Elizabeth & Leicester Power Passion Politics

Soon after Elizabeth became queen she scandalized the royal court with her passionate obsession with the married Robert Dudley. When Dudley’s wife mysteriously died two years later, there was rampant speculation that Elizabeth and Dudley would marry. Instead, over the next decades they formed a working partnership and an intimate bond of mutual dependence. Robert advised Elizabeth, serving as her counselor, unofficial consort, and army commander. He guarded her sickbed and represented her on state occasions. But despite her devotion, Elizabeth humiliated him, made him act as a go-between with her other suitors, and tried to imprison him when he finally remarried. Fueled by scandal and intrigue, this royal relationship was never dull.

Elizabeth & Leicester is an intimate, startling portrait of two people who transformed their age. For those who adore reading about the royals and the many fans of the Emmy Award- winning miniseries Elizabeth I and feature film Elizabeth, this is a story of enduring love that continues to speak to us today.

—Alison Weir, author of The Life of Elizabeth I

“Gristwood . . . parses out what we do know about this pair and what information fuels many of the more titillating conclusions people have drawn over the years.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Vivacious and absorbing . . . Full of intriguing suggestions, stimulating analogies and shrewd connections.”—The Sunday Times (London)

andldquo;Gristwood . . . parses out what we do know about this pair and what information fuels many of the more titillating conclusions people have drawn over the years.andrdquo;andmdash;Chicago Sun-Times

andldquo;Vivacious and absorbing . . . Full of intriguing suggestions, stimulating analogies and shrewd connections.andrdquo;andmdash;The Sunday Times (London)

No one knows quite when and where their relationship began — though Leicester once said he’ d known Elizabeth since she was eight years old. They shared an important commonality of experience — both with a parent dead on the headsman’ s block, both imprisoned in the Tower just yards away.

Within days of the death of her sister, Mary, he was at her side and within months, openly spoken of as her lover, even her future husband. Her relationship with her “ bonnie sweet Robin” was one of the most important in the life of Elizabeth. For thirty years he loved her, advised her, understood her, sat by her bed in sickness, and represented her on state occasions. Yet, much of the fascination in their relationship comes from what is not on display: the sudden death — some said murder — of Leicester’ s wife, which damaged his reputation irretrievably; and Elizabeth’ s persistent refusal for ever afterwards to marry anybody at all.

Not a conventional biography, Elizabeth & Leicester is, rather, an intimate portrait of an affair between two people at a crucial moment in history.

View our feature on Sarah Gristwood’s Elizabeth and Leicester. Though the story has been told on film—and whispered in historic gossip—this is the first book in almost fifty years to solely explore the great queen’s attachment to her beloved Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Fueled by scandal and intrigue, their relationship set the explosive connection between public and private life in sixteenth-century England in bold relief. Why did they never marry? How much of what seemed a passionate obsession was actually political convenience? Elizabeth and Leicester reignites this 400- year-old love story in a book for anyone interested in Elizabethan literature.

View our feature on Sarah Gristwoodandrsquo;s Elizabeth and Leicester. Though the story has been told on filmandmdash;and whispered in historic gossipandmdash;this is the first book in almost fifty years to solely explore the great queenandrsquo;s attachment to her beloved Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Fueled by scandal and intrigue, their relationship set the explosive connection between public and private life in sixteenth-century England in bold relief. Why did they never marry? How much of what seemed a passionate obsession was actually political convenience? Elizabeth and Leicester reignites this 400- year-old love story in a book for anyone interested in Elizabethan literature.

1. 'Some secret constellation': 1533-1536

2. 'Her eighth year': 1536-1547

3. 'The occasion of his utter undoing': 1547-1553

4. 'This night I think to die': 1553-1559

5. 'The King that is to be': spring 1559-summer 1560

6. 'So sudden a chance': autumn 1560

7. 'Maiden honour and integrity': 1560-1561

8. 'Not yet towards a marriage': 1561-1565

9. 'Majesty and love do not sit well together': 1565-1567

10. 'The daughter of debate': 1568-1569

11. 'The great Lord': the 1570s

12. 'Our estate requireth a match': 1570-1572

13. 'I have long both loved and liked you': 1573-1575

14. 'Dishonorable brutes': 1576-1579

15. 'The greatest prince in Christendom': 1578-1582

16. 'In times of distress': 1582-1584

17. 'Her Majesty will make trial of me': 1585-1588

18. 'A thing whereof we can admit no comfort': 1588

19. 'To end this life for her service'

Appendix I: The second Robert Dudley

Appendix II: The Arthur Dudley mystery

Afterword: some fictional treatments

Notes on sources

Acknowledgments

Picture acknowledgments

Index