Abstract
Gift exchanges in the early modern period often had much to do with power. This is especially true in the gift exchanges between Elizabeth I and other women both before she became queen and throughout her reign. This essay analyses such exchanges between Elizabeth and her sister Mary I, her cousin Mary Stuart, and the female relatives of the Earl of Essex at the end of her reign. While the material objects in this essay focus on clothing and jewelry, there is a further argument that the most important gifts offered, asked for, accepted or refused were not objects at all, but promises and advice.
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Notes
- 1.
Despatches of La Mothe Fenelon, March 11, 1575 in Agnes Strickland and Elizabeth Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman Conquest, new ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 409.
- 2.
Lisa M. Klein, “Your Humble Handmaid: Elizabethan Gifts of Needlework,” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 2 (1997): 459–93; 460.
- 3.
For more on theories about gifts in this period, see Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Gadi Algazi and Valentin Groebner, eds., Negotiating the Gift: Pre-modern Figurations of Exchange (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprech, 2003).
- 4.
For more on the significance of these gifts see Susan Frye, Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 31–41; Klein, 1997, 476–83.
- 5.
Jane Donawerth, “Women’s Poetry and the Tudor-Stuart System of Gift Exchange,” in Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 3–18.
- 6.
Rayne Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke: Palgave Macmillan, 2012), 91.
- 7.
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vol. 16: 1540–1541 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1898), item 1389.
- 8.
L & P, 16, item 1389.
- 9.
BL, Harley Ms 419, fol. 1371 in T. S. Freeman, “‘As True a Subiect Being Prysoner’: John Foxe’s Notes on the Imprisonment on Princess Elizabeth, 1554–1555,” English Historical Review 118, no. 470 (2002): 104–16; 107.
- 10.
Royall Tyler, ed., Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations Between England and Spain: Edward VI and Mary 1533 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1916), 418.
- 11.
Frank Mumby, The Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth, A Narrative in Contemporaries Letters (London: Constable, 1909), 97.
- 12.
Queen Elizabeth I , Collected Works, ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 41.
- 13.
Despatches of La Mothe Fenelon, vol. VI, 348 in Strickland, 2010, 409.
- 14.
John Fox, The Book of Martyrs: Containing an Account of the Suffering and Death of the Protestants in the Reign of Mary the First (London: John Hart and John Lewis, 1743), 903. In this edition, Foxe’s name is not spelled with the customary “e”.
- 15.
Heal, 2014, 167.
- 16.
Thomas Randolph to William Cecil December 31, 1563 Calendar of State Papers , Scotland (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1900), II, 27.
- 17.
John Guy, My Heart Is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (New York: Fourth Estate, 2004), 178, 179.
- 18.
Thomas Randolph to William Cecil December 31, 1563 Calendar of State Papers , Scotland, II, 27.
- 19.
The memoires of Sir James Melvil of Hal-hill containing an impartial account of the most remarkable affairs of state during the last age, not mention’d by other historians, more particularly relating to the kingdoms of England and Scotland, under the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots , and King James: in all which transactions the author was personally and publickly concern’d: now published from the original manuscript by George Scott, Gent (London, 1683), 46.
- 20.
Philippa Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London: V & A Publishing, 1990), 28.
- 21.
Queen Elizabeth I , CW, 116.
- 22.
Guy, 2004, 357.
- 23.
J. Keith Cheetham, On the Trail of Mary Queen of Scots (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 1999), 115.
- 24.
Aleksandr Iakovlevich and William B. Turnball, eds., Letters of Mary Stuart , Queen of Scotland: Selected from the “Recueil des lettres de Marie Stuart”: Together with the Chronological Summary of Events During the Reign of the Queen of Scotland (London: C. Dolman, 1845), 190.
- 25.
The following year, however, he supported Mary in the rebellion led by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, and also may have been involved in the Ridolfi plot. But despite his time in the Tower, where he recognized that the treatment he received was comfortable, he was released in 1573. Lowther redeemed himself in the government eyes because of his bravery during the Armada.
- 26.
Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d: The Inventories of the Wardrobe of Robes Prepared in July 1600, Edited from Stowe MS 557 in the British Library, MS LR 2/121 in the Public Record Office, London and MS. V.b. 72 in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC (Leeds: Maney, 1988), 98.
- 27.
Arnold, 98. May-Shine Lin, “Queen Elizabeth’s Language of Clothing and the Contradictions in Her Construction of Images” (last accessed May 3, 2017), http://www.his.ncku.edu.tw/chinese/uploadeds/383.pdf.
- 28.
Allinson, 2012, 83.
- 29.
Bishop John Ross “Audience with Elizabeth” June 28, 1570, Calendar of State Papers , Scotland, 3 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery office, 1903), 323.
- 30.
London, 9th January 1571/1572; Martin A. S. Hume, ed., Calendar of State Papers , Spain (Simancas), vol. 2, 1568–1579 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1894), 290.
- 31.
I am deeply grateful to Jane Lawson for her help about this item and so much else that has to do with gifts, especially new year’s gifts.
- 32.
Dr. Thomas Wilson to Lord Burghley 8 November 1571, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honorable the Marquis of Salisbury, Preserved at Hatfield House (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1883), I, 564. Susan Frye, 2010, 52; Margaret H. Swain, The Needlework of Mary, Queen of Scots (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1973), 75.
- 33.
Arnold, 1988, 95; Swain, 82.
- 34.
Arnold, 1988, 95; Swain, 83.
- 35.
Strickland, 2010, 410.
- 36.
Frye, 2010, 51.
- 37.
Agnes Strickland, ed., Letters of Mary Queen of Scots : Now First Published from the Originals Collected from Various Sources, Private as Well as Public, with an Historical Introduction and Notes (London: H. Colburn, 1843), II, 200.
- 38.
Conyers Read suggests that Lord North, an ally of the Earl of Leicester, may have emphasized the insults as he would have considered supporting the Huguenots more important than placating the French monarchy. Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), I, 288.
- 39.
Frances Bushby, Three Men of the Tudor Time (London: D. Nutt, 1911), 68.
- 40.
Agnes Strickland, Life of Queen Elizabeth (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1906), 369.
- 41.
Heal, 2014, 120; Charles Lethbridge Kingsford and Algernon Sidney, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord de L’Isle and Dudley Preserved at Penshurst Place (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1925), II, 418, 427, 434.
- 42.
Kingsford, De L’Isle and Dudley, II, 658.
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Levin, C. (2018). Queen Elizabeth and the Power and Language of the Gift. In: Montini, D., Plescia, I. (eds) Elizabeth I in Writing. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71952-8_11
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