The Real Story
Murder in the Queen's Wardrobe is fiction, but the story of Lady Mary Hastings and
the proposal that she marry Ivan the Terrible is not.
There is
no portrait of Mary, but here is a contemporary likeness of Ivan.
Aside from his reputation for irrational violence, the
other strike against him was that he already had a wife. Actually, he had two,
having put one of them away in a convent in order to wed the other. He is said
to have been deeply in love with his first wife, and devastated when she died.
After that, his matrimonial record is worse than that of Henry the Eighth.
MARY HASTINGS was the youngest daughter of Francis Hastings, 2nd earl
of Huntingdon (1514-June 20, 1561) and Katherine Pole (d. September 23, 1576).
In 1562, Mary's brother contracted a marriage for one of his sisters, either
Lady Elizabeth or Lady Mary, to Lord Bulbeck, the earl of Oxford's heir. The
agreement provided for a dowry of 1000 marks and a jointure of 1000 pounds.
Edward de Vere was supposed to marry one of the sisters within a month of his
eighteenth birthday. Before that date, however, the earl of Oxford died and the
new earl became the ward of William Cecil, Lord Bughley. He married Burghley's
daughter, Ann Cecil, instead. Lady Mary, still unmarried and in her late
twenties, may have been at the court of Queen Elizabeth in 1581 when Dr. Robert
Jacobi, an English physician living in Muscovy, suggested her name to Tsar Ivan
the Terrible of Russia in reponse to his interest in beginning negotiations for
an English bride of royal blood. Mary qualified, being a Plantagenet descendent
distantly related to the queen. It is uncertain when she was told of her role
in the matter, but if she knew anything about Ivan, she cannot have been
enthusiastic. He was at that time married to his seventh wife, a woman he
planned to discard if the match with an English "princess" could be
arranged. Ivan sent an ambassador,Theodor Andreevich Pissemsky, to England to
negotiate the marriage and an alliance against the king of Poland. He was to
report on the height, complexion, and measurements of the proposed bride and
procure a portrait of her. Ivan was looking for a stately appearance, and would
also require that Mary and all her attendants convert to the Orthodox religion.
Queen Elizabeth, who wanted exclusive English access to the port of St.
Nicholas, deliberately delayed committing herself with the ambassador, who
arrived in England in September 1582, at first telling him that Mary Hastings
had recently had smallpox and that a face-to-face meeting and a portrait would
be intrusive. In May 1583, however, she could put him off no longer. There are
several contradictory accounts of the meeting, based on a report by the
ambassador himself (translated) and a memoir by Sir Jerome Horsey, who was not
present. They differ widely in some areas but agree that the meeting was in the
Lord Chancellor's garden. The Lord Chancellor was Sir Thomas Bromley, but while
the ambassador's account says the garden was at Bromley's country house, Horsey
places it in the gardens at York House, near Charing Cross in the city of
Westminster. According to the ambassador, he was allowed only an interpreter,
Dr. Roberts, and did not actually speak to Lady Mary. There was a party of
ladies in the garden and Lady Mary was pointed out to him. She was walking at
the head of the group, between the countess of Huntingdon (her brother's wife, born
Katherine Dudley) and Lady Bromley (Elizabeth Fortescue). The two groups
circled the garden several times, passing each other, so that the ambassador
could get a good look. Horsey's version, in which the
ambassador throws himself on the ground before the Tsar's betrothed and
declares she has the face of an angel, seems unlikely. What the ambassador did
say was, "It is enough." He reported to the Tsar that "The
Princess of Hountinski, Mary Hantis
is tall, slight, and white-skinned; she has blue eyes, fair hair, a straight
nose, and her fingers are long and taper." Some translations make her eyes
grey. The long-awaited portrait was completed in time for him to take it with
him when he returned to Russia. He embarked on June 22, 1583 along with England's
new ambassador to Russia, Sir Jerome Bowes. Bowes's instructions were to
dissuade the Tsar on grounds of Mary's poor health, scarred complexion, and
reluctance to leave her friends. Until Ivan's death on March 18, 1584, Mary (at
least according to Horsey) had to put up with being called "the Empress of
Muscovia." Mary herself died, still unwed,
before 1589, by which date a bequest in her will was being contested. One
source says her death came shortly after a visit to her brother in Ireland but,
so far, I've found no record that any of her brothers was serving there in the
1580s.
Two
other real people who play a role in Murder
in the Queen's Wardrobe are the ambassadors, Theodor Andreevich
Pissemsky (various spellings) was sent to England by
Ivan the Terrible in 1582. Below is a painting showing Queen Elizabeth giving
an audience to foreign ambassadors. It is doubtful it portrays the Russian, but
he would have been received in a similar setting.
Sir
Jerome Bowes was sent as Ambassador to Russia in 1583. He was not a great
success. We do have a portrait of him.
Similarly,
Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Thomas Bromley, George Barne, Dr. Robert Jacobi, and Prince Albertus Laski, and
Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester are all real people. Below are portraits of Walsingham and Leicester.
There
are other real women in the novel, as well.
KATHERINE DUDLEY was the
daughter of John Dudley, duke of Northumberland (1504-x.August 22, 1553) and
Jane Guildford (1509-January 15, 1555). Although the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography gives her birthdate as c.1538, there is a record of a
christening on November 30, 1545 that several authorities believe was
Katherine's. The godparents were Francis van der Delft, Imperial Ambassador to
England, Princess Mary, and Catherine Willoughby, duchess of Suffolk, who
hosted a reception at Suffolk Place, Southwark.
Assuming this birthdate to be correct, Katherine was seven when she was married
to eighteen-year-old Henry Hastings (1535-December 14, 1594) on May 24, 1553 at
Durham House in the Strand. Three months later, her father was arrested and
executed for treason. It would have been easy for her father-in-law, the earl
of Huntingdon, to have her marriage annulled. Instead he took her to
Ashby-de-la-Zouche to be raised with his own family.
From 1555 on, under the terms of her mother's will, her brother Robert paid her
a stipend of twenty marks a year. She set up housekeeping with her husband in
1560. She first came to court in 1562 or 1563 and because her brother, Robert
Dudley, was the queen's favorite, she was made a lady of the privy chamber. In
1564, however, when a book on the succession urged acceptance of her husband's
claim to the throne, Katherine was given "a privy nippe"
by the queen. His assurance that the book was "foolishly written" did
not mend the rift and for a time Katherine left the court. In 1566, according
to an essay by Simon Adams in Leicester
and the Court, the earl of Leicester's visit to the West Midlands was put
off due to the illness "or possible miscarriage" of his sister, the
countess of Huntingdon. In January 1570, Leicester and both his sisters went to
meet their brother the earl of Warwick at Kenilworth. In 1576, Katherine and
her husband became legal guardians of the earl of Essex's children. She was
already fostering and training several young gentlewomen but had no children of
her own. In 1583, she was in London with her sister-in-law, Lady Mary Hastings,
who was under consideration as a bride for Ivan the Terrible of Russia. On June
18, 1584, Katherine was living in her husband's house in Leicester when her
brother, the earl of Leicester, stopped there for the night on his way back
from a visit to the baths at Buxton. He left at 5 AM the next morning.
Katherine spent some time in the north where Huntingdon was president of the
Council of the North, but had been ill and remained at Whitehall the last time
he went to York. She was prostrate with grief when told of his death.
Nevertheless, she returned to court and was considered one of the queen's
closest friends during the last years of her reign. During the reign of James
I, she took charge of the small daughters of her nephew, Robert Sidney, while
he and his wife were in the Netherlands. She died at Chelsea and was buried
there in the parish church.
ELIZABETH FORTESCUE
was the daughter of Sir Adrian Fortescue of Stonor
Park, Oxfordshire (c.1481-x. July 9, 1539) and Anne Rede (c.1510-January 5, 1585). She was married by 1560 to
Sir Thomas Bromley (1530-April 12, 1587), Lord Chancellor of England from April
1579, and was the mother of Sir Henry (d. May 15, 1615), three other sons,
Elizabeth, Anne, Muriel (1560-1630), and Joan (b.1562). The Bromley children
were tutored by William Hergest, who dedicated his The
Right Rule of Christian Chastity (1580) to his charges. It was in the Lord
Chancellor's garden, with Lady Bromley present, that an ambassador sent by the
tsar of Russia was allowed a look at Lady Mary Hastings in May 1583. Lady Mary
had been proposed as a possible bride for Ivan the Terrible. Accounts vary as
to whether this garden was at York House, Westminster or at the Bromleys' country house. Since this was at Holt,
Worcestershire, York House seems more likely. Elizabeth was buried on June 2,
1602 in St. Margaret's, Westminster.
JANE RICHARDS was an Englishwoman living in St. Stephen Walbrook, London when, on July 18, 1564 she married one Eliseus or Eligius Bomelius (c.1530-1579), also known as Elijah Bomel and Dr. Elisei. He was a
native of Westphalia who had come to England in 1558 to study medicine at
Cambridge. His sponsor was Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, who had
been in exile with her second husband, Richard Bertie during the reign of Mary
Tudor, and had given birth to their son, Peregrine Bertie, in October 1555 in
Wesel. It was Eliseus's father, Henry Bomelius who baptized Peregrine. Eliseus
started a practice in London as a physician and astronomer, living for a time
in 1567 in Lord Lumley's London residence near Tower Hill and later in the
parish of St. Michael-le-Querne, but he neglected to
follow the regulations of the College of Physicians and was arrested in 1567
for practicing without a license and imprisoned in the Wood Street Compter. He was still confined at Easter 1570, but as an
"open prisoner" of the king's bench. Jane appealed to Sir William
Cecil, who was already acquainted with her husband, for help and appeared
before the censor's committee of the College of Physicians, petitioning for his
freedom. Having decided that London was no longer welcoming, Eliseus made arrangements to accompany the departing
Russian ambassador back to Moscow, taking Jane with him. They arrived late in
1570. There he served Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) as a magician and physician
and held a post in the household of the tzar's son.
He cast horoscopes, concocted poisons, and accumulated a fortune. In 1575,
however, he was caught trying to sneak into Riga (controlled by the Tzar's enemies, the Polish) in disguise. Under torture he
admitted to all sorts of crimes against Russia. He died in prison. Jane, who
had been left behind in Moscow in 1575, was not permitted to return to England
until Queen Elizabeth interceded on her behalf in 1583. It is uncertain when
she left, but it was certainly no later than May 1584, when Sir Jerome Bowes,
the departing English ambassador, sailed home. On October 28, 1586, a marriage
license was issued for Jane, widow of Eliseus Bomelius, and Thomas Wennington,
gentleman, of St. Margaret Pattens, London.
The
settings used in Murder in the Queen's
Wardrobe are almost all real places. Willow House is fiction, but it's
location, Bermondsey, is as accurate as I could make
it. The village is famously portrayed in a painting by Joris
Hoefnagel.
This map
from 1572 also shows the area:
The
Horse's Head Inn is my own invention, but it is based on real inns of the
period. Here's what one of them may have looked like.
Another real place is English House in Moscow, which still exists and is now a museum.
Below are an exterior photo and an exhibit showing an interior scene from the
sixteenth century.
