to have been in the range of 1100 tons a year; the figure rose to 7000 tons in 1591 and 1599 in London alone; cf. Cheyney, History of England, I, 386. T. S. Willan, Studies in Elizbethan Trade (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 85, which provides figures from Exchequer King’s Remembrancer Port Books 1131/1–2, 4–5, 10–11 1132/7–8, 11. The household of Sir Francis Willoughbly alone could consume up to 56 pounds of currants in less than ten months; see Mark Dawson, Plenti and Grase: Food and Drink in a Sixteenth Century Household (Totnes: Prospect Books, 2009), 166. 5. A few years later Vellutelli imposed the same rates on the English merchants, who complained to the Privy Council and were eventually allowed a much lower rate of payment; see BL, Add. MS

TO DOGE NICOLÒ DA PONTE AND THE SIGNORY OF VENICE 

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48126, fol. 173 and 191–93; Cheyney, History of England, I, 386– 87, and below, notes to Letter 12. 6. BL, Add. MS 48126, fol. 174v. See also Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean, 49–50. 7. The Letters Patent which Elizabeth signed on 17 April 1583 include the names of Thomas Cordell, Edward Holmden, Paul Ronning, Richard Glascock, ‘Robert Sadler, William Garraway, Henry Anderson, Andrew Raning, Edward Lecland, Henry Farington, Edward Sadler, Thomas Darobins, Richard Dusell’ and ‘Thomas Trorote’ as those who ‘shall for the next six years enjoy the trade by sea with Venice and Venetian dominions.’ A copy of this is in SP 12/160, fols. 18–20. Cf. also CSPD, 1581–1590, 105; CSPVen, VIII, 65, no. 160. 8. SP 12/155, fol. 193. 9. BL, Add. MS 48126, fol. 176r–v; Cheyney, History of England, I, 388. Zante and Cephalonia are mentioned in Moryson’s Itinerary as being two typical areas where the English purchased currants (cf. pt. 3, book 3, p. 127, sig. 3P3). 10. Beale had experience of foreign affairs, having served as special ambassador to the Low Countries and the German courts. He married Edith St Barbe, the sister of Walsingham’s second wife Ursula; see Gary M. Bell, ‘Beale, Robert (1541–1601),’ ODNB; Taviner, ‘Robert Beale and the Elizabethan polity,’ esp. 46–154, and Cooper, The Queen’s Agent, 42–43. 11. See letter 11a below. 12. See Cheyney, History of England, I, 386–88; Read, Walsingham, III, 375–76 and Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters, 98, note 60. The fact that Walsingham did have a hand in the Venice letters of this period might contradict the statement made by Read that he did not take ‘any particular interest’ in the fortunes of the English merchants ‘after Vellutelli’s claims had been disposed of’ (Walsingham, III, 376). Certainly, though, only Beale’s hand appears in the 1584 English draft. 13. Cf. CSPVen, VIII, 65 and Letter 11b below, where Elizabeth expresses her ‘meraviglia’ and displeasure at the fact that no demonstration of good will had yet been made by the Republic ‘of the kind done to our predecessors.’ 14. Cf. Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 123–24.

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5. Cf. ibid., 110, 115; SP 102/49, fols. 1 and 2. 1 16. Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 128. This manuscript is now in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow (fund 35, opis’ 2, no. 4). 17. See CP 30/32; Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters, 128–29; Andreani, Letters 1590–1596, 130. 18. For comments on this hand see the Introduction, 2.2-2.3, and Letter 14 below. 19. See the general Introduction above, 2.5. 20. Letter 11, in fact, was endorsed by a Venetian secretary ‘la regina d’Inghilterra/2a.’

LETTER 10

To Doge Nicolò da Ponte and the Signory of Venice September/October 1581

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lizabetha par la gratia Dio Regina D’Inghiltierra, Francia et Irlanda et caetera al Excellentissimo Doge, et Ill.ma Signoria di Venetia. Excellentissimo Principe et molto Magnifici Signori: Per la relatione de gli diletti subditi nostri, Paulo Bainninge et Edwardo Honden, et altri soi Compagni, mercandanti di nostra Citta di Londra: habbiamo inteso: comme essendo loro per parecchi anni accostumati, di trafficquare liberamente, con le lor robbe et mercantie, in quella inclita Citta, et altre Isole et luoghi sottoposti al vostro dominio: di pochi mesi in qua sono talmente ristretti che senza pagare certi noui dattij et gabelle, per vn vos decreto, imposte sopra le lor mercantie che non puonno vs et continuar la lor solita negotiatione, comme inanzi s’accostmauano. Et percioché consideriamo che l’exactione 12 percioché] periochie Add. 48126 4 Paulo Bainninge: Paul Bayning (c.1539–1616), merchant and member of the Venice Company and later Sheriff of London (see ODNB, s.v.). 4-5 Edwardo Honden: Edward Holmden, one of the founding members of the Venice Company; cf. BL, Add. MS 48126, fols. 174–76v. 8 Citta, et altre Isole: the 1583 Letters Patent mentioned Venice, Zante, Candia, Cephalonia and ‘other territories of the Venetians’; cf. SP 12/160, fols. 18–20; CSPVen, VIII, 65, no. 160. 9-10 noui dattij et gabelle: for a list of the taxes imposed by Venice on foreign traders see BL, Add. MS 48126, fols. 173, 184, 191–92.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 Carlo M. Bajetta, Elizabeth I: Italian Letters, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43553-8_10

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di dette nuoue gabelle, sara al grande discomodo et preiudicio de nostri detti subditi, alliquali desideriamo di fare piacere: al humile intercessione loro, non habbiamo voluto mancare di pregarui molto affectionatamente, per rispetto di qulla anti et bona amicitia et correspondenza, laquale e stata tra g