i my self': queen elizabeth i's oration at tilbury...

"I My Self": Queen Elizabeth I's Oration at Tilbury CampAuthor(s): Janet M. GreenSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 421-445Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2543451Accessed: 28/10/2009 15:28

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Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXVIII! 2 (1997)

"I My Self": Queen Elizabeth I's Oration at

Tilbury Camp

Janet M. Green Kent State University-Ashtabula

Queen Elizabeth I made one of her most famous speeches on August 9, 1588, atTil- bury Camp. Its authenticity has been doubted occasionally, but substantial evidence indicates that it is genuine. Its internal rhetorical characteristics link this oration strongly to Elizabeth's others. Also, considerable contemporary evidence exists that she delivered a speech at Tilbury whose phrases, often remarked, were like those of the speech we have. Finally, one of the two surviving texts-BM Harleian MS 6798, article 18-is in the handwriting of another, namely of Dr. Leonel Sharpe, author of a 1623 letter first published in the Cabala of 1654, in which Sharpe (almost certainly an eyewitness at Tilbury) gives the now familiar text. Though the Harleian MS is in a few places literarily inferior to the Cabala text, it is nevertheless an important link to that text and shows with much more certainty that both are genuine.

QUEEN ELIZABETH I ON AUGUST 9, i588, made an oration at Tilbury Camp to her troops assembled there to encounter the Spanish Armada. Most writers and histo- rians have accepted this short but perfect speech as one of the jewels in the crown of England, polished by Queen Elizabeth herself, and reflecting the pride of a nation. However, some others have doubted its authenticity, from Miller Christy in 1919, the first modern commentator to discuss Tilbury events at length, to Susan Frye in 1992.1

However, substantial evidence exists for believing the Tilbury oration is genuine, which falls into three categories: First, internal rhetorical characteristics link this oration very strongly to Elizabeth's others. Second, there is considerable contemporary evidence that she delivered a speech at Tilbury whose phrases, often remarked, were like those of the speech we have. And third, one of the two texts we have of her Tilbury oration-BM Harlelan MS 6798, article 18-is in the handwriting of the other, the handwriting of Dr. Leonel (Lionel) Sharpe, author of the letter to the duke of Buckingham of 1623, first published in the Cabala in 1654, in which he gives the familiar text of the queen's speech.2 These two texts

'Miller Christy, "Queen Elizabeth's Visit to Tilbury in 1588," English Historical Review 34 (1919): 55. Susan Frye, "The Myth of Elizabeth of Tilbury," Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992): 95-114. Also doubtful is Frances Teague, "Editing Elizabeth's Speeches," Renaissance English Text Society Proceedings, ed. Suzanne Gossett (1987), 15-19.

2The Cabala, Mysteries of State, in Letters of the Great Ministers of K.James and K. Charles: Wherein Much of the Publique Manage of Affaires Is Related, is a collection in two parts of documents, letters, and papers, which as the title page states was "Faithfully Collected by a Noble Hand," who was never identified. (London: M. M. G. Bedell and T Collins, 1654). Evidently it met with a good reception, because two expanded editions followed: Cabala, Sive Scrinia Sacra [Cabala, In Secret Collections] (London: G. B.

421

422 Sixteenth Centtury Jotrnal XXVIII / 2 (1997)

are given in the appendix (see pp. 443 ff. below). The internal evidence of the Tilbury oration provides the best argument for

Elizabeth's authorship. It demonstrates strongly Elizabeth's typical use of such rhetorical elements as proofs and arrangement and her continued preference for a style "that grows out of the subject," which her tutor Roger Ascham had observed in her when she was sixteen.3

Princess Elizabeth had a fine education. Queen Elizabeth said so herself.4 Ascham boasted to John Sturm of her preparation in Latin and Greek rhetoric, and it is certainly true, as Mary Thomas Crane points out, "that Elizabeth was trained, as other women were not, in the use of rhetoric to assert authority,"5 and she was rigorously drilled in the language of men's privilege and power-Latin. She was also accomplished in the two chief contemporary English styles: one complex, often ambiguous, almost euphuistic; and one simple and direct. She used both styles in her writings, letters, and speeches, as her need or will served. Both styles appear in Latin authors: Cicero's copious, highly adorned and mannered fashion,

and T. C. 1663), and Cabala, Sive Scrinia Sacra: Mysteries of State and Government in Letters ... (London: Thomas Sawbridge and Matthew Gillyflower, 1691). The 1691 edition includes Sir Dudley Digges' Compleat Ambassador. Eva M. Tenison, Elizabethan England, 12 vols. (Royal Leamington Spa, 1933- 1960), describes the different editions of the Cabala briefly (appendix, 49).J. E. Neale briefly describes the Cabala and accepts Sharpe's letter as genuine, although he mistakenly cites a 1651 edition which does not exist. (The 1691 edition's title page terms it the third edition.) "The Sayings of Queen Eliza- beth," Essays in Elizabethan History (London:Jonathan Cape, 1958), 103-6. Sharpe's letter to Bucking- ham is traditionally dated 1623 because of its reference to Spanish affairs. Another letter from Sharpe, this one to KingJames, about the pope (undated) precedes his letter to Buckingham in the Cabala (1654 ed., 255-57).The queen's speech is not altered in the three editions, all of which give it, except for some spelling, punctuation, and capitalization differences. Her Tilbury speech appears in the 1654 edition, 260; 1663 edition, 373-74; 1691 edition, 343-44. I follow the Elizabethan orthography, except I changed "u" to "v." Unless otherwise noted, I use the 1654 edition.

3Comment to John Sturm, Rector of Strasburg Gymnasium, 1549, quoted from John Neale, Queen Elizabeth I:A Biography (1934; reprinted Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957), 14-15. For the rhetorical analysis which follows: Cicero, De oratore, trans. E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1942), and Aristotle, Rhetoric, ed. Lane Cooper (New York: Appleton, 1932). BrianVickers, In Defense of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), has a useful summary.

4At Oxford in 1566, she said (in Latin):"Certainly, I confess that my parents took the most diligent care that I should be properly instructed in the liberal arts. And, indeed, I was for a long time engaged in the study of a variety of many tongues, of which I assume I have some knowledge.... Certainly, I have had many learned teachers who labored diligently to make me erudite." (She then modestly disclaims ability.) Laurence HumphreyJohnJuelli, Episcopi Sarisburiensis [Life of Bishop Jewell] (London, 1573), 243-44.This passage contains one of Elizabeth's few references to her mother ("parentes meos"). In her Nov. 14, 1586, speech on Mary Queen of Scots she said, "I was not simply trained up, nor in my youth spent my time altogether idly"; quoted in John Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments: 1584-1601 (New York: Norton, 1958), 128. In her Mar. 29, 1585, speech to Parliament, she said, "I am supposed to have many studies, but most philosophical. I must yield this to be true: that I suppose few, that be no profes- sors, have read more"; ibid., 100.

5Ascham, Letter to Sturm quoted in Neale, Queen Elizabeth I, 14. Crane, "'Video et Taceo': Eliz- abeth I and the Rhetoric of Counsel," Studies in English Literature: 1500-1900 28 (1988): 4. Wallace MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I (London: Edward Arnold, 1993), 7, comments on Elizabeth's two epistolary styles.

Green / Elizabeth Is Tilbtiry Camnp Oration 423

and Seneca's more terse, brief, and pithy style.6 The Tilbury oration is the prize of Elizabeth's succinct English mode. It is a

demonstrative (or epideictic or declamatory) oration, a type that could express praise or blame, and the shortest formal address of Elizabeth's we have. About 250 words, it takes about two and one-half minutes to deliver. Most Elizabethan orators spoke, in church and in Parliament, for at least an hour, but Elizabeth did not like other people's long harangues. In her own orations she was unusually brief. Her main purpose in speaking was to set forth the royal will and message, and for this, she did not need a great deal of talking.

At expressing sentiments perfectly fitted to the occasion, Elizabeth was an art- ist. Surely this ability to honor the occasion instead of merely imposing her regal personality upon it was one of the secrets of her popularity, and much of this ability depended also on Elizabeth's specific use of the art of rhetoric. In Aristotle's and Cicero's rhetorical plan, under invention were listed proofs (evidence, reasons, sup- ports), and these were divided into three types: logical, which appealed to reason; ethical, which confirmed the speaker's virtue and reliability; and pathetic, which moved the emotions.7 Elizabeth used logical proofs less than ethical or pathetic, which show her worth to her hearers and unite their passions with hers.

One type of logical proof is called nonartistic, so rather scornfully termed because it required less skill than artistic proofs, being derived from the obvious elements outside a case, like quotations, custom, and experience. Artistic proofs depended on the ingenuity of the orator and were figures of ornament, amplification, and style, which Renaissance rhetoricians admired in all their bewildering

variety.8 Elizabeth uses one such nonartistic proof in the Tilbury oration, the experi-

ence of her own life, called testatio or martyria.9 She begins by announcing she has rejected the advice of nervous counselors, and because of her own experience with her loving subjects she now appears in the midst of "armed multitudes." She con- tinues with a reference to her constant behavior in the past. Such life experiences

6The queen gave a copy of her translation of one of Seneca's letters (Epis. cvii) to her godsonJohn Harrington, in 1567, "in token of remembrance of her Highness painstaking and learned skyll"; see NugaeAntiquae, ed.Thomas Park, 2 vols. (London, 1804), 1:109-14. Elizabeth taught herself as she went along "how to make a princely oration," says Allison Heisch, "Queen Elizabeth I: Parliamentary Rhet- oric and the Exercise of Power," Signs 1 (1975), 33, who sees improvement with experience. Her plain talk was not a discovery of her old age (41). However, Maria Perry, The Word of a Prince:A Lfe of Eliza- beth Ifrom Contemporary Documents (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1990), 13, thinks Elizabeth's speeches became more elaborate as she grew older. Elizabeth's ability in both a complex, Ciceronian style of orating and a much simpler, Senecan one is evident from the beginning of her reign.

7Cicero, De oratore, 2. 27.114-15;Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1. 2. 8Lee A. Sonnino, Handbook to Sixteenth-Century Rhetoric (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

1968), is a valuable guide with brief definitions, as is Marjorie Donker and George M. Muldrow, Dic- tionary of Literary-Rhetorical Conventions of the English Renaissance (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982). Six- teenth-century rhetorics in English include Henry Peacham (the elder), The Garden of Eloquence (London, 1577, 1593), and Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique (London, 1553). Possibly Elizabeth was acquainted with Wilson's work, which was largely based on Cicero.

9Sonnino, Handbook, 177. Frye, "The Myth of Elizabeth at Tilbury," 104, thinks the autobio- graphical detail counts against Elizabeth's authorship because it is not really appropriate to Tilbury.

424 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXVIII / 2 (1997)

were peculiarly feminine proofs, other kinds being often denied to women, comments Mary Beth Rose, who terms them a rhetoric of self-legitimation, embracing both one's own experience and one's own wisdom, which was a device Elizabeth often employed elsewhere.10 Monarchs can make especially effective use of testatio, for who would contradict them?

Allusions and quotations are other important nonartistic proofs in classical and Renaissance rhetoric, but Elizabeth was her own authority. She does not refer very often to any source inferior to herself and the Almighty. Proverbs were usually her favorite, but in the Tilbury oration she quotes none. The perceptible influences are predictable HenryVIII's and the Bible's. Henry swore in a speech to Parliament December 24, 1545, that for his people's defense, "My treasure shall not be hidden, nor my person shall not be unadventured."11 In her Tilbury speech, his daughter expressed these ideas more eloquently.

Undoubtedly her presence at Tilbury and her reference to "a king of England too" brought to her army's mind stories of old Harry the Eighth. Elizabeth seems to have shared her people's love for Henry with excessive vigor, considering the fate of her mother. She often identified herself with him and his kingly power, and never to better effect than here.12 Maria Perry speculates that at Tilbury perhaps Elizabeth recalled "the times when she had seen HenryVIII inspecting a guard or attired for the tilt."'13 Phyllis Rackin, in an arresting phrase, calls a battlefield "the privileged site of patriarchal history" (from which women are traditionally excluded).14 At Tilbury, Elizabeth takes the battlefield and her warlike father to herself quite naturally.

Just as easily did she reflect her knowledge of the Bible which, like the Book of Common Prayer, she knew so well that sometimes it is hard to distinguish her original words from these sources.15 She was particularly fond of the Psalms. One Tilbury phrase seems to ring out of Psalm 7:4-5: "If I have rewarded evil unto him that dealt friendly with me ... yea, let him [mine enemy] tread my life down upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust.") The queen says, "I am come ... to lay down for my god, and for my kyngdom, and for my people, myn honor, and my

1?Lecture, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, (Dec. 1, 1993). 1'Quoted in Albert F. Pollard, Henry VIII (London: Longmans, Green, 1930), 336. On her way to

be crowned, Elizabeth, in thanking the lord mayor for a gift of money, made the same promise she made years later atTilbury: "[F]or the safety and quietness of you all, I will not spare, if need be, to spend my blood." Quoted in Neale, Elizabeth I, 61.

12Paul Johnson, Elizabeth I, 22, reminds us that she never finished his tomb, and she ignored his will, despite her expressions of filial loyalty.

13Perry, Word of a Prince, 284-85. 14"'Genealogical Anxiety and Female Authority," Contending Kingdoms: Historical, Psychological, and

Feminist Approaches to the Literature of Sixteenth-Century England and France, ed. Marie-Rose Logan and Peter Rudnytsky (Detroit:Wayne State UP, 1991), 339.

15For example, her two English prayers in her "Book of Devotions," composed between 1579 and 1584, interweave phrases from the Bible and Book of Common Prayer with her own phrases of equal weight and merit. The prayers are beautifully reprinted in Perry, Word of a Prince, 254-55.

Green / Elizabeth Is Tilbury Camp Oration 425

blood even in the dust" (italics added).16 Elizabeth used artistic proofs of the logical type, the skillful amplification and

ornamentation of arguments, less than nonartistic proofs, but she used them well. In saying, "I know I have the body butt of a weak and feble woman, butt I have the harte and stomack of a kinge, and of a kynge of England too," she is using definitio (orismos or definition).17 In this example, "woman" appears to be genus and "king" the species.

Sixteenth-century auditors would have also heard in this expression, as we do, Elizabeth's use of a lively synecdoche (subintellectio or intellectio), defined as expressing the whole by a part, as well as her characteristic rhetorical use of"contraries" (comparatio or antithesis).18 In almost all of her speeches in which she mentions her femininity, she encases her allusion in a contrary or antithesis, like this:

Yes, I am a woman

Yet/But, I do (or I am) such and such.

The structure seems natural enough, a concession to her audiences' prejudices against women in general.

Without any reference to her sex, she uses many other comparisons of dissim- ilarities at Tilbury. In fact, the entire Tilbury oration seems to be built on them. In 1549, Ascham wrote to Sturm, "She admires, above all, modest metaphors and comparisons of contraries well put together and contrasting felicitously with one another." Thinking, no doubt, of some of her later writings made difficult by her overuse of these figures, Neale adds, "If only, one murmurs, she had not admired them." 19 However, they are used in her Tilbury speech with simplicity and great effect, as in:

My counsellors have warned that

I am in danger here, but I trust my people.

I am not here for pleasure, but to live and die with you.

I know of the invasion threat, but I will oppose it with my blood.

In the final lines of the oration, we see another artistic proof or device, a fine adhortatio or protope, a "[florm of speech by which the orator exhorteth and persua- deth his hearers to do something ... not only the form of a commandment or of a

16The Psalm verses are William Tyndale's translation,The Psalter, Book of Common Prayer of the Prot- estant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia, 1923), 333-34. When Elizabeth was told of Mary Tudor's death, she fell on her knees and "after a good time of respiration, she uttered this verse of the Psalm: A domino factum est illud, et est mirabile in oculis meis" ("This is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in my eyes"), ibid., 118:23.A shorter version was later engraved on her gold coins; Robert Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia or Observations on Queen Elizabeth, Her Times and Favorites, 1641, ed. John S. Cerovski, Folger Books (Washin ton: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1985), 40.

17Sonnino, Handbook, 67-68. 8Ibid., synecdoche (172); comparatio (45-46). 19Quoted in Neale, Queen Elizabeth I, 15.


promise" but giving reasons as well.20 Having promised the soldiers "rewards and crowns," Elizabeth concludes by exhorting obedience to their general, concord in the camp, and valor in the field, and she promises shortly the "famous victory."

Special attention must be given to one of Elizabeth's best known sentences: "I know I have the body butt of a weak and feble woman, butt I have the harte and stomack of a kinge, and of a kynge of England too," which though only thirty words, has caught the imagination of modern writers.21 Noting that, rhetorically, it is a definition, a contrary, and a synecdoche hardly begins to exhaust its possibil- ities. An Elizabethan writer, George Puttenham, defines "synecdoche" as a "word ... by which we drive the hearer to conceive more or less beyond or otherwise than the letter expresseth,"22 which in the light of some of the ingenious interpretations of Elizabeth's sentence, especially in recent years, is a pertinent caution. Still needed is the measure of what the queen herself would have thought of these mat- ters. Winfred Schleiner speculates that possibly Elizabeth "was suspicious of any argument we might now call feminist."23

Much of the recent discussion centers on whether or not Elizabeth wore armor at Tilbury, but it is difficult to say more with certainty about her appearance than contemporary commentators said, like the two possible eyewitnesses, James Aske and Thomas Deloney.24 Their descriptions are sparse. For example, Aske's

20Henry Peacham (the elder), The Garden of Eloquence (London, 1577, 1593), ed. W G. Crane (Gainesville, FL, 1954), 78, quoted in Sonnino, Handbook, 20. The example of the rhetorical figure "adhortatio, which Sonnino quotes from Peacham's work, bears interesting similarity to a summary of the queen's Tilbury oration, though it lacks its tremendous energy and conviction: "If ever God have had respect to a just cause, or ever gave victory where it was due, or ever lent his hand to equity against tyranny, or ever preferred his people and confounded his enemies, he will this day fight with us, and for us, and give us a glorious victory, be our enemies never so many and we never so few, and therefore shew yourselves this day valiant, courageous and constant, fight this day for your honour, and for your country, cast off this day all fear that may make you weak and arm yourselves with hope that may make you strong."

21For example, Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power, New Cultural Studies Series (Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, 1994); Leah Marcus, "Shakespeare's Comic Heroines, Elizabeth I, and the Political Uses of Androgyny," Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1986), 135- 53; and Allison Heisch, "Queen Elizabeth I and the Persistence of Patriarchy," Feminist Review 4 (1980): 45-55.

22The Arte of English Poesie, 1589, ed. G. D. Willcock and A. Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1936), Quoted in Sonnino, Handbook, 172-73.

George Puttenham, "Divina virago: Queen Elizabeth as an Amazon," Studies in Philology 75 (1978): 179.

24 James Aske, Elizabetha Triumphans, 1588, in John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols. (London, 1823), 2:545-82. Aske published his long and turgid poem Nov. 23, 1588, the eve of the St. Paul's thanksgiving service. He says that as a young versifier he spent three months considering whether to publish it or throw it in the fire, a reasonable disposition. It is of historical interest though as a report not reliable. Whether Aske was at Tilbury or not has been impossible to ascertain. I think it most likely, from the poem's evidence, that he was not, though he does use many specific names and incidents with assurance. Felix Barker, "If Parma Had Landed," History Today 38 (1988), 38-39, attempts to connect Aske with one J. Askew, a stationer, but his identity remains elusive. A speedier author,Thomas Deloney, got his work into print Aug. 10, 1588, "The Queens visiting of the Campe at Tilsburie, with her Entertainement There" (London, printed by John Wolf for Edward White), in Sixteenth-Century English Poetry, ed. Norman E. McClure (NewYork: Harper and Brothers), 173-75. If he was indeed at Tilbury, which is probable, he must have composed on horseback.

Green / Elizabeth I's Tilbury Camp Oration 427

only mention of extra equipment is a truncheon which Elizabeth, he says, held in one hand, "not used thereto," and Deloney gives her a "plume of feathers."25 Almost all of the other commentators wrote only that the queen looked inspiring and martial.

But, of course, legend has clothed the queen as it wished. The process began almost as once, when Aske compared her to Mars, to Bellona, to Dido, to the "Amazonian Queen," and to Voada and Vodice.26 The apotheosis once achieved, the armor arrived, in later portrayals.27 Armed or not, when Elizabeth at Tilbury referred to her body as that of a "weak and feble woman," the truth was that she was a vigorous and healthy fifty-five-year-old Tudor prince with the strong nerves of her redoubtable father. In spite of this glancing reference to feminine weakness, she speaks with all the authority and power of her real voice -as a queen. Her Til- bury audience knew she was a remarkably robust and enduring ruler.Whatever else it might be, her famous sentence is a trope, and an inspired one.

Elizabeth often pointed out that she was both a woman and a queen. It would have been strange had she not, since she was both. In this oration, she probably mentioned being a woman to disarm any chauvinistic anxieties aroused by her unusual appearance on a battlefield by meeting those fears directly, tactfully allow- ing her subjects to entertain them even as she gracefully disproved their necessity.

A second category of rhetorical proof is ethical proof, that persuasion effected both by the good reputation of the speaker and by the good character expressed in the oration. Elizabeth does not take her reputation for granted at Tilbury, but presents herself as trusting, determined, martial, generous, pious, and brave. There is no charming self-deprecation, as in her Latin University orations, except for the brief reference to her sex.This is a new audience, so she leaves nothing to chance. Besides putting great heart into them-if that was needed-she tells them exactly how she wants them to think of her, a typical strategy for the queen.

Her frequent references in her speeches to God are another means of present- ing herself as worthy and virtuous. In Elizabeth's orations, God changes his attributes according to her rhetorical need of him, but always in direct communi- cation with the queen. At Tilbury, God becomes "mere English"-she mentions

25Aske, Elizabetha Triumphans, 570; Deloney, "Tbe Queens Visiting," 174; T. D. or T. I. [Thomas Deloney] also provides Elizabeth with a "martiall staffe" in "A Joyful Song of the Royal Receiving of the Queens most excellent Majestie ... at Tilsburie... "Aug. 8 and 9, 1588; a partial reprint is in Teni- son, Elizabethan England, 7:297-99 n. 104.

26Aske, Elizabetha Triumphans, 565 (Mars); 565 (Bellona); 572 (Dido); 567 Juno); 570 (Amazo- nian Queen); 570 (Voada andVodice). Marcus, "Shakespeare's Comic Heroines," notes the "tremendous interest lately in the mythicized self representations which Queen Elizabeth either created for herself or allowed her subjects to confer upon her." Interest in the queen's different personae was perhaps first stimulated by Elkin C.Wilson, England's Eliza, Harvard Studies in English 20 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1939). However, it is debatable how much the queen deliberately created and used "symbolic male identities" to build a myth of androgyny. Marcus, "Shakespeare's Comic Heroines," 137-38, cites Eliz- abeth's Tilbury costume as "visual embodiment of her verbal appeal," but we do not know anything about this costume with certainty.

27Frye, "The Myth of Elizabeth at Tilbury," reproduces an engraving of the queen in armor by Thomas Cecil,"Truth Presents the Queene with a Lance" (c. 1625), III.The mounted queen wears a cuirass and helmet and carries a sword, shield, and lance.


God twice and briefly at that-but there is no doubt that Elizabeth's enemies are the enemies of God.

When it comes to the third type of proof, pathetic, she was fond of the figure exclamatio28 as in the resounding "Let tyrants fear!" She also liked the figure of extuscitatio29 stirring oneself and others to some emotion, with which she often confirmed her audience's disapproval of rebels, dissenters, and traitors, and approval of their virtuous opposites. "They were an emotional lot, these Elizabethan gentle- men," says Neale. "The queen knew it and fostered it."30 Certainly her own indig- nant contempt is undeniable here, directed towards the duke of Parma and Spain or "any prince of Europe" who "should dare to invade the borders of my realm."

She also uses another figure, laudatio, expression of praise, in the Tilbury oration, to compliment "my lieutenant general" (Leicester), but mainly her army.31 Expressions of patriotic love were both ethical proof, demonstrating her goodness and virtue, and powerful devices of pathetic proof that were frequently used by the queen. The emotional force of her expressions of love of her country and her people runs through Elizabeth's speeches like a floodstream, and at Tilbury her loving pride surges through the address.

A monarch has a tremendous advantage as an orator. The pomp and drama which surrounded Elizabeth's appearances increased the effect of her pathetic proofs. Even as a new ruler, as her coronation progress shows, she had recognized that "in pompous ceremonies a secret of government doth much consist, for that the people are naturally both taken and held with exterior shews."32 Tilbury provided all of the "exterior shews" anyone could wish. There was no need of a glittering court or the solemn rituals of Parliament. The greatest possible drama was provided: drums, trumpets, ranks of armed men, nobles pacing beside her great grey horse, banners blowing, and the enemy approaching on the seas.33

When we consider arrangement (dispositio or organization) of ideas and sentences, the unity of thought, feeling, and purpose in the Tilbury oration is at once apparent and never better blended than here. Elizabeth's thoughts in her speeches were most often organized by topics, within which she proceeded with her own logic and order.This speech is an outstanding example of her method of tying each thought to a preceding one, so that each new clause swelling from its predecessor seems to have also grown from the center out, like ripples from a stone thrown in a pool.

She reinforces this method of organization by repeating ideas and words, thus enhancing unity. She very effectively uses the "God, kingdom, people" series twice (in the Cabala text) and also repeats single words: "my self/our self" four times; "prince" and "people" three times; and "king," "fear," and "general" twice each.

28Sonnino, Handbook, 87-88. 29Ibid., 96-97. 30Neale, Queen Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments: 1584-1601, 387. 31Ibid., 127. 32John Hayward,Annals of the First Four Years of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed.John Bruce (Lon-

don: Camden Society, 1840),15. 33The drama of the Tilbury Camp site still exists. "Tilberie Forte," located on a charming contem-

porary map by Robert Adams (BM M. 68513), can be imagined as one trudges across the windy plain and up the great hill. In 1984, Christy's description still fit most of the landmarks.


In her use of emphasis, Elizabeth, when she wished to be absolutely clear, would place her main thought toward the end, though she would usually develop it somewhat before-as she does here-which makes the inclusion of the last long sentence essential.34 Tilbury, then, in miniature, follows the general plan of Eliza- beth's orations. She opens the speech graciously, turns at once to business, presents her position, and then concludes with a brief but effective peroration that emphasizes her main idea.

The sentence structure mostly loose sentences-oftheTilbury speech is well suited to delivery in the open air. An auditor could miss a few words and still get the sense of the whole structure. The last sentence is a beautifully balanced parallel sentence using compar (parison, isocolon)-clauses and phrases of similar length, and often syntax-and encasing them in a masterful cadence.35 Periodic sentences, of which the queen was quite fond, are omitted, no doubt for the sake of simplicity on this occasion. As in her other utterances, she uses a short sentence in the midst of long ones-"Let tyrants fear! '-and the impulse to applaud at this juncture is almost irresistible.

In smaller elements of style, simplicity also is the dominant feature. In most of her orations, Elizabeth used surprisingly simple diction; it is the construction of those speeches that is sometimes difficult. Although Elizabeth, like most Elizabe- thans, was fond of alliteration, she uses it here sparingly:36

strength ... safegard ... subiects37

weak ... woman

concord in ye camp

She depends more in this speech on doublets, paired synonyms, a cherished device of hers and of others-Shakespeare, translators of the Bible, and compilers of the Book of Common Prayer. Here the device is particularly well suited to the outdoors, where repetitions reinforce thought and decrease the effect of interfering noise (soldiers and horses) and of words blown away by the wind. The Tilbury speech is full of doublets, for example: "faythfull and lovinge people"; "chiefest strength and safegard"; "weak and feble woman"; "harte and stomack of a kinge."38

Elizabeth also uses triplets as in "generall, judge, and rewarder";39 and in her promise to spend her blood "for my god, and for my kyngdom, and for my people."40 The famous last sentence uses one series of three's, "by your concord in ye campe, and [your] valure in ye field, and your obedience to my selfe and my generall"41-the Cabala text changes the order of the items-which are "double"

34Neale, Queen Elizabeth I, 308-9, omits this last superb sentence, for unknown reasons. Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1959; reprinted London: Jonathan Cape, 1983), also omits the last sentence, probably in accordance with Neale's example (314-15), or perhaps because the pre- dicted battle at Tilbury did not take place. Carole Levin, Heart and Stomach of a King, 144, in a precis of the speech omits the last sentence; Perry, Word of a Prince, 286, andJohnson, Elizabeth I, 320, include it.

35Sonnino, Handbook, 43-44. 36As in the BM Harl. MS version. 37BM Harl. MS version. 38BM Harl. MS version. 39BM Harl. MS version 40Cabala version. 41BM Harl. MS version.


triplets: nouns and prepositional phrases parallelled. These are followed by two or three prepositional phrases in the final, ringing prediction of a "famous victory over thes enimyes of my god, and of my kyngdom." The Cabala text adds "and of my people."

Her images, like these doublets and triplets, are pertinent and forceful, but few, as we would expect in such a short speech. She promises to lay down her honor like her blood in the dust. Her people's good will is her chief strength and safeguard. She has the heart and stomach of a king. In other orations, Elizabeth most often used money or jewels as a metaphor of her love for her people and their love for her, a comparison that was as much fact as poetry.42 In the Tilbury oration she does refer to money-she often does-but she mentions "rewards and crowns" as an effect of her affectionate good will, not as a metaphor.

All of Elizabeth's propositions are chosen with superb rightness, as if indeed the style grew out of the subject, as Ascham had remarked of her long before. She refuses to admit that an English soldier might harm her, she deeply responds to the love of her people (whom she trusts), she offers to die with her army, she defies the fearful enemy, she endorses her subordinate, she promises to pay the soldiers, and she concludes by predicting victory since her side is her people's side, and their side is God's.All these statements she encloses in an artful rhetorical structure, using the standard elements of proofs, arrangement, and style, but far transcending them by her own genius. If someone else composed the oration, for whatever purpose, that person's gifts of literary forgery exceeded the queen's gifts of expression, a most unlikely occurrence.

More proof of the queen's authorship of the Tilbury oration is provided by strong external evidence. To begin with, almost every contemporary writer who refers to the queen's presence at Tilbury says she spoke to her army there, though the phrases used vary, and only Aske gives much more than a brief statement or summary. Still, these omissions of the entire speech do not prove the speech we have is apocryphal; commentators and chroniclers have an inconsistent record in preserving the texts of speeches by Elizabeth.43 For example, compare the records

42Neale, "Sayings," 26, quotes a Puritan M.R in 1585 who refers to Elizabeth herself as a jewel. 43The means by which Elizabeth's speeches were preserved, if they were, were many and rather

haphazard.John Strype (1643-1737) says he took his printed version of Elizabeth's Feb. 1559 speech from a "printed Copy, garnish'd with gilt Letters, given to the Honourable the Lady Stafford of her Maj- esty's Privy-chamber; and written out by Alex Evesham ... by which Subscription, the Authentickness of this Copy doth sufficiently appear"; see appendix to William Camden, Annals in A Complete History of England (London: 1706), 2:661, col. a. No such copy exists for the Tilbury speech. No one refers to obtaining it at London ordinaries or taverns, a practice Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments: 1584- 1601, 392, mentions in connection with Elizabeth's "Golden Speech," of Nov. 30, 1601. Elizabeth did not send the Tilbury oration as a special favor to a kinsman or friend as she sent her 1576 speech to Par- liament to her young godson, John Harington: "Boy Jack," she wrote, "I have made a clerk write fair my poor words for thine use"; see Neale, Elizabeth I, 223. No contemporary chronicler printed the Til- bury oration, as Holinshed had printed her 1564 Cambridge oration. It did not appear in a common- place book or collection of rhetorical models.There is no text in a collection of state documents. Most puzzling of all, the Tilbury speech was not printed with the approval of the government (and of course the queen), like her two tortuously revised orations on Mary Queen of Scots, Nov. 12. and 24, 1586, and like her final speech of her reign, her closing address to Parliament, Saturday, Dec. 19, 1601. Some of Elizabeth's orations were lost, like her closing address to the Parliament of 1589; see Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments: 1584-1601, 238.We are fortunate that the Tilbury oration survived at all.


of the speech.The first is recorded in James Aske, Elizabetha Triumphans (November 23, 1588), 572-73:

Then I shall write in these lines too rude Her Royall Speech (though nothing like her Speech) Which in effect was it that here ensues: "We will them know, that now by proofe we see Their loyall hearts to us their lawfull Queene For sure we are, that not beneath the Heavens Have readier subjects to defend their right:

Which happiness we coumpt to us as cheefe. And though of love their duties crave no lesse, Yet say to them, that we in like regarde, And estimate of this their dearest zeale, If time of neede shall ever call them foorth To dare in field their fearce and cruell foes Wil be ourselfe their noted Generall. No deare at all to us shal be our life, Ne Pallaces or Castles huge of stone Shall hold as then our presence from their view: But, in the midst and very heart of them, Bellona-like, we meane as then to march; On common lot of gayne or losse to both, They well shall see we recke shall then betide. And as for honor with most large rewards, Let them not care; they common there shal be: The meanest man, who shall deserve a might, A mountaine shall for his desart receive. And this our Speach, and this our solenme vowe, In fervent love to those our subjects deare, Say, Serant-major, tell them from ourselfe. On kingly faith, we will performe it there."

The second is from Thomas Deloney, "The Queens visiting" (August 9, 1588), 175:

And then bespake our Noble Queene, "My loving friends and countriemen: I hope this day the worst is seene, that in our wars, ye shall sustaine. But if our enimies doe assaile you, never let your stomackes faile you. For in the midst of all your troupe, We our selves will be in place: To be your ioy, your guide and comfort, even before your enimies face!


T.D. [Thomas Deloney], "Three Ballads on the Armada Fight," An English Garner: Tudor Tracts, 1532-1588, ed. Albert F Pollard (Westminster: Archibald Con- stable, 1903), 491, in his ballad of August 10, 1588, on the capture of Don Pedro Valdez' galleon, the Galleazzo, has an interesting paraphrase of the queen's last sentence: he repeats her triplet. His entire summary of the speech is:

She [the Queen] will among you be In every bitter storm! Desiring you True English hearts to bear to GOD! To her! and to the land wherein you nursed were!

T. D. or T. I. [Thomas Deloney?], "A Joyful Song of the Royal Receiving of the Queens most excellent Majestie ... at Tilsburie ...," August 8 and 9, 1588, is briefer:

With princely promisse none should lacke, Meate or drinke or cloth for backe, Golde and silver should not slacke, to her marshall men of England.44

"The Copie of a Letter" by a "Richard Leigh" (probably Burghley), printed in early autumn 1588, omits the oration, but describes the tremendous expressions of love from the soldiers for their queen, "all which she acquitted with very princely thanks, and good speeches."45 Here, "good speeches" refers to brief rejoinders, not to set orations.

Later writers such as John Stow, Edmond Howes, John Speed, Thomas Hey- wood, Bishop Godfrey Goodman, and Lady Diana Primrose also referred to a speech or speeches, usually giving only a brief summary or notice.46 With so much

44Tenison, Elizabethan England, 7:297-99 n. 104, gives a partial reprint of the ballad, "A Joyful Song," which differs from the partial reprint in Muriel Bradbrook,The Queen's Garland (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1953), 65-66. Bradbrook's reprint of the lines referring to Elizabeth's speech are: "What gracious words her Grace declared / What gracious thanks in every ward, / To every soldier none she spared, / That served anywhere for England."

45Harleian Miscellany, 2 vols. (London: 1808-1811), 2:74-75. 46John Stow, Annales (London, 1615): "Shee went in person to Tilbury, where her presence and

princely encouragement, Bellona-like infused a second spirit of love, loyaltie and resolution into every Souldier in her Armie," 748; Stow may have picked up Aske's earlier "Bellona-like." MacCaffrey, Eliza- beth I, cites Stow's Chronicle (London, 1598), 415, as his source for the "heart and stomach" sentence he quotes, 241 n. 18. Edmond Howes, "A Commemoration of Queene Elizabeth," in Stow's Annales (1615), 814, wrote that "at Tilbury being bravely mounted shee gave such encouragements with her words, lookes, and gestures, that neyther the feare of death nor mis-fortune could be discerned." John Speed, The History of Great Britaine (London: 1627), 862, par. 220, praises Elizabeth's "lovely presence and imperiall speeches." William Camden, Historie of the Life and Reigne ... of Princesse Elizabeth (Lon- don: Benjamin Fisher, 1630), 142 (a translation of his 1615 Latin Annales), wrote: "incredible it is how much shee strengthened the hearts of her Captaines and Souldiers by her presence and speech."Thomas Heywood, in his play, If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody, part 2, Dramatic Works, ed. John P. Collier, 2 vols. (1606; London: Shakespeare Society, 1850), 2:156-57 (act 1, scene 1), shows the armed queen making a martial address, including a comparison of herself to Zenobia, the British queen who opposed


evidence from sixteenth and seventeenth writers that Elizabeth made some kind of address at Tilbury, it seems reasonable to conclude she did.

Another kind of external evidence also presents compelling arguments for Elizabeth's authorship-the fact that most of the summaries or paraphrases of the speech reproduce many of the chief ideas of the BM Harleian MS 6798 and the Cabala versions, whether these are contained in a poem, ballad, chronicle, or even a sermon or painting. The occurrence of some of the same ideas in all the variant reports indicates that news of what Elizabeth had actually said circulated and survived long after Tilbury.

Aske's poem gives the queen a formal oration that sounds like a school exercise and has none of her spontaneous fire, although it does incorporate some of her ideas, particularly those expressed in the BM Harleian MS and the Cabala; for example: her subjects' loyalty is her chief happiness; her life is not so dear that she would avoid sharing their fate in war; and she will reward them, she vows. Aske omits the advisors' caution, the disdain of treachery, the reference to laying down her honour and blood in the dust, her scorn of the invaders, her recommendation of her lieutenant general (Leicester), and the resounding final sentence that predicts a "famous victory."Though in his rhymed paraphrase of the speech he omits reference to her weak body but kingly heart and stomach, he gives an interesting paraphrase earlier in his poem:

Although she be by nature weake, Because her sex no otherwise can be: Yet wants she not the courage of her Sire, Whose valour wanne this Island great renowne

(549)

the Romans. Bishop Godfrey Goodman, The Court of KingJames the First, ed.John Brewer, 2 vols. (Lon- don: Richard Bentley, 1839), 1:161, wrote that Elizabeth "was a lady of admirable qualities, and among other her virtues she was of a wonderful courage and an undaunted spirit; whereof I will give these two instances, which I hadfrom those that did see and hear her [italics mine]. In Tilbury Camp she did ride up and down amongst the soldiers and did encourage them, and told them that she would strike the first blow in that battle, which did much hearten the soldiers." The second example is her calmness during Essex's rebellion: Diana Primrose,A Chaine of Pearle: or a Memoriall of the Peerles Graces ... of Queen Eliz- abeth (1630), Nichols, Progresses, 3:648.

But that which doth beyond all admiration Illustrate Her, and in Her this whole nation; Is that heroicke march of Her's and speech At Tilbury, where shee did all beseech Bravely to fight for England; telling them That what their fortune was, should be Her's be then. And that with full resolve Shee thither came Ready to win, or quite to lose the Game. Which words, deliverd in most Princely sort, Did animate the army, and report To all the world her magnanimity, Whose haughtie courage nought could terrify. Well did Shee shew Great Henry was Her Sire, Whom Europe did for valor most admire, Mongst all the warlike Princes which were then Enthronized with Regall Diadem.


Deloney's "The QueensVisiting" emphasizes Elizabeth's good will, her desire to be with the soldiers "if our enimies doe assaile you," and even before the enemy's face to "be your ioy, your guide and comfort" (175).

The BM Harleian MS and the Cabala versions are markedly more similar to one another than to Aske's poem or Deloney's poem and ballad. Clause by clause, they echo one another.The only variations except for spelling, a different word, or a crux in line 10 of the manuscript version are these:The Cabala version omits the queen's phrase, "your obedience to my selfe" (line 30 in the BM Harleian MS) and adds to the last sentence of the manuscript-"wee shall shortly have a famous victory over thes enimyes of my god, and of my kyngdom"-the phrase "and of my people."

Frye discusses two other contemporary sources which seem to be reports of a Tilbury speech by Elizabeth: a version of Elizabeth's speech that is included in a sermon, printed in 1612 by William Leigh, which claims that Elizabeth "uttered these or the like words," and a speech by the queen much like Leigh's that is inscribed beneath a church painting (referred to as the Gaywood painting).47 They do not much resemble the BM Harleian MS or the Cabala versions, and Frye thinks they stem from a different tradition altogether. Both are some years later than the exciting events of 1588.

Though very short-Leigh's version is 147 words, and the painting's is 122-

they contain a few of the ideas of the somewhat longer BM Harleian MS and the Cabala versions. They both express scorn for the invaders, and they both refer to Elizabeth's sex. Neither balances the reference to her sex with the well known "harte and stomack of a kinge."

Some new ideas are added. In both the sermon version and the painting, Eliz- abeth characterizes herself as having been England's queen in peace, the coming struggle as the battle of the Lord, and the Spanish invaders as Philistines. In some instances, the two versions differ from each other and from the BM Harleian MS and Cabala versions as well. Leigh's concluding sentence shows Elizabeth asking for "your prayers" and "your powerfull preaching, for that will shake the earth of our earthly hearts; and call us to repentance, whereby your good God may relieve us, and roote up in mercy his deferred Iudgements against us, onely be faithfull and fear not."This sentence sounds like a pious addition by preacher William Leigh, as does: "and if God doe not charge England with the sinnes of England, little doe I feare their force." The reference to "sinnes," which is unlike the public Elizabeth, appears in no other version of the Tilbury speech. In addition, the earthy tone of both the sermon and the Gaywood painting version differs from the dignified tone of the BM Harleian MS and the Cabala. The Leigh sermon version begins with a

47William Leigh, Queene Elizabeth, Paraleld in Her Princely Vertues ... (London: Printed by T. C. for Arthur Johnson, 1612), Second Sermon, 92, in Frye, "The Myth of Elizabeth at Tilbury," 101-4. The painting is on the chancel wall of the St. Faith's Church, Gaywood, outside King's Lynn in Norfolk; it shows the mounted Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury with her entourage around her, and burning ships in the background. Above this scene, she kneels in prayer. The painting was commissioned by the rector, Thomas Hare (1572-1634), and dated 1588, though it may have been executed in the early seventeenth century; ibid., 102-4.


hearty "Come on now my companions at arms," which has the queen speaking with piratical vim.The Gaywood painting version begins, "Now for Queen & For the kingdome." It is not likely the queen concluded as the Gaywood painting version attests, that if God be for us, ccyt skills not Greatley if all the devills in hell be against us."48

Frye thinks the two are essentially scrambled versions of one another and speculates:"Perhaps both speeches derive from an actualTilbury speech through different intermediary texts." She adds that in spite of their late dates, the two are more likely to be close to what Elizabeth actually said than the Cabala text.49 However, the evidence is not conclusive, though her idea that Elizabeth may have made both the Cabala speech and one approaching the Leigh/Gaywood version is reasonable.

Elizabeth could well have delivered both the Cabala speech as part of a formal review of her troops and one or more colloquial utterances, from which perhaps derive the Leigh and the Gaywood summaries. It is probable that Elizabeth spoke many times at Tilbury on August 8 and 9 because of the nature of the scene a huge army camp through which she rode (some say walked) several times.The references by contemporary accounts to her "good speeches," "good words," already cited, support this conclusion. These remarks, it seems certain, are now lost.

It does not seem likely that such a queen, one well educated in rhetoric, would have let go by in silence the magnificent and dramatic opportunity that Tilbury provided. Her deportment at Tilbury, her very appearance, conveyed a ceremonial and symbolic message, but she needed words to refine her purpose. Contemporary writers said she put heart in her army. That was what she came to do. The best way to do it was not only to appear but to speak.

Though there are some obscure points relating to the Tilbury oration which may never be clarified, still it does not seem likely that so many Elizabethan, Jaco- bean, and modern writers would have said Elizabeth spoke at Tilbury if she had not, nor does it seem probable that so many would have ascribed the speech we have to her if it were not hers. Neale, one of the most astute scholars of Elizabeth's style, accepts the speech as genuine, as do Garrett Mattingly, Paul Johnson, and Carole Levin.50 There seem to be no other reliable candidates for the authorship of the Tilbury oration but the queen. If she did not compose it, who did? Neither Burghley (who was not atTilbury on August 9 when the speech was delivered), nor Sharpe, nor Aske, nor Deloney was capable of composing Elizabeth's martial, rhythmic cadences.

The most likely, the simplest choice for the author of the Tilbury oration, then, is Elizabeth herself. Its rhetorical structure, typical of the queen, attests to her authorship. In addition, her contemporaries say she was there and made some kind

48Frye, "Myth of Elizabeth at Tilbury," 101 n. 16, 102. 49Ibid., 102-4. 50Neale, "Sayings of Queen Elizabeth.," 103-6, and Elizabeth I, 308-9; Mattingly, Defeat of the

Spanish Armada, 314-15; Perry, Word of a Prince, 286;Johnson, Elizabeth I, 320; Carole Levin, Heart and Stomach of a King, 143-45. Garrett Mattingly, Lecture, Tudor History, Columbia University, Jan. 6, 1960, remarked that SirJohn Neale "knew more about Queen Elizabeth's style than any other person," and "He's the only one I know who can recognize Elizabeth's prose style by intuition" (6).


of memorable speech. The main ideas of the oration became too well known too soon and were too well preserved in other paraphrases and summaries for anyone else to have pretended authorship. There was, literally, an army to witness against such a one. No one but Elizabeth knew her own mind and feelings with the sin-

cerity and emphasis given in this speech. The Tilbury Camp oration on August 9, 1588, is a glorious example, her best, of the queen's simpler rhetorical style.

On the witness of Dr. Leonel Sharpe, author of the Cabala letter, depends the last major proof that Elizabeth did indeed deliver that oration.Therefore, it is essential to form an estimate of his reliability. The poems of Aske and Deloney with alu their poetic exaggerations are often treated as more factual accounts of Elizabeth's Tilbury visit than Sharpe's prose report. His presence atTilbury is accepted without question, though there is no corroborating witness, but the queen's oration which also he alone gives is sometimes doubted.

Some have found Dr. Sharpe unlikable and unreliable; for example, the rather priggish Dictionary of National Biography and Susan Frye. It is true that Sharpe dra- matizes and probably exaggerates his role in affairs of state, and gives unsolicited advice tediously. It seems true, as Frye points out, that his enthusiastic and gullible account of the Spanish whips and the treatment of the prisoner Don Pedro de Valdez is not accurate.51 (It is also true that we base much of our estimate of his character on only a few documents.) Still his contemporaries not only advanced him to ranks of honor, but they seemed to have liked him rather well.

He was born in Elizabeth's coronation year, 1559, the second son of a London merchant, the grandson of a lord mayor.52 He received a B.A. (1581), an M.A. (1584), and a D.D. (before 1603) from King's College, Cambridge, and an honor- ary D.D. from Oxford in 1618. He says in the Cabala letter that he was at Tilbury in August 1588, serving the earl of Leicester, probably as a chaplain. (Some writers mistakenly say he was in Essex's entourage.) Thereafter, he accompanied the earl of Essex as a chaplain on the earl's expeditions to Cadiz and Portugal.

Sharpe became a royal chaplain to Henry, Prince ofWales, about 1605, and in 1606 he wrote the prince an epistle, congratulating him on his escape from the Gunpowder Plot.53 When the popular prince died suddenly of typhoid fever in 1612, Sharpe composed a prose Latin eulogy, "Oratio Funebris," which was later printed, "Englished" by Sharpe's brother Edward.

Sharpe's court career ended when Henry's life ended. However, he had a variety of parishes during his life in Cheshire, Devonshire, and Kent. From 1605 to his death in 1631, he was archdeacon of Berkshire, a prestigious position ranking just below a bishop or archpriest.

5'Frye, "Myth of Elizabeth at Tilbury," 99-101. 52Materials on Dr. Sharpe's life are from the Dictionary of National Biography; BM Lansdowne MS

984, fol. 92 (a compendium of other sources); the Cabala;Athenae Oxonienses (An Exact History ofAll the [Oxford] Writers and Bishops), 2 vols. (1691), 1; Camden, Annales;Thomas Birch, Life of Henry, Prince of Wales, 2 vols. (Dublin: G. Faulkner, 1760);Thomas Birch, The Court and Times ofJames the First, 2 vols. (1849; reprinted NewYork: AMS, 1973).

53Birch, Life of Henry, gives some biographical data and a precis of Sharpe's congratulatory epistle, 1:56-57.


Dr. Sharpe had an equal talent for getting into trouble and getting out of it. It was fortunate that he enjoyed the favor of important people. In 1601, according to the writer of the Athenae Oxonienses, he was thought to be involved in Essex's treason,54 but he was only banished to his Devon estates, and a mere four years later he was appointed a royal chaplain to Henry, prince ofWales. In 1606 he had to explain to the Privy Council that he was not causing difficulties between the English and Scottish factions at court.55 Later, he was in much greater peril from a suspected involvement with the "Sicilian Vespers" matter in 1614. (The reference is to the universal massacre of resident French in Sicily in 1582, on Easter Monday, upon the signal of the vesper bells, and the war of that name which followed.)

John Hoskyns (or Hoskins), a hot-tempered burgess of Herefordshire, when speaking in Parliament on June 3, 1614, used the phrase "Sicilian Vespers" in criti- cizing KingJames's Scottish compatriots and suggesting they be sent home. In con- text, the phrase had an ominous meaning indeed. The authorities dissolved this fractious Parliament on June 7, 1614, confiscated their records, questioned the most active dissidents, and imprisoned some, including Hoskyns, in the Tower.56

He was soon joined by Dr. Leonel Sharpe. Hoskyns under interrogation had implicated Sharpe as the author of the SicilianVesper allusion.57 London gossip was rife. The Reverend Thomas Lorkin wrote to Sir Thomas Puckering in Madrid, on June 18, that Dr. Sharpe had helped to compose Hoskyns' speech, "as the bruit goeth," and John Chamberlain speculated in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton June 30 that Hoskyns was bribed "to do that he did, and some others drawn on by other practice ... as I take it, little Dr. Sharpe and Sir Charles Cornwallis were committed to the Tower, and there remain."58

There Sharpe remained for a year. His health was affected by his imprison- ment, but perhaps it was some recompense that he with Hoskyns and Cornwallis "ever after were held in great value by the Commons."59

Most likely Sharpe was, as his contemporaries thought, the source of the Sicil- ianVespers allusion. It is in character for him. He liked trying to manipulate affairs with advice, supported by his pedantic analyses of historical events. Both of these tendencies, though not reserved to him alone among Jacobeans, are demonstrated in his letter to the duke of Buckingham in 1623.

His name is associated with trouble once again in 1618. Sir Lewis Stukeley's pamphlet refuting charges that he had betrayed SirWalter Raleigh (whom he had arrested) was rumored to have been composed by Dr. Sharpe.60

54Athenae Oxonienses, 1:832. 55DNB, 1349. 560ne anonymous diary, hidden and saved, is now at the University of Kansas; it formed the basis

of Maija Jansson, Proceedings in Parliament: 1614 (House of Commons) (Philadelphia: American Philo- sophical Society, 1988).

57Athenae Oxonienses, 1:523. 58Lorkin's letter to Puckering, in Birch, Court and Times ofjames I, 1:324; Chamberlain's letter to

Carleton, ibid., 325-26. 59Athenae Oxonienses, 1:523. His health affected (DNB, 1349); he was valued ever after (Athenae

Oxonienses, 1:523). 60PRQ, Cal. S.P Domestic Ser.,James I (1611-1618) (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Long-

mans, and Roberts, 1857- ), 600.


It is hard to evaluate Sharpe truly from his own remarks, because his vein does vary. His undated letter to King James in the Cabala is a summary of an antipapal work by Sharpe. He sounds at ease with majesty. His 1623 letter to Buckingham is more flattering, overassertive, often self-centered, and pompous, but his 1601 letter to Secretary Robert Cecil, when Sharpe had been banished to Devon after Essex's rebellion, is manly and dignified, and what praise he gives to Cecil is restrained. He stands his ground though it be dangerous footing, asserting his loyalty to the queen and confessing no wrong."I loved his person," he writes of the executed earl, "hate his treason, and lament his ruin, though deserved."'61

In all three letters, he enlightens his betters by some discussion of history, seeming to be on comfortable terms with them; he may give advice, and always adheres to his own ideas.We see "little Dr. Sharpe" at the center of things, bustling about on self-appointed missions, if only in his own small world.

Whatever criticism one might make now of Sharpe's nature, he enjoyed the patronage and trust of some of the most powerful men of his time-Leicester, Essex, Prince Henry, the earl of Northampton, the duke of Buckingham, not to mention the king of England. He was on familiar terms with them. They saved his letters. When Prince Henry urged the earl of Northampton to recommend Dr. Sharpe to the king as the new provost of King's College, Cambridge (Sharpe's old college) in 1612, Northampton praised Sharpe to Sir Charles Cornwallis "for learn- ing, good conversation, and integrity" but felt strongly bound to remind the king that the fellows of the College would want to choose their own provost, "though the Dr for his qualities may take his turn [hold his own] with competitors."62

As a learned, successful clergyman, much concerned with the political and religious issues of his day, Sharpe achieved considerable success in his attempt to move in royal and aristocratic circles, but evidently he was not as effective or as important as he desired to be, perhaps because he was too extreme in his political and religious opinions, perhaps because of his involvement with bad risks such as Essex and Hoskyns, perhaps from lack of the right kind of ability, perhaps because he had more zeal than tact, perhaps from lack of an attractive nature, perhaps because he compensated for being a second son and a little man with overassertive ways. Whatever the cause, many like him were drawn to the great, glittering per- sonalities of their time but were unable to maintain a constant position in their dangerous, revolving spheres. Sharpe did better than most.

Further discussion of the genuine nature of the Tilbury text can now proceed with some confidence in Dr. Sharpe's reliability. There is no reason to doubt his statement that he was at Tilbury as a chaplain to the earl of Leicester, Elizabeth's lieutenant at Tilbury and captain general. On August 9, 1588, the queen, he said, "made an excellent Oration to her armie, which the next day after her departure, I was commanded to re-deliver to all the Armnie together, to keep a Publique Fast."

61PRo Cal. SIY Domestic Ser., Elizabeth I (1601-1603) (London: Longman, 1879), 27-28. 62Ibid.,James I (1603-1610) (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858),

142. Northampton to James I, Aug. 10, 1612, ibid., 142. Linda L. Peck, Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court ofJames I (London: Allen and Unwin), 1982, 61-62.


He gave this account and a text of the queen's speech in the 1623 letter to Buck- ingham, King James's unfortunate favorite, urging him to beware of the Spanish. At Tilbury, Sharpe seems to have served in some public relations capacity; in the letter, he says Leicester commanded him "to publish to the armie in my next Sermon" news of Don Pedro's whips (259), and gave him Don Pedro's examination.

Sharpe died in 1631, but his 1623 letter to Buckingham was not published until 1654 in the Cabala.The version of Queen Elizabeth's Tilbury speech used by scholars has always been this one.

However, one other text of Elizabeth's speech does exist: BM Harleian MS 6798, article 18, a collection of letters and papers pertaining to foreign states. On the outside is written in the hand of Humphrey Wanley, the antiquary (1672- 1723), "Bought of Mr. G. Paul's landlady." The text of the speech contains a few mistakes and reversals of words, and some differences from the Cabala version, such as might occur if one were rapidly writing down a speech as it was being delivered outdoors, or trying shortly thereafter to reproduce the speech from memory. One wonders how close to the Queen "little" Dr. Sharpe was able to stand.

The Harleian MS has long been available, but no one has paid much attention to it, although it is in some respects superior to the Cabala text.63 (The two texts are compared in the appendix, pp. 443ff. below). It sounds more extemporaneous and stronger, less revised, and the final phrases of the last sentence, being two instead of three, sound less literary and less carefully balanced than the Cabala text's. The main ideas of the two texts are the same.The Harleian MS omits the final "of my People," omits "everie one of your" [virtues], omits "Spain" after "Parma," and it substitutes "I my self will ventir my royall blood" (lines 20-21) for "I my self will take up arms," and "you shall not fayle of them" for "they shall be duly paid you" (line 25).

The words and phrases that the Harleian MS omits are frequently the kinds of unimportant ones that might be added in a later, corrected version. It is notewor- thy, too, that the Harleian MS text uses the first person singular almost exclusively, instead of shifting from "I" to "we" and back, as the Cabala text does. Elizabeth preferred the first person singular rather than the royal "we" in her other speeches, both Latin and English.

There is evidence of haste or carelessness.The one crux seems to be a copyist's error. The Harleian MS has "wherefor I am com amoungst you att this buttfor my recreation and pleasure being resolved in ye middst and heate of y e battle to live and bye [sic] amoungst you all," instead of,'"wherefor I am com amoungst you at this time not for my recreation and pleasure butt being resolved in the middst, and heate Of ye battle to live and dye amoungst you all."The copyist, evidently following another manuscript (now lost), skipped from "att this time" to "butt being resolved" and back again, omitting the necessary "not." To make such an error, the

63Frye, "Myth of Elizabeth of Tilbury," says: "Allison Heisch has discovered a manuscript version of the speech which, though intriguing, is as yet undated." Heisch's edition of it is to appear in a forth- coming book; see ibid. 99 n. 9. This is probably the BM Harl. MS 6798, Art. 18.


copyist would have needed another text in front of him to misread. "Bye" for "dye" is a simpler mistake.

Thus, the Harleian MS appears to be a copy of a version of the speech that differs from Sharpe's in the Cabala. In some stylistic respects, it is better, but in its pos- session of a crux, it is worse.

Harleian MS 6798, article 19, which is bound upside down with the Tilbury oration, is the queen's extemporaneous Latin rebuke of the audacious Polish ambassador on July 25, 1597. It also has several errors, but it is one of the few manuscripts of this speech to contain an English translation. A note on the outside of the manuscripts states that it was "englished by Harry Gapoll" (Capell?), and a notation in a later hand states that is was "given by Mr Geo. Holmes." Neither the Latin nor the English handwriting appears to be Dr. Sharpe's. The binding of the 1588 Tilbury speech with the 1597 rebuke to the Polish ambassador does not seem sigificant.

The subscription at the bottom of article 18, "Gathered by on y' heard itt, and was commaunded to utter it to ye whole army ye next day, to send itt gathered to the Queen herself," in a hand probably Sharpe's, may link it to him also because the wording is similar to his description in his Cabala letter. There he says, as he calls God for his witness, that he "by Commandment delivered it to the Army." This subscription is apparently about the same date as Sharpe's handwriting, but it raises some questions: If the recorder of the Tilbury Harleian MS was Sharpe, why did he not tell Buckingham in 1623 that he had been asked to send his copy "to the Queen herselfe"? Was it common knowledge? Or had he possibly forgotten? (He is writing Buckingham thirty-five years after Tilbury, in 1623; eight years later, Sharpe died.) The matter is curious, since Sharpe does not seem the kind of person to leave out such a flattering commission.

As I pondered these questions while working in the British Library as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, I thought to compare this BM Harleian MS 6798, Article 18, to the holograph Latin prose funeral oration by Dr. Leonel Sharpe on the death of Prince Henry in 1612.64 I discovered the two hand- writings were the same. Later, handwriting experts confirmed my conclusion. LaetitiaYeandle of the Folger Library, after looking at copies of the two I sent her, replied March 3, 1994, that she thought so also. She checked Sharpe's funeral oration against two more samples of his hand, in the Cecil Papers, and these, she thought, resembled the Harleian MS as well. She wondered whether the Harleian MS might not have been the copy Sharpe used when delivering his oration to the whole army the next day, and this is certainly a possibility.

W H. Kelliher, curator of manuscripts at the British Library, wrote me on February 2, 1994: "Though comparison of the handwriting of texts in different languages is not easy, I think you are right in supposing [the two handwriting samples] are identical." He adds that he came across (in the Sir John Coke papers) a letter Sharpe wrote to Coke before October 1590, and saw similarities there also to

64"Oratio Funebris," BM Add. MS 40166, fols. 22r-28v.


the Harleian MS, "the difference being merely that between current and formal versions of the same hand."

The evidence is convincing that Harleian MS 6798, article 18, is in Sharpe's handwriting, and that he wrote it down while Elizabeth spoke or shortly thereafter. Furthermore, it seems extremely likely that he used this copy to redeliver the speech to the army that was unable to hear the queen's delivery the day before, as Yeandle has suggested. Perhaps Leicester ordered him to do so, since Leicester was in charge of the arrangements for the queen's visit. Neale says the queen herself so commanded and that "[t]he story of the way in which he [Sharpe] came by the speech is circumstantial and natural enough."65

Perhaps Sharpe treasured his copy, and thirty-five years later corrected it and incorporated that corrected version in his letter to Buckingham. If this is so, then his corrected handwritten copy has been lost. Another possibility is that Sharpe copied his original quickly for a friend." [A]nd no man hath it but my self, and such as I have given it to, and therefore I made bold to send it unto you, if you have it not already-" Such a copy the BM Harleian MS might be, in which case that original has been lost as well. It seems as if Neale surmised correctly in 1925: "[A]nd so I have little doubt that Sharpe's version is a copy, at two or three removes, of a speech actually written by Elizabeth herself."66

If BM Harleian 6798, article 18, was written by Sharpe, as it seems it was, then he preserved the Tilbury speech as he says he did.And if this is true, it is more likely than ever that Elizabeth composed the Tilbury oration, as he implies she did. If she made no Tilbury oration, then how does one explain the existence of BM Harleian 6798, article 18?

It is regrettable, but understandable, that there is no other full record of her speech. So far as we know, none of the usual methods of transmitting and preserving royal speeches was used for her Tilbury oration, perhaps because everyone, especially the queen, was fully engaged during the busy days after Tilbury, and she was also saddened by Leicester's sudden death.67 Sharpe may have wanted to arrange publication of the queen's speech, but after Tilbury his patron Leicester vis- ited London only briefly; then Leicester, on his way to Buxton Spa, died Septem- ber 4, 1588. If Sharpe traveled with Leicester, he would perhaps not have had time to circulate Elizabeth's speech. After Leicester's death, Sharpe must have been scrambling to get his career in order and to secure another patron. (In his Cabala letter he says he went with Essex to Portugal in 1589.) Perhaps also the queen, attempting to stitch together a ragged armistice in which the hopeful English pri- vateering syndicates could operate, was not anxious to have her warlike threats

"Sayings," 105. 66Ibid. Still, one would like to know what happened after Sharpe died to any copy he had, what

happened to those copies he says in his letter he gave away, and what happened to the queen's own copy which, according to the subscription of BM Harl. MS 6798 was "gathered" and sent to her by com- mand. Sharpe's jealous care ("and no man hath it but my self") only partially explains the paucity of copies.

67Johnson, Elizabeth I, 322, says she took no part in arranging Leicester's funeral, being perhaps too busy or too distressed.


against "Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe" emphasized. And, great as the oration is, the events surrounding it were still greater.

Thirty-five years elapsed before Sharpe's version was published in the Cabala, but in considering the significance of this gap, let us recall a letter from a witness, probably Thomas Newton, to Elizabeth's 1564 Latin oration at Cambridge, which he had taken down as she uttered it. He wrote in about 1584:

This hir majesties extemporall oration lieng among my papers these twen- tie yeares and more, I thought good now to send to you, that if anie occasion be fitlie offered in the discourse of hir highnesse reigne, you maie (if you please) insert it. In truth, I my selfe never elsewhere read it, which hath made me ever religiouslie to preserve it.... [T]his is the thing it selfe, as I my selfe (as most unworthie) being both an eare and also an eie wit- nesses can testifie68

Likewise, the BM Harleian 6798, article 18, seems "the thing it selfe," a close account of what Elizabeth said at Tilbury on August 9, 1588, in the handwriting of an eyewitness, Dr. Leonel Sharpe. One cannot easily conjecture any other reason for the existence of this manuscript except that it is what it purports to be. It provides us with a link to the text of Elizabeth's speech in the Cabala and indicates with more certainty that both are genuine.

68Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland 1577, ed.John Hooker et al. (Lon- don, 1587), p. 1206, col. b.


APPENDIX

QUEEN ELIZABETH I S ORATION AT TILBURY CAMP

AUGUST 9, I588,

From BM Harleian MS 6798, article 18

My lovinge people, we have been perswaded by som yt that are carefull of my safty, to take heed how I commnitted my selfe to armed multitudes for feare of treachery. Butt I tell you, that I would not desyre to live to distrust my faythfull and lovinge people. Lett tyrants feare: [word deleted] I have so behaved my selfe yt under god I have placed my chiefest strength and safegard in ye loyall harts and goodwill of my subiects. wherefor I am com amoungst you att this butt for my recreation and pleasure being resolved in 'P middst and heate Of ye battle to live and bye [sic] amoungst you all, to lay down for my god and for my kyngdom and for my people myn honor and my blood even in , dust. I know I have ye body butt of a weak and feble woman, butt I have ye harte and stomack of a kinge, and of a kynge of England too. and take foule scorn yt Parma or any prince of Europe should dare to invade ye borders of my realm: to ye wth [which] rather then any dishonour shall grow by mee, I myself will ventir my royall blood, I myself will bee your generall,judge, and rewarder of your vertue in ye field. I know yt already for your forwardness you have deserved rewardes and Crownes, and I assure you in ye word of a prince you shall not fayle of them. In ye mean- tym my Lieutenant generall shall bee in my steed; then whom never prince commaunded a more noble or worthy subict. Not doubting butt by your concord in y< campe, and [word deleted: your?] valure in ye field, and your obedience to my selfe and my generall wee shall shortly have a famous victory over thes enimyes of my god, and of my kyngdom.

From the Cabala, 1654

My loving people, we have been perswaded by some, that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our self to armed multitudes for fear of treachery: but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful, and loving people. Let Tyrants fear, I have alwayes so behaved my self, that under God I have placed my chiefest strength, and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subiects. And therefore I am come amongst you as you see, at this time, not for my recreation, and disport, but being resolved in the midst, and heat of the battaile to live, or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my Honour, and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the bodie, but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and Stomach of a King, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my Realm, to which rather then any dishonour shall grow by me, I my self will take up arms, I my self will be your General,Judge, and Rewarder of everie one of your virtues in the field. I know alreadie for your forwardnesse, you have deserved rewards and crownes, and we do assure you in the word of a Prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time my Lieutenant General shall be in my stead, then whom never Prince commanded a more Noble or worthie subject, not doubting but by your obedience to my General, by your Concord in the Camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victorie over those enemies of my God, of my Kingdomes, and of my People.


The two versions of Elizabeth I's oration at Tilbury on Aug. 9, 1588, are given below. Sharpe's text in his 1623 letter to the duke of Buckingham (Cabala, 1654 ed., 260) is lined thritgh. Following it in italics are the variants of the BM Harleian MS 6798, articlel8:

Line Number BM Harl. MS I Cabala (1654)

1. My loving people, we I have been perswaded by some,

2. that are careful of Ott my safety, to take heed how we

3. eomietur commit our self to armed multitudes for fear of

4. treachery: but I asstre tell you, I 4e would not desire to live

5. to distrust my faithful, and loving people. Let

6. Tyrants fear, I have awayes [omitted] so behaved my self,

7. that under God I have placed my chiefest strength,

8. and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of

9. my subjects.And therefore Vherfor I am come amongst you

10. as yotu see [omitted], at this time, not for my recreation and

11. disportt pleasure being resolved in the midst, and heat of

12. the battaile to live, or die and bye [sic] amongst you all, to lay

13. down for my God, and for my kingdom and for my people,

14. my Honour, and my blood even in the dust. I know I

15. have the bodie, but of a weak and feeble woman, but

16. I have the heart and Stomach of a King, and of a

17. King of England-too, and think take foul scorn that Parma

18. or Spainor any Prince of Europe should dare to

19. invade the borders of my Realm, to [insert yewhich rather then

20. any dishonour shall grow by me, I my self will tak ventir

21. p arms my royal blood, I my self will be your General,Judge, and

22. Rewarder of -veriV ' el %-ornitted] your virtues vertue in the field.

23. I know yt alreadie for your forwardnesse, you have deserved

24. rewards and crownes, and we de I assure you in the word

25. of aPrince, they shallb. duIy paid you shall notfayle of them. In the

26. mean time my Lieutenant General shall be in my stead,

27. then whom never Prince commanded a more Noble or


28. worthie subject, not doubting but by your obedicen. [omitted]

29. to-y my Ge??l [omitted], by your Concord in ye Camp, and [yor] [omitted]

30. valour in the field, and your obedience to my self and my general we shall shortly have a famous

31. victorie over those [thes] enemies of my God, and of my King4ome4Kingdome],

32. a red n [omitted]