Queen of Hearts: The (Many) Sex Scandals of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I

was like the number one most important thing to know. True. It's like if you think about like farmers in the sixteen hundreds, the weather was actually incredibly important topic. And so you come in and be like, m how long you think this snow is gonna last? Don't like to look at that sky. I hope this sun keeps coming up. We could use some rain. I mean, you know what I mean. We need the r now. It seems silly because we have climate control, climate control. The climate has

never been more out of the climate. I just mean, I know, but but I hope we're moving away from it. You know what else we should move away from? Yeah, this conversation, that's right, So we can move towards our episode today. Yeah, we told y'all in part one all about Robert Dudley, Lord Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth the first long history together and the murder mystery surrounding Robert's wife Amy robs Heart, which of course we decided was obviously the fault of the ghost of Bloody Mary the

first Amy clearly went into the bathroom in the dark. Yeah, like a fool, Yes has met the same fate. Was very happy. We got a review, a new review where someone was telling me that they also are very scared of Bloody marries Yill even years years later. That mays me feel a little bit better about my silly paranoia. Well, anyway, the aftermath of all that Amy Rob's Heart stuff is just as interesting. There's really clearly never a dull day

in Queen Elizabeth's court. Robert had several interesting lady love and legal troubles in his future, Elizabeth had some fun suitors herself. It's basically tutor tender around there. Wow. Um. Plus, there's so many wild theories about the Virgin Queens to cover as well, So let's find out how it all played out with our star Cross lovers yeah, let's go. Hey, their friends come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking a romantic tips. It's

just about ridiculous relationships. A lover might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons at our concrete wall. But if there's a story with the Second Clans ridiculous role mass a production of iHeartRadio. Okay, So, as we said at the end of part one, with the death of Amy robs Hard, Lord Robert and Queen Elizabeth were free to marry. Finally, my wife is dead. Now I'm happy, happy,

you know. Um. But they could not get married without destabilizing Elizabeth rained too much and possibly fomenting a rebellion against her because of all the scandal about whether or not they had murdered this lady and stuff. Right, it basically would have looked like they absolutely did if they went and got married immediately after admitting to it. Yeah, but even so, they simply could not stop flirting and

causing gossip because they just were so into each other. Right, And in fifteen sixty one, Elizabeth was bedridden with a swelling sickness as they called it, made her body swell so conspiracy theories immediately sprang up, saying that she's not sick, she's actually pregnant with Robert's child. Oh my goodness. And we're going to get more into that later. So don't forget that. Yeah, I mean like swelling sickness. Come on, I mean I get that every time we go out

from Mexican food. I mean it could have been dropsy or something, sure, or maybe she ate too much. People gets Wait, did people get dropsy? I've only ever dealt with it in the fish tank. People do, and then you see the if you see pictures, it's insane how big they swell up. Their feet look insane or their hands or whatever. It looks really crazy, really sad when it happens to fish. I didn't know what happened to people.

I'm pretty Yeah. Well the more you know, the more you know, the less you want to know, well, the less so true. So yeah, at any rate, all of this scandal around them just refused to die. It does not matter how many years went by, you know what I mean. People were just always willing to believe that the two of them were up to something. Yeah. So as a result, matchmaking started anew for both Elizabeth and

Lord Roberts. Okay, For years, the Royal Council kept encouraging Robert to give up on marrying Elizabeth by suggesting various foreign princesses as his bride as like a consolation prize for the Queen. I guess, so, like just marry the Swedish Light or whatever. Yeah. In fact, Elizabeth herself proposed that Robert Mary Mary, Queen of Scotts. She went to Mary, Queen of Scott's, and was like, hey, if you marry Roberts,

I'll make you my air. And this would of course unify Scotland and England, and it would neutralize one of Elizabeth's greatest rivals. Sure, so she said absolutely, and she said she could do this on just one condition. Mary would have to come live in Elizabeth's court so that she could keep Robert, her favorite courts Air, by her side, as she always liked to have. I love it. She's like, marry this guy and then come live with me so

I can keep flirting with your husband. It's like when I see an adorable dog that needs an adoption, and I try to go get my best friend to adopt the dogs that I can still hang out with the dog. Yeah, but I don't have to take care of total same energy. Perfect Mary, Queen of Scott's, please come adopt sweet little Robert. Look at his little tail wagging. He's so cute and I just want to scratch his head, but I don't

want to have to feed him. So Elizabeth went ahead and made Robert the Earl of Leicester and gave him a bunch of land in fifteen sixty three so that he would be a more acceptable husband to Mary. And Mary actually seemed like she might kind of go for it. But there was one little hiccup in this plan, and that's that Robert was like, no, and no, no, I'm not marrying Mary, Queen of Scott's. He unequivocally refused to

marry this woman. He was dead set against it, at least partly because he was still holding on to hope that he might one day get to marry Queen Elizabeth. So instead of going along with her plan, he went and helped a guy named Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, win Mary, Queen of Scott's hand, which eventually Lord Darnley did, which I mean would be It sounds like a classic rom com set up yes, like, oh, I, oh, you're going

to have to marry this woman. Oh yeah, not if she falls in love with my friend who just came to town first. That's right, except this turned out to be a really ill fated man. Well yeah, yeah, a rom com with a really dark sequel. Yeah. But you know, Robert was not just like pining away in his celibate

bedroom or anything like that waiting for the queen. Okay, hey's a real handsome women loved him, sure, So he's flirting with several ladies in the court, including Elizabeth's cousin, Latise Knowles, who was the Countess of Essex, and she was Her name is spelled l E t Tice, so it's Lettuce, let us, let us and I could not stop reading it as let us the whole time we're going through this. So but anyway, it's Latise apparently knows she was the Countess of Essex, and she was Elizabeth's

most beautiful lady in waiting. But in fifteen sixty eight, Robert Dudley started having an affair with a different lady in waiting. Her name was Douglas Sheffield and she was newly widowed. Okay, Douglas Douglas Douglass, Douglass the last Douglass. So anyway, Robert and Douglas were together for several years. Douglas even gave birth to Robert's illegitimate son, who was also named Robert, in fifteen seventy four. They only had five names to choose from, serious she had to like

spin the wheel something. Now, Douglas was getting a lot of marriage proposals, but she was waiting for one from Robert Sure, like, all these dudes want to marry me, but I only want one man. I only had a son with one of them. But this proposal never came, and Robert explained to her in a letter he wrote her where he was. Basically, he was just encouraging her

to marry someone else. And he told her, you know, I know it's really strange of me to threaten my own family name and household by not getting married and having legitimate children and heirs, you know, for my property and everything. But he said he could not do it because quote, if I should marry, I am sure never

to have the Queen's favor. So he just knew that the jealousy of Elizabeth was going to be real crazy for him, right, because Elizabeth was not she would not marry him, but she was kind of not happy about him flirting with anybody else. A bit of a trap. But Robert was also getting a little tired of waiting for Elizabeth to make up her mind about whether or not she'd take him or not. As he said, he had no opportunity to build up his own family while

he was waiting in the wings for the queens. So in fifteen seventy five, Robert decided to go for it. He threw a huge nineteen day long festival at his castle, Kennilworth, which he was building up as a quote wonder house for her majesty and I love a historical party, so Christian had include all these details. Yeah, this party had a Lady of the Lake like some I guess, some woman dressed up holding a sword in the water swimming around. They had a swimming paper mache dolphin that had a

little orchestra and its belly plan. They had fireworks that were said to be heard twenty miles away. Of course, they were holding hunts. We're all going to get together, go out and find some foxes. And then they had entertainment that was popular at the time, like bear baiting. Good. It always makes for a fun party. Oh so fun. I love to make a bear really mad. Yeah, that's what I like. And then, of course the scenery was spectacular. Brought all the best decorators out. He had a artificial

lake and castle. He also had a Renaissance garden, and English Heritage dot Com says that when Queen Elizabeth complained that she could not see this garden from her lodgings in the estate, Robert's gardeners worked all night to create a little pop up version of it right under her window. Wow, pulled out all the stops. Now, this was the longest Queen Elizabeth had ever stayed at one of her courtier's houses.

And the final entertainment was to be this masquerade where actors would have been commissioned to urge Elizabeth to marry their generous host, Lord Robert Dudley, but the mask was rained out. And even though one of these actors was like, I got a job, I'm gonna do it, and he ran after Elizabeth in the rain, pleading for her to wait and stay and talk to Robert, but she refused to do it, and she wrote off parties over I'm

out of here. I've been here nineteen days. I don't know if you heard, but I'm a queen and I got work to do. It's true. So this had been Robert's most ostentatious proposal and it came to nothing. Now, some historians believe that as much as this party was a proposal to Elizabeth, it was also kind of a request to let Robert marry somebody else. All right, He's kind of like, this is my final thing, it's your final answer, and yeah, we're good, right, like we know

it's all good. Yeah, And that might be because Robert had a certain lady in mind to be the next Missus Dudley, because ten years before, as we mentioned, he had flirted with Latise knows let us. You know, I've flirted with let us a few times myself too, but I end up going for French fries. And Latisse was

married to the Earl of Essex at the time. And now, of course, since it's Robert Dudley, he could not do anything without the rumor mill kicking into gear, and they started saying that Latise had two children with Robert, but had aborted one of them to prevent her husband finding out about the affair, just one, yeah, the other one. They're like, she's just lying to him. You've had one child that I don't know how you had him about a second one and I'm going to start to get suspicious.

Must now again, zero evidence for any of this. Okay, he just flirted with her and everybody ran with it. It's almost like they had nothing to do back then. But gossip true, very true. Then. When Latis's husband, the Earl of Essex, died in fifteen seventy six, the rumor mill said that Robert deadly had poisoned him so he could marry Latise. Never mind that the Earl of Essex was in Ireland at the time trying to colonize it

and definitely died of dysenterry during an epidemic. Oh yeah, so there's like no way that Robert had anything to do with his right. But one thing that the gossips did get right was that Robert and Latise were in love. History extra dot com says that Robert had flirted with Latise back in fifteen sixty five, deliberately to fan the Queen's jealousy and get her to finally marry him. So you know, don't you hate it seeing me hang out with this girl while you got You can lock it

down if you want. She's so beautiful and she's into me. But when the widowed Latis visited Kenilworth in fifteen seventy seven, her and Robert's feelings for each other grew so intense that, even knowing how much the Queen would dislike it, they went ahead and started planning their wedding, and that meant that Robert would have to formally end things with his

baby mama Douglas Sheffield. So you know, I've been telling you and I'm not going to marry you, but we actually really I'm trying to get serious with somebody else. Now I'm gonna marry someone else. Right, It is a little I do imagine that Douglas had a bit of a moment of huh, because he's like, I can't marry you or else the Queen will get marrit me. But I am going to marry this other lady even if the Queen gets mad at me. So I feel like there's no way to read that other than you didn't

want to marry me specifically. Yeah, Well, they did come to an amicable agreement about the young little Robert Sheffield Junior his custody. He stayed in Robert Dudley's houses. He was extremely well educated, and he had permission to go see his mother whenever she wanted to see him. And Douglas herself remarried in fifteen seventy nine to Sir Edward Stafford. So everything turned out all right for Lady Douglas, that's right. Yeah, So it was all clear for Robert and Latisse's wedding,

which took place in September fifteen seventy eight. Some accounts say that Latise was pregnant with Robert's child at the time, but kind of the only proof for this is that she wore a loose fitting gown to get married in. Otherwise, there's no historical evidence for a child at all. It's historical evidence to me that she wanted to be comfortable, That's what I said. Also, there wedding date coincided with the end of the traditional two year morning period for widows,

and they had planned it for over a year. So this is like no shotgun affair when he knocked her up and he had to get married or something. But only the bride's parents and the groom's brother Ambrose were present at the ceremony, and everybody was sworn to secrecy because they were all just so afraid of what the Queen would do when she found out that her boy toy was married, which unfortunately did not take very long.

Of course, a French ambassador reported on their marriage only two months after it, and then Elizabeth was told a few months after that, and her reaction was immediate. She was like incandescent with rage. Right, she even ordered Robert thrown into the Tower of London. She's not going to imprison him, but the new Earl of Essex, who is Latisse's son and Robert's stepson, Robert Devereaux another Robert, Sorry, guys, he intervened and he convinced Elizabeth that that was a

bad move. Probably's like, honey, you can't just be thrown people into jail. Were getting married. That's kind of crazy. Yeah, not to mention, I think it says something publicly about y'all's relationship. If you're this reactive, that's right what I see. You know, I could see her upset, you know, more than just being in love with him, but like he also like is her best friend since they were kids, and he didn't tell her he got married. I mean, you know that's probably a factor as well. I'm just

saying it's part of it. It's not like that's why she got married instead of her love for him. But I just think that that didn't help. No, I agree. I would just say she needs to look inward because it's her he's not. He probably did want to tell Harry what I mean, right, but she's too crazy. Yeah. So Robert did not get thrown in prison, but he did have to leave court in disgrace. Sam Meanwhile, Latise was called to court to bear the brunt of Elizabeth's wreath.

Elizabeth raged at her, calling her a she wolf and a flouting wench she boxtra years before finally banishing her from court for life. Jez, Yeah, just cruel. And Latisse had to retire to the Dudley's country house, and she stayed there for years, and she still called herself the Countess of Essex, and she lived as discreetly as she could.

But in fifteen eighty one she gave birth to Robert's son, another Robert, called Lord Denby, and they moved permanently to the Dudley's house in London and that made the Queen mad all over again. I guess it was like, you're flaunter in my face now, Yeah, you know, I got to look at her sometimes now. Latis's social life was severely curtailed because everyone knew the Queen hated her guts, so you didn't want to get seen hanging out with the Queen's number one enemy. Every time she did anything,

Elizabeth would get angry. One time, Queen Elizabeth became furious because she heard Latise was planning to join Robert in the Netherlands with a procession of people and carriages even bigger than the Queen's. And it turns out none of that was true. Latise wasn't planning to go to the Netherlands at all. But this poor girl really could not lift a finger without pissing off the Queen, and this

lasted for the rest of Elizabeth's life. Sucks. Not the kind of person you want to be, constantly looking at everything you do and easily mad about it. Not really. It's like I think I'll just make a sandwich today, and then a royal proclamation just announced from the Queen. All women who make sandwiches suck. Stupid and ugly. Yeah, I don't know, but she sacrificed a lot to be with Robert. You know, I don't know that she expected this,

but they definitely expected to not be her favorite. I mean, even the thing with the Netherlands, Like, even stuff that she doesn't do, she's encouraging the wrath about right, which I'm sure there was some like you know, shenanigans where some courtiers like, I want her to be mad at Robert, so let me tell her about let us doing something or Latise doing something. Yeah. It's like it's like when someone has a dream about you and they're mad at you,

but I didn't do it. You're like, well, I don't care. I need a minute before I'm okay with you. But even though Queen Liz was equally pissed off at Robert for getting married, she only showed him a cold shoulder for a few months before welcoming him back to the fold and all his responsibilities at court. Sure's best, that's bestie exactly. She's like, I'm just gonna put all my

anger on the wife. But this was actually pretty important because Elizabeth was in serious negotiations to finally marry somebody in fifteen seventy five, and that was Francois, the Duke of Angou, and we will tell you all about that right after these royal proclamations. Here you hear you, welcome back to the show. That guy's strong, and that guy's done with this job as the royal crier. He's like, okay, I'm ready to retire. Yeah, So Queen Elizabeth and Francis

the Duke of Anjou. We're actually a whole episode suggestion from a listener named Daniel Fields through emails, So thank you, Dan, will be since we're doing all this Queen Elizabeth stuff, we decided to throw it into this episode. But I'm glad that you told us about him. Now we already know we were talking in part one and this episode that Elizabeth, you know, is being courted from near and far.

She's a queen, okay, people want to marry her. When she ascended the throne, she had publicly declared that she would never marry and that she would remain a virgin for her whole life. But no one really believed her. You know. They're like, you're a young woman, your Queen of England. We're gonna get married and have some babies, But as she got older, the people of England revered her more and more for her virginity, which to me makes it a lot harder for her to choose to

get married. I feel like, if you have this whole cult of personality about something about you, it's really hard to like not have that thing anymore. But honestly, really the main thing was that Elizabeth knew if she got married, her husband was in charge. Queen or no queen. You know, he would own all her money, all her stuff, all her children, and all her body. And she knew what that meant. He could cut her damn head off if he wanted to. She's like, yeah, daddy did it several times. Okay,

She's like fully traumatized growing up in King Henry's house. Okay, yeah, if Henry the Eight's your dad, you just you have a different outlook on marriage than the rest of us, all of it. You're like, I don't know, but this guy, Francois was a serious contender, largely because his name was Francois. That's the most romantic man ugandad. Elizabeth was forty six years old at this point, and she knew her time to get married was running out Francois might be her

last suitor. Some of her favorite courtiers, including Robert Dudley and Sir Francis Walsingham, opposed the marriage to Francois because Francois was French, I believe it or not. And Elizabeth, of course wasn't very likely to have any children at this point, so if she died while married to him, which was definitely possible because Sis was nearly half her age at twenty four, England would fall under French control.

Just whoops, all of somewhere in different country now too. Yeah, and Francois also was Catholic, and if you remember part one, getting Elizabeth on the throne to begin with, was this whole Catholic Protestant mess. Now Walsingham was able to point out to Elizabeth that the French Catholics, under the orders of Francois's own mother, Catherine de Medici, had just murdered a bunch of Protestant hugueen nuts in the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre after the French king's Catholic sister married a

Protestant in fifteen seventy two. So he's like, that's what happened if the French king's sister married a Protestant. If Francis here marries a Protestant, I eat you, Queen Elizabeth, They're gonna pop off. They're gonna act real crazy and do something nuts. Yeah, you know, he might be worried too about English Protestants like Catholics. He's like, either way, it's a bad situation. Nobody's happy when the Catholics and the Protestants get together in sixteenth century England. But Elizabeth

seems to have been truly fond of Francois. He had been scarred by smallpox as a young child. He was also short, with kind of a curved spine, so you know, he was described to her as being quote amazingly ugly. Oh, which is so rude. Heads up, girl, you're about to meet a guy, and I don't want you to flinch, so freak out. But he's fucking crazy looking. But she

said that he appeared handsome to her. But mainly I think the attraction seems to be that he was just very witty and intelligent, and he was really capable of keeping up with her in conversation. He didn't have a lot of pretension about him right, So they really got along, you know, on a personality level. He gave her a frog shaped earring that she wore all the time, and she called him affectionate nicknames, either Monsieur or her frog.

Oh no, one is sure if the frog one is because of the earring or because frog was a derogatory term for French people at the time. Okay, And like, I guess she was like trying to be funny because because now I'm like, what him? Why is I don't know where that came from anyway, And it must be said that Elizabeth did like a little play acting. She

loved to get melodramatic, and she was very contradictory. She loved to fuck with people also, so sometimes she would like one day, you know, they'd be like, don't marry Francois, and she'd be like, oh, it is my one true love, you know, and like run off. And then another day they'd be like, fine, you can marry him. She'd be like, oh, I would never you know. She was just always, oh,

my god, the world. And of course we already know that she was, you know, kind of messing with all her pass suitors as well the other foreign princes she was kind of playing around, pretending to be interested in them, but she sort of used it as like foreign policy stuff. And this is pretty similar because over the six years that she and Francois recording, Elizabeth was able to create a strong alliance with France and make friends with the

Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici. And then when she decided not to marry Francois, it was partly due to how much the English people would really hate having a French Catholic king, but it was also because the French were about to get into it with the Dutch, and by adroitly kind of extricating herself from an engagement, Elizabeth managed to avoid England getting involved with this Dutch French problem those war's back then, it was just drive me so crazy.

Oh sorry, honey, I'm off to fight in a war against the Dutch. Oh no, why are we at war with the Dutch? I don't know. Some lady married a guy, and now where all I have to go die in battle? Now we all have spears through our eyes. So anyway, she might have just been kind of using this engagement for foreign policy reason. Yeah, but she did have enough affection for Francois to write him a poem when their

courtship officially ended in fifteen eighty one. So let's go down to poetry corner and hear Queen Elizabeth the first poem on Monsieur's departure. I grieve, and dare not show my discontent. I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate. I do, yet dare not say I ever meant. I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate. I am and not I freeze, and yet am burned. Since from myself another self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun, follows me, flying flies when I pursue,

it stands and lies by me. Doth what I have done? His too familiar care doth make me ru it? No means I mind to rid him from my breast, till by the end of things it be suppressed. Some gentler passions slide into my mind, for I am soft and made of melting snow. Or be more cruel love, and so be kind, let me float or sink, be high or low, or let me live with some more sweet content, or die, And so forget what love er meant. No, she's really stuck in the middle here. Yeah, I like

this poem. Yeah, it kind of shows her sort of contradictory nature, Like she clearly feels an internal thing. It's not just external forces. Why she has internal contradictions, right, also external contradictions. So it's kind of a cool like tug of war poems. Yeah, exactly why am I? Why am I so stuck feeling you know this way and that way? Why can't I just either get what I want or not have it? Yeah? I also love I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate. She's like, I'm

not saying a word, but inside right, I know. Right.

So Elizabeth stayed single and Robert was married to Latise, who Elizabeth still paid it, and even when Robert and Latise's three year old son died suddenly in fifteen eighty four, Elizabeth could not bring herself to forgive Latise, right, but she was still very close with Robert himself, and in fact, he became Lord Stewart in fifteen eighty seven, which meant he was basically in charge of the palace, like all the food, all the sanitization, just everything, like you know,

non judicial, right, yeah, not legislative. He is in charge of the maintaining the whole palace. Yeah. Fun fact, this sanitization issue actually in the palace was so bad that Robert Dudley sat down and had a conversation about it with Elizabeth's godson, John Harrington, who was then inspired to invent the first flush toilet. I had no idea dated back that far. Um. Is that why we call him John's Some people say that, but there's no evidence for that,

But I think it is. John apparently is like Americans, so they're like, they're Americans. Didn't know anything about John here. Maybe Americans learned that. We're like, O, why aren't we naming it after that guy? He did a great job. What's funny too, is that he invented the flush toilet, but what he didn't have was the U bend and the pipes. Oh yes, we have now, so you couldn't avoid the odor. So that was what. But it's so interesting that the dates back that far, they had no idea.

I guess a flush in a stink is better than no flush. No flush. That was that was one of Asop's fables. I think right, a flush in a stink is better than no flush. That's the moral of the story today, okay, but the real headline here is about a whole other guy, entirely someone who was shipwrecked and

rescued by the Spanish. They detained him because they thought he was an English bye, so they took him to Madrid, where he claimed that he was none other than Arthur Dudley, the secret love child of Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth the First What he told King Philip's secretary who interrogated him that Elizabeth's governess kat Ashley, had given him as a baby to her servant, who raised him sixty miles outside of London as a gentleman. But on the servant's deathbed,

he confessed to Arthur about his royal origins. My boy, your whole life. I never told you you're the heir to the throne of England. Gotta go have fun with that. Arthur, of course, was terrified for his life if that secret came out. A real um, a real uh? Who is the kid in Game of Thrones? Barrathian? Yeah, one of them? But wait us not friend Lee Richard Boris, I don't know, Craig Philip, I'm gonna say every name. Just let me know when I hit it. I don't know, Samuel, Jennifer

yep is Jennifer all right, Jennifer Barrafi, thank you. So Arthur is scared for his life obviously this if the secret comes out, they would definitely like lock him up or something worse. So he traveled to Spain, but then there he got shipwreck, captured, etc. Etc. Here we are, which this is a very simplified version of his story.

His story was incredibly convoluted. He talked about several people that he could name that were in the court that were Sir Robert Dudley, that were Lord Robert Dudley's like members of his household or his servants or whatever. And his birthday, he did say, was fifteen sixty one, which would have coincided when Elizabeth had her swelling sickness. Oh

my good. So there was something, you know, there was some details that seemed very plausible, and then some other things were like huh, you know, it's a little convoluted. So it's a real, very convoluted story he gave them. I'm kind of seeing the opening of thor Ragnarok sort of, but like it's this guy, it's this Arthur Dudley character. In the chair being interrogated by the Spanish. Right now, he turns with the camera and he's like, I bet

you're wondering how I got here. Let me take you back. Well, Arthur's story, despite some of these exciting details or whatever, did not really impress King Philip's secretary or anyone else in Spain. The King's secretary who examined him, he told Philip, you know, I think Arthur's a spy, or if he's not a spy, the Queen and her quarter are using him in some type of way to benefit them, Like

they're just super paranoid about what Elizabeth's up to. So he's like, let's just keep this guy under lock and key and prevent him from escaping, just in case he's a spy. Sure, And after that, Arthur was never heard from again. We still don't know what happened to him. He either he could have perished in a Spanish prison, or maybe he really was a spy working for Sir Francis Walsingham and eventually escaped and resumed his real identity.

And so there never was on Arthur Dudley to trade. Okay, Now, again, historians are also extremely skeptical that he was Elizabeth's illegitimate child. They largely agree that she was just too closely watched to hide a whole pregnancy, and once she went into labor, there's just no way that all the ladies in waiting, courtiers, doctors, servants, midwives, whatever that would have been called to help her out would have been able to keep that secret to themselves

for very long. This would have been the most sellable secret in the land. They're like, look, we all know that the downstairs workers are the most gossipy people in the ballast, okay, and if someone offered them the right amount of money, you know, so it's pretty unlikely. And

I kind of agree. I think it at all points to Arthur being a spy because his story was so convoluted and had some real details and some not real so it felt like he was trying to send them on a little bit of a wild goose tape, giving himself time to gaborbet that's that's what it looked like him. I like it. I like it. Speculation station Arthur Dudley

was his by okay, and his real name. Meanwhile, Robert Dudley was off all wrapped up with some complicated history with the Dutch, and then he was named Lieutenant and Captain General of the Queen's Armies and Companies in fifteen eighty eight when the Spanish Armada was threatening. But in September of that year, Robert Dudley died unexpectedly at the age of fifty five. Historians have alternately said that it might have been stomach cancer or malaria that killed him.

Latise Dudley, his wife, was devastated, and of course, his side piece, Queen Elizabeth the First, was inconsolable. She actually locked herself in her room for several days until William Cecil had the door broken down. Yike. Even though she never did marry him, historians said, including Sue and Dorian, in her book Elizabeth the First and Her Circle, that he quote remained at the center of Elizabeth's emotional life and that he was likely the one true love of

Elizabeth's life. When Queen Elizabeth herself died, it was discovered that she had saved Robert's final handwritten letter to her. On the outside she had written his last letter and she kept it inside a silver casket by her bedside. Wow, she really did love him, she really did. But did she ever physically love him and they ever got on. We're going to get into that sexy story right after this. Welcome back to the show, everybody. Okay, So is this a will they won't they never did, or is this

a Monica Chandler secret sex situation? Of course, we can't really know unless we go back in time and drill ape pole in the Queen's bedroom, which the super creepy of us. Yes, so we won't do it. But on her deathbed, according to English heritage dot com, the Queen solemnly swore the quote. Though she loved him dearly, nothing unseemly had ever passed between them. Okay, and many scholars say that she was at most a shameless flirt but really never did anything else, really actually did stay a

virgin her in her life. Okay. But despite the total lack of evidence that she ever did anything sexual with anyone, there are tons of conspiracy theories about her illegitimate children with a variety of men. Some people thought that every time the Queen did a progress, anytime she left the palace and went anywhere else, it was covered for her to have to give birth to some wow other kids.

I was like, she's just littering children all over England's for something she couldn't walk out the doors people be like last week, Yeah, well that's so much she's she's a really good baby maker. So there's just tons of you know, theories about all these illegitimate children she had with a variety of men, including Robert Dudley, but also her stepfather and her son with her stepfather. Oh okay, hold on what now? Yeah, so first let's talk about

the stepfather. Remember Queen Elizabeth's fathers King Henry the eighth, and when he died, Thomas Seymour, who was the brother of one of Henry's other wives and Elizabeth's stepmother, Jane Seymour, wrote to Elizabeth and asked her to marry him, and Elizabeth Tudor politely declined, saying that, oh, I'll be mourning my father for two years, and also I'm only thirteen, so I'm probably too young for you anyway. So a month later, Thomas married Catherine Parr, another one of Henry

the Eighth's ex wives, his sixth wife. They had been old flames and they were actually planning to get married before King Henry the eighth snatched her up. Yeah, Catherine was like, I guess it's God's will that I marry the king. Right. So Katherine Parr was close with her stepdaughter Elizabeth, and she invited the then fourteen year old

girl to come live with her and Thomas. And then, according to testimonies from fifteen forty nine from Elizabeth's governess kat Ashley, a few days after Elizabeth got there, Thomas visited the girl in the early morning while she was still in her bed, and he would quote make as though he would come at her, and she would shrink

back from him. And the next day she woke up earlier to avoid being in bed when Thomas came by, but she was still in her nightgown, so he showed up bare legged in his nightclothes and slapped Elizabeth on her butt. Another time, he actually climbed right into bed with Elizabeth. So she continued to wake up earlier and earlier each day to avoid him, and if she was already dressed, he would just say good morning and go

on with his day. Super creepy, very weird behavior, very weird behavior, and Catherine Parr did not put a stop to any of this. In fact, she would sometimes tickle Elizabeth alongside Thomas Seymour, and one time she even held her down while Thomas cut a gown off her body quote in a hundred pieces. It's not clear how she held her down, like if she was like it was like a friendly hug, or if she's like holding her

down like this forceful thing. Right, but it's something weird like that was she's sort of participating with Thomas in this behavior. But then another time she comes into this empty room where Thomas and Elizabeth are embracing in some way. I don't know if they were kissing or hugging or what, but they were in an embrace, and Catherine Parr was heavily pregnant at the time with Thomas's kid, and she

became very furious at seeing him and Elizabeth together. Okay, after that, Elizabeth went to live somewhere else, and history extra dot com says it's not clear if she was sent away or if she chose to leave. So now, with all of this story, some scholars think that Thomas Seymour was sexually harassing, if not abusing, Elizabeth sounds like it, and that it turned her off from sex forever. That's what kind of made her go fuck this, Yeah, sounds

like it. I would believe that, But Smithsonian Magazine points out that there was no concept of adolescence in the fifteen hundreds, and that at fourteen years old, Elizabeth would have been perceived as a grown woman, not just by other people, but also by herself. Sure, okay. She also did have some affection for Thomas. He apparently was an incredibly popular guy, like, he's very charming and handsome. Everybody

liked him. So it's been suggested that she did not mind his treatment, that she laughed it off, that she even liked it, or that she had a bit of a crush on him. I have a hard time with this sort of thing because I think women laugh when they're uncomfortable all the time as a way to kind of be like, oh you please stop. You know, the fact that she had a crush on him, people said it because she would blush when his name was mentioned, I mean, which could mean she had a crush on him.

It could mean that she was embarrassed to think about her stepfather coming into her room with her dick hanging out of nightgown. I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot of ways to interpret that uncomfortable. Yeah, and you. I mean, you've heard many times women say, you know how much easier it is to just kind of roll with it, even though you hate what's happening, than it is to try and protest or say not. It's dangerous to say no. Yeah. Well,

Thomas's ambition ended up getting him killed. He was always trying to get the young King Edward to name him Lord Protector instead of Thomas's own older brother, the Duke of Somerset, and one night Thomas tried to sneak into the King's room and in the process he woke up one of King edwards pet spaniels, who started barking. Thomas had with him either a pistol or a knife, and he used it to kill the dog. So already he's like villain of the week. Hate him, But it was

too late. The dog had woken up the King and his various attendants, who were all like, uh, what are you doing in the King's bedchambers with a weapon? Okay, So the courtiers decided that he had planned to murder young King Edward and then mary his stepdaughter Elizabeth and put her on the throne. Now that is supposedly why they were asking Elizabeth's governess about her relationship with Thomas, because both of them, Thomas and Elizabeth, were under suspicion

of conspiring together to kill King Edward. So that was when kat Ashley gave them all these dirty stories about Thomas and how he treated Elizabeth when she was young.

But it's ben said that kat Ashley, this governess, was just trying to make Elizabeth look as innocent as possible with her testimony, So she might have overblown Tom his inappropriate behavior couldn't look bad to make him look bad, So it could just be, you know, these stories that we're hearing about the creepy things he did were just that, like stories that were kind of inflated a little bit to sort of separate Elizabeth from his crimes. I don't know.

That's another thing where it's like you're trying to throw dirt on a good man's name. Yea, there's it's a total it's impossible to know for sure. Yeah, but according to the Prince Tutor theory, Elizabeth did have an affair with her stepfather, Thomas Seymour, had a teen pregnancy and gave birth to his child, who was then placed in John Devere's home and grew up to become Edward Devere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, who is purported to be the real Shakespeare, this guy who you played one. I

played Edward Devere in a show. Yeah. We'll get into that in a second. Yeah. So there are a ton of Shakespeare scholars out there who think there was no William Shakespeare, there's no one guy named William Shakespeare, that that was actually just the pen name of one or

more other guys, other authors. They posit that it could be Edward de Vere who we're talking about right now, also Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spencer, or Sir Francis Bacon, who was also supposedly the Queen's illegitimate son with Robert Dudley and the true heir to the throne. And the truth is all hidden within the plays and sonnets if you

just read them right. We did a show with our theater company years back called Shake and Bake, and it was where we just mashed up a bunch of different Shakespeare characters and plot lines together to kind of do sort of this Shakespearean sketch show. And it was narrated by these four characters, Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, Christopher Marlowe, and this stoner version of a guy named Bill Shakespeare, whose name they were all using, yeah to

write wrote the Weed. Yeah. We did a bunch of research for that show where we came up with those characters, and there's not a lot of sturdy evidence to support that any of them were the real Shakespeare. No, and even crazier the theory, the Prince Tudor theory further says that Edward de Vere grew up to have an incestuous affair with his own mother, Queen Elizabeth, and that she gave birth to his kid, Henry Rothsley, the third Earl of Southampton, which would be a really gross thing for

her to do. Well. As Eli said, there's just not much evidence for any of this, except for again just reading Shakespeare's works with a certain lens, like it's like, oh, He's wrote this play that takes place in this area, and there's these names in it that Sir Francis Bacon was also in that place and knew some of those people, so it must be really Sir Francis talking about his

own life or whatever. There was one guy named Percy Allen who did confirm his findings, thank you very much, by using a medium to contact the spirits of Edward de Vere, Queen Elizabeth the First, Sir Francis Bacon, and William Shakespeare, who all said that he totally nailed it and got it all completely right. But I'm so confused because if his whole thing is that there is no Shakespeare,

so how did he contact the spirit of Shakespeare? Oh yeah, maybe he's like, no, I contacted the stoner and his name, but like he ain't no writing, right, I'm William Shakespeare, but I never wrote a word a day in my life, that's right. I don't even know how to read it. But Elizabeth's, to some inexplicable determination to remain a virgin has led to so many insane theories too. Some people believe that Elizabeth actually died as a child and was replaced by a young boy, and they didn't want the

secret to get out. So this kid never married or had a love affair, all right, listen, Like King Henry the Eighth wind it been like, we'll figure it out. We'll just figure it out. I need a son, so we'll figure it out. Put a boy in there. We'll just tell everybody we were wrong. There's no way that some people think that Elizabeth actually was having sex and

leaving illegitimate children all around the nation. Like we mentioned before, the poet Ben Johnson theorized that she had quote a membrana on her that made her incapable of having sex, so literally, like her vagina was sealed up. He's like, I don't know, I'm speculation station vagina didn'tata. Nobody had said this, but what if Queen Elizabeth's like, look, there's teeth down, there's a big chomping mom. I can't I can't be heaven mind of its own. King Phillips did

come off in my vagina. They're like, I'm traveling to Japan for a steel dildo. Well, finally break that demon's teeth. Well, most of the more down to earth theories simply point to her childhood. Right, It's clear why she wouldn't want to get married and give up her power to a man when you know her dad was King Henry the Yight, and there's all these bettings, and you know she lost grandmother and two stepmothers to childbirth as well, so she

might have also just seen sex as too risky. Right, So she's like even if I didn't want to get married and just took a bunch of lovers, I don't want to get pregnant. I'm very scared to get pregnant. I could see that. There's also, again this sort of cult of personality that she built around this virgin queen title right from the very beginning of her reign, all the way until she died in sixteen oh three. So she might have just been working to maintain that image

because it was working for her. She also knew that an air could be used against her. That happened with her as the center of plots quite a few times. Right, she was young, right, Look, she even said the quote is something about, like I know how a second person as I have been can be used against somebody. Yeah, I mean to me. I think that she just had

a negative relationship with sex. She had a very confusing emotional relationship with Robert Dudley, and kind of I wonder if, like the way he kind of didn't want to marry, he didn't want to marry for a while until he finally went with Lettuce. If you know, Queen Elizabeth just had a stronger version of that of like, I don't want to get involved because I might get to marry Robert one day. You know. I also wonder if she's

seen so many women kind of I don't know. I wonder if she's like, if I have sex, I might really like it, and that means I'll make bad decisions, oh you know, from men around me, and they'll end up turning on me. Because there's so many women who did you know they've were into King Henry and they did you know, or any other men in the court. Sure it happened. There were tons of relationships happening all

around her. Mary Queen of Scott's is a really great example because she married Henry and then didn't like him and there was this whole scandal about it. She ends up getting executed ultimately, and that was because she was trying to rebel. But it still didn't help, Like the whole marriage thing did not help. So I think she just sees a lot of examples of this inn't working out. And I like being the Queen of England. So that's my goal is just hey, the Queen of England. Yeah,

she was the whole thing. She was like country before all right, I want to see a beam of Queen Elizabeth's portrait if this country before kunt see, Yeah, if you say the C word with a British accent, it's okay because it's not a big deal over there. They love it over there. In the US. This episode is now like NC seventeen, the worst thing we could say. Well, I think speculation Station, I do believe that she may

remained a virgin. I think she had a ton of good reasons to not have sex or get married, and she definitely did not, And she just loved flirting and being thought of. It is very beautiful and and messing with these men all the time, but never really wanted to pull the trigger. That's my feeling. Okay, I don't know about you. Uh, since we're in Speculation Station, I gotta go with the demon. Oh oh yeah, the demon in her vagina. Yeah. I like that she had vagina dentata.

She had to go get a steel dildo from Japan. But yeah, that's the problem. Yeah, nobody Goldo from van Yeah, She's like, honestly, I'd rather have the demon. Maybe that demon was her best friend after Robert Dudley. You know, you gave her some really good advice and helped her bring England into a brighter era. I don't know, yes, yes, okay, Well, Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth are dead now in our story and also in real life, there's still some loose

ends to tie up. Oh sure, because first of all, I want to tell you about Latisnoles Dudley, the Countess of Leicester. Now, after Robert Dudley died, she was left well provided for because again, good guy, right, But less than a year later she married his servant and friend, Sir Christopher Blunt. Now, some people, I'm sorry, are you telling me that there was a Lettuce Blunt out there somewhere? Let us blood, sign me up. Love it. Now. People do not think much of her doing this, but Latis said,

you know, I'm just a defenseless widow. I gotta have some man around. You know. That's how she felt, Okay whatever. By all accounts, they had a pretty happy marriage. But I don't think they were having anything going on before Robert died or anything like that. I think she really loved Robert a lot. Yeah, but even though Robert is dead now, Queen Elizabeth still refused to speak to her or like forgive her or let her come back, like

she was just like you're iced out still for life. However, Latisa's son from her first marriage, Robert Devereaux, the second Earl of Essex, was Elizabeth's new favorite courtier. Even though they were thirty years apart in age, they flirted pretty shamelessly, and of course people immediately had all the speculation that they were fucking too oh wow, which Elizabeth probably loved. Oh she should be like, oh, boy, your son and I are getting along great fastically. Oh there's rumors that

I'm sleeping with your son. How funny. Wow, she really went for this lady. Yeah, I know. But whatever love Elizabeth had for young Robert Devereaux, it didn't save him when he fell out of favor for his own secret marriage to Sir Francis Walsingham's daughter, or when he abandoned

his military post without permission. He was disgraced, and then he got all sulky and decided to rebel against Elizabeth in sixteen oh one, so she had him imprisoned and Latise stayed nearby, which might have been dumb, because Elizabeth, of course got really angry when she heard reports that Latise and young Robert were waving to each other from their windows, she wouldn't even let this lady wave at her sponn Yeah. So finally both Robert Devereaux and Sir

Christopher Blunt were executed. So poor Latise lost both her son and her third husband or has she called him quote my best friend on the same day. That is so petty. Clearly got a really strong personality and a very strong will. Yeah, but I feel sorry for her. That's worry. She just gets short straw. So poor Latise, you know, she's left with no one now. But she did outlive every other character in this story. And she

died at the ripe old age of ninety one. And then she was buried next to Robert Dudley with the epitaph that she commissioned, reading quote the best and dearest of husbands. Oh oh, that's really nice, and who knew ninety one? I thought let us will did a lot faster than that. She stayed crispy? Did you stay crispy? Baby? She gave me that healthy crunch every sandwich needs. I wish she'd married the Earl of sandwich. Let us sandwich amazing?

All right? Now, finally, remember Robert Dudley's baby Mama Douglas sheffields you have not talked about her in a while, Yeah, Douglass, but just as a quick refresher. She had married Sir Stafford back in fifteen seventy nine, and she and Robert Dudley had been totally cool co parenting their kid, Sir

Robert dud Right. It was a no m a situation until after the Queen died and Sir Robert Dudley decided to sue to get his father's now defunct Earls of Leicester and Warwick titles, because since Sir Robert Dudley was illegitimate, he could not inherit them or the property that they came with, So he told the courts that Robert Dudley and Douglas Sheffield were secretly married in fifteen seventy three, which makes his marriage to Latise and her subsequent inheritance

of all his property upon his death null and the void. Oh boy, so Douglas got into this. She sent a letter to the court detailing her supposed marriage to Robert Dudley, but she said the ten plus witnesses to it were all dead and just worked around a test. Sorry, they all died. She also, you know, she just couldn't remember the name of the efficient or the exact date of

the ceremony. She just said, it was, you know, in winter time, the best day of my life, the most important day of my life, when I married my love, Sir Robert Lord, Robert Dudley, right on a some day by some guy. I don't say. It was a Tuesday, and I remember it was cold. It was the tenth, maybe the eleventh, who knows, October or November something like that.

She tried to explain her own big miss marriage in fifteen seventy nine, because of course she was married somebody else too, by saying that Robert was going to poison her, and she got married for her personal safety. So poor Robert Dudley here, he's dead and he's still getting accused of murder for real. Oh my god. She also said that Robert offered her money and she initially refused, but then he got mad and said he could cut her off without a penny, so she decided, fine, I'll take

the money. Okay, But I mean, the court did not believe this story, and I mean, do any of us believe the story? Robert Dudley is not that kind of guy. I don't think he's no. And also a lot of this evidence I stretched to even call it evidence, it's not evidence. A crazy story. It seems to me like she's like I can say anything I want about Robert Dudley and people will believe me. I'm gonna say he tried to poison me. They'll be like, sure he did,

because he tried to poison all these other people. Like why wouldn't they have you know what I mean something on that rumor mill about Yes, it really feels like that just a shameless cash grab. True. Well, of course Latis won this case, and she walked out of the courtroom, probably bent down over Sir Robert's ear, and said, I wish you well the group of her time, of her time, Latis, let us scoop, let us scoop. Well, let us get out of this episode. Where right? So yeah, that's the story.

So that's the two part story of Queen Elizabeth and her one true love Robert Dudley. Yeah, and I will say, if Elizabeth really did love attention and fucking with people, which it seems she did, she really won at life. Because not many people can say that. There are a bunch of scholars still trying to figure out if they got laid four hundred plus years after they died. That's true. We should all hope for such a few Yeah, in twenty five hundred, I hope they're still, Like, you know,

I wonder what Diana's sex life is like. Well, I'll have to be more specific in my journals, all right, Yeah, that would help. Yeah, the scholars of tomorrow, the scholars of tomorrow helping them today. Well, if they dig out this episode, they'll have a lot more information about Queen Elizabeth the First, that's for sure. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm looking into it. It was so interesting.

I don't know if I'm just feeling sorry for Robert Dudley because he's a possible ancestor of mine, but I'm oway here thinking he has not been treated right. He was a super cool guy. I'm glad to know that he was one of your ancestors, because I mean, again, I think that a lot of the bad things people said about him, we're we're slander. Yeah, and he's sure he had his flaws like any man. Sure, but he was supposed to be an excellent husband right to the

people who married him. A great stepfather, dad of an illegitimate A good friend to people who are friends with him. He was always very loyal, throwing parties right, being fun, and probably didn't poison any of his lovers. Probably not. And if he didn't, he's great. And if he did, you know, we'll reevaluate him. Think about that later. I also was thinking, I wonder if he didn't get a lot of respect because he's like, you know, the master of the horse, and then he did like parties, and

then he was like basically like a butler. Oh. Yes, so they were just like, oh, Robert, you know, he freaking deals with the queen right and makes her happy, and he like does the parties. But we are the politicians. Yeah, we are doing the real work of running the cut, you know what I mean, right, even though like managing the queen must have been actually incredibly important, probably more difficult than managing you know, international relations. Oh my god.

And they would even write to him sometimes when he wasn't at court and be like, hey, I hope your comeback soon. Between real four we're all we're all suffering. Please come back, stactor. I love the court wants your presence. So anyway, Robert Dudley Party. That's all I know, right, And thanks again to Daniel Fields for selling us the story about Elizabeth and francois that we were able to include it here, and my parents for suggesting this episode

so they would finally have a reason to listen to. Yeah. Do you think your dad made it through to the end of episode two? No? No, Hey dad, if you're still there, thanks for listening, Thanks for listening. We exonerated him, did my duty by the family, right, So yeah, let us know what you thought. We hope you enjoyed this story as much as we did, and we always love hearing from you, so please reach out. Our email address is Raddick Romance at gmail dot com. That's right. You

can find us on Instagram. I'm at Oh Great, it's Eli. I'm at Sanamite Boon and the show is at Riddick Romance and you are awesome. We really appreciate you for listening and we can't wait to bring you another episode soon. We'll catch it in so long, friends, it's time to go. Thanks for listening to our show. Tell your friends neighbor's uncle's in dance to listen to a show. Ridiculous role Dance