Trudy Gold
Elizabeth I, Catherine de’ Medici and the Sultana Roxelana

Trudy Gold | Elizabeth I, Catherine de’ Medici and the Sultana Roxelana | 05.21.24

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

- Good evening, everyone, and welcome from a very, very rainy London, and I hope everyone’s okay in this very, very trying time we are living through. And I decided, I mean, we are looking at a very, very serious subject of course with the Middle East and the whole history of the Ottoman Empire, et cetera. And I’ve always been interested in women and their role in history. And I thought if we look at the 16th century, which was one of the most extraordinary periods in history, if you think about it, in 1492, Columbus bumped into the New World, bringing back the treasures of the New World, and not only that, huge trade. You had the Catholic Empire. And then everything was changed because in 1519, Martin Luther nailed “Ninety-five thesis” to a church door in Wittenburg, which began the Protestant Reformation.

So one of the prime factors in the 1600s, in the 16th century rather, is the development of trade, the opening up of the world, and also the huge conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism. And not only that, the largest, most important empire of the time was that of the sultans, the Ottoman sultans. And we’ve already established that for many Jews fleeing the Inquisition, the Ottoman Empire provided a very safe haven compared to what was happening in Catholic Europe. Now, these three women, Elizabeth I, the Queen of England, whose father murdered her mother, Anne Boleyn, because there were no heirs, no male heirs, she comes to the throne by right, Catherine de Medici, who was used as a political pawn by her uncle, the Pope, and is married off to the younger son of Francis I of France. And having had an extraordinarily difficult time with her husband, she finally becomes regent of France for her very sick sons, both mentally and physically. And then the Sultana Roxelana.

Roxelana was a slave girl who had been in the Crimea, she’d been captured by marauding pirates and bought to the harem. And by her incredible allure and beauty, she so enraptured the sultan of the time, Suleiman the Magnificent, probably one of the greatest sultans that the Ottoman Empire ever knew, she exercised power. Now, what is interesting about Roxelana and her two successors, the wife of her son and the wife of her grandson, more about that later, they are all going to enter into correspondence. There’s going to be correspondence between Elizabeth and Catherine, between Catherine and the daughter-in-law of Roxelana, and Elizabeth and the granddaughter-in-law of Roxelana. And it gives a different insight into the history of the time and also gives us an insight into women.

Now, let me say from the beginning, these women are exceptions. If you think of the role of women today, it’s all very well for us living in the very well educated West, to think that we are fighting for women’s rights, et cetera, but I would suggest to you that probably 90% of the women in the world live pretty miserable lives. Having said that, the majority of people live miserable lives. But go back to the 16th century, women were pawns in everybody’s game. And what is interesting about these women, each of them in their own way, was incredibly pragmatic, incredibly ruthless, and knew how to rule. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you a biography of each of these women, and really you should read good biographies of them because they are all so fascinating. And then I’m going to try and pull it together and look at their communications.

So let me please start with Roxelana. Can we see the first slide please, if you don’t mind? Yeah, of course, this is an idealised portrait of Roxelana. She was a Ukrainian, she actually came from what is today the Ukraine, the daughter of a priest. She was, as I’ve already said, she was captured by Tatar raiders and sold into slavery in the great slave market in Constantinople. People were commodities. And a beautiful, white, redheaded slave girl would be very, very popular in the court in Constantinople. They called her Roxelana because she was named The Laughing One. She had a great capacity for life. She made the best of any situation she was in. Her language was actually Ruthenian, which is a precursor to Ukrainian. When in the slave market, she was actually bought by a man called Ibrahim Pasha. Let’s go onto the next slide and see the man who takes her on. Ibrahim Pasha, let’s have a look at him first. Can we go onto the next?

That’s Roxelana by Anton Hickel. This is Ibrahim Pasha. And he is the Grand Vizier to the sultan. And he bought her as a present, or there’s another story that in fact Suleiman’s mother bought her as a present. Can we go back to Suleiman, please? Now, so she is in the harem, and you can imagine that in the harem, there were hundreds and hundreds of women who spent their time being beautiful and alluring for the sultan. If you ever get the chance to go to Istanbul, it was then called Constantinople, go to the Topkapi Palace and have a look at the harem and The Golden Cage. It gives you a real smell of, in fact, what it was like. Now, Suleiman, as I said, he was an extraordinary ruler and he ruled over at least 25 million people. He began his campaign against the Christian powers of the West. Remember, the three women I’m talking about, she is going to be part of an empire that was constantly at war with Christendom, think crusades.

You know, for nearly a thousand years, and this is pertinent today, there was total opposition between Christianity and Islam, both the proselytising religions. In 1526 at the Battle of the Mohacs, he broke the power of Hungary and took over most of Hungary. This was the apex of the Ottoman Empire. He dominated the whole of the Mediterranean. Also, the reason he’s called Suleiman the Magnificent, he instituted major changes in law, education, taxation, criminal law. He tried to harmonise both the secular or his law with religious law. He was a poet, he was a craftsman, he was a goldsmith, and he was fascinated by art and architecture, and it’s really the apex of the beauty. But he had a fatal flaw, and that is actually going to be Roxelana. So she bewitches him. European ambassadors, and if you turn to people like the Venetians, they were always wonderful, they were gossipy people and they always told us what was going on, they portray her of having red hair, green eyes, and white skin, Roxelana, for the red hair, and Hurrem for the laughter.

Now, if you think about the world of the harem, this is a quote from a very good cook on the harem by Gene Reese, “Glittering, insular and conspiratorial world of eunuchs, slaves and perfumed concubines.” The people who ran the harem, of course, were the eunuchs. They’d been castrated and therefore were considered safe. And they were the people who ran the harem. And now Ottoman sultans didn’t marry, they had no need of dynastic marriages because they were too powerful. And the tradition was reinforced by a legend. One of Suleiman’s ancestors, his wife had been captured by enemies and she had been forced to wait on table of the enemies naked. And the sultan swore that neither he nor his descendants would marry, but have children with their concubines.

Consequently, all sultans from then on would be the sons of slaves. And the sultan, as I said, could have a limitless number of concubines. He usually took four as his main women. And it was the child of the main woman who would be the successor, until Suleiman came along. In fact, one of my favourite sultans is a man in the 1700s called Selim the Sot. He had 711 sons. And when Roxelana joined the harem, there was already his first wife, the First Sultana, she was called Gulbahar, Roses Spring. She was the mother of his eldest son Mustafa, the designated heir. But Roxelana, not only was she beautiful, she was pragmatic and incredibly ambitious. She was very seductive. And she managed to bewitch this extraordinary man, and it’s going to make her the most powerful woman in the harem. He becomes obsessed with her. She gave birth to a son, Selim, within the year, and she bore him four more children. This is the quote from Luigi Bassano, who was the the Venetian page boy to the sultan. “They say she has bewitched him, therefore they call her Ziadi, which means witch.”

And she gained such ascendancy that Suleiman got rid of all his other women, including his first wife, and was faithful only to her. And Roxelana insisted that Suleiman marry off all the virgins of the harem. She would have no rivals. And gradually, she’s very clever, not only is she ruthless, she’s clever, and he begins to seek her advice on all sorts of affairs of state. The pair become inseparable, they write love poetry to each other, but she wants more, she wants marriage. And finally, to the absolute horror of the court, he capitulates and made a foreign slave woman beside him at the head of the empire. And that’s what led to the rumour that in fact, he was totally bewitched. And this is from a clark at the Genoese Bank of Saint George because Constantinople is one of the most important cities in the world at this time. And in previous presentations I’ve talked about how Jews had become part of it. If you remember back 1492, an ancestor of Suleiman, his grandfather actually, had sent his admiral to pick up refugees from Spain.

And he’d got in touch and he said to his courtiers, “I cannot understand why Ferdinand of Aragon got rid of his most useful subjects.” And it was in 1493 that it was Sephardi Jews who brought the first printing press into the Turkish Empire. So, and this is the quote. “This week there has occurred in this city a most extraordinary event, absolutely unprecedented in the history of the sultans. The Grand Signior Suleiman has taken to himself a slave-woman from Russia called Roxelana as his Empress. There have been great feasting and much rejoicing in consequence. There is talk all over the country about this marriage and no one can understand exactly what it meant.” And Roxelana didn’t want to be in the claustrophobic harem. There was too much distance between it and the old palace and the new palace, which was the seat of government. And she needed to get closer.

Now, events played into her hands, either fates or did she do it herself? But there was a huge fire on the waterfront of the Bosporus. It spread through the city and reduced the old palace to ashes. Roxelana, you can just imagine the scene with hundreds of these eunuchs, servants and slaves were now homeless and she leads them in procession to the new palace, and formally asked her husband for the shelter. He agreed, she entered the palace and never again left it. And restruction to the old palace took much too long. She had a private door cut between her apartments and the sultan’s. She had total access to him, the divan and the Council of Ministers. Suleiman constructed a tower with a latticed window overlooking the divan so he could observe his ministers without being detected. She positioned herself watching, learning, advising. And this act marks the beginning of the rise in power of the harem.

Two people stood between her and complete power, the grand minister who had bought her, Ibrahim Pasha, and Mustafa, Suleiman’s eldest son. He was also the people’s hero. So she initiated a campaign against Ibrahim and the sultan gave into the face of rumours and gave evidence, and he believed all the evidence and had his lifelong friend strangled. And this claim was that Suleiman was in the room next door while it was happening, and Roxelana covered him with kisses so he wouldn’t hear the screams of his friend. And then she persuaded Suleiman to appoint her daughter’s husband and her ally as the Grand Vizier. And together they dealt with Mustafa and they convinced the sultan that his eldest son was inciting rebellion. Now, this is the brilliant military commander, he was clever, he was able, he was handsome, but Suleiman, absolutely bewitched, believed, you couldn’t make this up, could you? He believed Roxelana and had his son executed, and that led the way for Selim to inherit the empire. And in 1566, on the death of his father, he became sultan. Now can we see the next slide, please? That’s Roxelana again, can we go on?

There you see Ibrahim Pasha, and there’s “The World of the Harem,” very idealised Victorian picture of the world of the harem, a fascination with the East. Can we go on? There, there’s the quote. “They say she has bewitched him, therefore they call her Ziadi.” Can we go on? This is Selim II. Now ironically, her son has become the ruler of the empire. What has happened is she’s completely broken the notion of succession, and this in many ways leads to the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Selim going to choose his sultana, can we see her please? Nurbanu Sultana, now she was interesting. She was either Venetian or Jewish. She was incredibly intelligent. And she had a Jewish advisor, a woman called Kira, who worked with the famous Duke of Naxos. Remember Joseph Nasi? So basically the line of succession is broken. And can we go on with the next sultan?

Her son and Roxelana’s grandson, Murad III, becomes the new sultan. And these are very, very powerful individuals. And his wife, can we see the next one? Is Safiye. Now what is interesting about these women, it becomes known as the Sultanate of Women. It begins with Roxelana, and we know that Roxelana had correspondence with Catherine, but now, what is fascinating is how Nurbanu and Safiye developed correspondences with Elizabeth and Catherine. In a way it’s backdoor diplomacy because there are certain things that sultans can’t say, but their wives could. So consequently, this is female backdoor diplomacy.

But in a way, what happened with Roxelana did lead to the decline of the empire, and because, just imagine the situation. The new favourite, her son must rule. When Murad III took the throne, he murdered five of his brothers, and it really does lead to disintegration. Those of you who go to the Topkapi Palace will see what is known as The Golden Cage. And when the sultan chose his successor, usually the child of his favourite, he was put in what was known as The Golden Cage. Not a cage, of course not, he was given the most incredible treatment, but he had no commerce with anyone except slaves to keep him safe. And then he doesn’t emerge until his father’s dead, by which time, quite often, he is quite unstable and has no notion of statecraft. So ironically, it is the Roxelana and the bewitchment of probably the greatest Ottoman emperor of all that leads to the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

And this is a quote on Nurbanu from, again, from the Venetian ambassador, “Extremely well loved and honoured by His Majesty, both for her great beauty and for being unusually intelligent.” Now she is going to develop a very interesting correspondence with Catherine the Great, with Catherine de Medici, I beg your pardon. And that is really going to enhance the picture we have of that world. So that is really a brief biography of Roxelana, who is the one who begins the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which I think is absolutely extraordinary if you think about it. One of the greatest, most talented, most sophisticated sultans in history is so bewitched by a woman that he allows his empire, well, he sets in motion things that will lead to the decline of the empire. Now let’s look at another woman, Catherine de Medici. Now, there you see her dates.

Now, Catherine de Medici is one of the most maligned women in history. Now, she was born at a time when her, let’s go on to the first slide, please. Her uncle was Pope from 1523 to 1534. She had an incredibly unstable background. Let’s see her father. Her father, Lorenzo de Medici, died, both he and his French wife died in 1519. They actually died of the plague. So the girl had a very, very unstable background because those of you who know about the de Medici, they were expelled from Florence, she was kept as a semi prisoner, her uncle had to save her. She becomes a pawn in a marriage game. And then finally, she is given to whom? Francis I of France. Let’s have a look at him. Now, Francis, he of course was the king, who was, those of you who know English history, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, when Henry VIII was king of England, he was king of France. He was a very, very clever, wily individual, Francis I.

He wanted a marriage between his youngest son, Henry, Duke of Orleans, and Catherine de Medici. Money would exchange hands, there would be a huge dowry from the de Medici. A lot of the court looked down on her because of course, they made their money in trade in inverted commas, but the marriage goes ahead and she comes to France. Let’s have a look at her husband. Yeah, that’s Henry, Duke of Orleans. He was a very, very unstable character. His father had been involved in war with Spain. And what had happened was the two boys, he and his brother were actually taken captive. And as a result, he had a big scar. Now, it was a big mental scar. And the woman who kissed him goodbye was the extraordinary Diane de Poitiers. When he was 17 years old, his father gave him a mistress.

That mistress, Diane de Poitiers, one of the most seductive women in history, an extraordinary individual who kept him absolutely trammeled to her right up until his death in 1559. So he marries Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers actually backed it because she was related to her. Their grandmothers were sisters. Remember, there was Catherine de Medici’s family had married into France, and in fact, she became his mistress, not at 17, but when he was 15. And he marries Catherine, obviously completely loveless marriage, but she falls for him. And it was Diane who insisted that he visited her bed chamber. And in fact, he did give her 10 children. And Diane nursed Catherine when she was ill. But Diane, although there were occasional other women, Diane remained completely in control of the state. So Catherine, the proud Catherine, who comes to France as a kid, as a young girl, for a long time can’t get pregnant until Diane more or less pushes her lover into the royal bed chamber. She has a very bad time at court.

She’s called The Italian and the notion of Italian and poisoning. But what is also interesting about her was she was very, very, very bright. And the problem arose though that Catherine’s sons, both Francis I and her father had syphilis. So in the end, they’re going to have 10 children. If we have a look at them and their children, there you see her, Catherine, and Henry and the children. Now, these kids, these children, they’re quite ill, they’re quite diseased. And the one who was most healthy was in fact Margot. Now Catherine has no power at this time. Her favourite, the home she loved most, Chenonceau, was actually given to Diane de Poitiers. But then there is a joust to celebrate the marriage of one of their daughters into Spain. And it’s at the joust that Henry, performing for his mistress with her colours, is actually struck in the eye with a lance and wounded, and he dies in agony.

And that’s when Catherine takes control because Catherine bans Diane from the bed chamber. And now she’s going to have to rule through her sons. There’s a council of state, she’s never had the power that Elizabeth had, but she’s going to rule through her council of state, and she has to face some terrible problems. Going back to what I said before about Catholicism and Protestantism, Protestantism had hit France in the form of the Huguenots, and some of the nobility were Huguenot, but most of the main advisors, led by the Guise family, were Catholic. And there was almost civil war in France. Now, whereas in England, when I come to Elizabeth, I’m going to explain this, Elizabeth had more power than Catherine because Catherine has to rule through her council. Now Catherine is a very, very pragmatic woman. And the most important thing to her is to keep her children on the throne. And that is what she tries to do.

There are three marriages, there are three big ones, there are three sons who rule. The first of her sons was married to Mary, Queen of Scots, who as a child, she lived in the court of France. Later on, of course, she’s going to become Elizabeth’s greatest enemy. And that’s another thing that’s going to bring Catherine and Elizabeth together. I’ll pull it all together at the end, the relationships. He dies young, it then goes to another son, and then finally to her favourite son, Henry of Anjou, who had been made King of Poland and had to come back. Now he was very, very headstrong. He was very much on the side of the Guise. And in 1572, Catherine makes a very interesting, pragmatic move.

She marries her daughter, Margot, beautiful Margot to, can we see the next picture, please? To Henry, Henry, of course is the Protestant, the Protestant Henry. And the dream is, and he is Henry of Navarre, and the dream is that she can bring Catholics and Protestants together, but it all goes terribly, terribly wrong. And in 1572, there is a terrible massacre called the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, where the Duke of Coligny, the main advisor to Henry, is murdered and many thousands are mowed down in the streets of Paris. It really seeps into the conscience of France and the consciousness of Europe, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. But Catherine was not behind it, it was the Guise. But she’s hated, she’s hated as an Italian poisoner, she certainly consulted soothsayers.

Those of you who are fascinated by that side of the world will know that, in fact, one of her advisors was a man better known as Nostradamus. She’d been educated in astrology and also in astronomy. Elizabeth was also interested, she had John Dee. Now Catherine is very much called The Witch. Ironically, she believed in humanistic ideas, she had learn that, she’d watched Francis I, who was an interesting ruler, very, very full of guile, she had a group of women, they were called her little band. She insisted that they were beautiful, that they evidently had 13 inch waists, they must have removed ribs. And their job was to seduce, they were her spies, their job was to seduce foreign ambassadors, anyone who’d be useful to Catherine. She’s pragmatic, she’s wily, and she would do everything to keep her children in power. She had taken on the ideas of her father-in-law, Francis I.

He’d very much seen himself as a Renaissance king. She hosts leading artists of the age. And don’t forget, she is a de Medici. Just think of the de Medici as great patrons of the arts. And she sought to bolster royal prestige through lavish display. And she left to, if you think, it was left to Louis XIV to perfect it, but much of it was based on the original collection of Catherine de Medici. Cosimo Ruggeri was another one of her advisors. And he was part of the entourage of a Tuscan ambassador to France. He was a tutor and he was often attacked as a sorcerer, you know, this notion. And particularly because she had characters like Nostradamus around. And by the way, Nostradamus was a converso. He became her physician. And of course today he evidently, he prophesied the deaths of her children and she believed that he prophesied the death of her husband.

But anyway, that was Catherine, and she never had the real power of Elizabeth, because as I said, she’s regent, she had to keep the balance of power. Later on when her most beloved son, Henry, died, she predeceased him, but he died, they all died childless, the throne does pass to Henry of Navarre. Henry of Navarre, one of France’s best kings who said that every peasant should have a chicken in his pot on a Sunday, it was Henry who said of her that she was in fact, a good queen. That if you look at the way she managed her life with basically the cards that were dealt to her, she really did do the best she could. So it’s Henry who, as it were, who really bolsters her reputation. And the next queen I want to look at though is Elizabeth. Let’s talk about dysfunctional families, shall we? Can we see her parents? There you go, Henry VIII, Henry VIII who came from a very insecure succession.

His father, Henry VII, had won the English throne at a battle in 1483, which had wiped out the last of the Plantagenets. He had married the sister of Richard, he had married, one of the things that had galvanised England for 100 years was the War of the Roses. And I don’t want to go too deeply into it now because it’s a very complicated story, but suffice to say, Henry VII didn’t have a very secure claim to the throne. He’d married into House of York. The two warring branches were the House of York and the House of Lancaster. He married into the House of York. He had a very tenuous claim, Henry VI, to being part of the House of Lancaster. He married the sister of the Princes in the Tower. And that’s a very big story in English history, who murdered the princes in the tower? Of course, Richard III, who was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field, when Henry takes power, many accuse him of the murder, but actually it’s far more likely that it was either Henry VII or his mother who ordered the execution because he marries the sister. And because if the boys have lived, they would have a far better claim than the throne.

So Henry VIII inherits a very insecure throne. He marries his eldest brother’s sister, Catherine of Aragon. And don’t let’s talk about love here. The most important thing for a king with an insecure dynasty is to produce an heir. And poor Catherine, who was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, you all with me now? The five children of Ferdinand and Isabella, the youngest daughter has married into England and she can’t give him a child, couldn’t give him a male child. And in those days it was always determined it was the woman who was responsible for the sex of a child. Now, he even consulted rabbis to see if by marrying his brother’s sister, his brother’s fiance, had they laid together, his brother’s wife, had they laid together, was the marriage illegal? The problem was that Catherine had an uncle, Charles V, the most powerful man in the world, there was no way the Pope would give Henry a divorce. And it’s at this stage, an incredibly wily minister, Thomas Cromwell, says to Henry, “If you can’t divorce Catherine, why don’t you divorce the Catholic church?”

Because there were many English people who were fascinated by the Protestant Reformation. And this is Henry who in 1521 had written a book called, “Fidei Defensor,” “Defender of the Faith.” He had actually believed that he’d been supporting the pope, but now he wants a divorce and he has a mistress, Anne Boleyn. He’d had many mistresses. He’d even had a son by her sister. Anne Boleyn held out, she held out for marriage. And finally he divorces the church, he divorces the Catholic church, proclaims himself head of this Church of England and marries Anne Boleyn. But Anne never gave him the succession he wanted. All she could give him was a daughter, Elizabeth. So Elizabeth, you can just imagine, her father murdered her mother. And of course, Henry went on to have another four wives. He finally had a son by his third wife. Can we go on to Thomas Seymour?

Now, she is going to be brought up mainly by the, her life is going to change when he marries his sixth wife, things are going to get better. And she had a very good tutor, Elizabeth, and this is what the tutor said. “Her perseverance is equal to that of a man. Her mind has no womanly weakness.” So we know that Elizabeth, who is going to be brought up in the Protestant faith, is very much a clever woman. She learns languages, she learns to be sedate, she learns to manage her life, can we go on please? Here you see Thomas Seymour, he’s going to come into the picture because she fell in love with him. But let’s go on, she’s going to realise that men are not going to be for her. In the end, when Henry VIII died, the throne is taken. He died in 1547.

The throne is taken by his third wife’s son, Edward. Now, Edward has been brought up as a Protestant, but he was a very weak child and he died in 1553. There is a plot to keep the Protestant throne through Lady Jane Grey, but there is a legitimate daughter, is there not? The daughter of Catherine of Aragon. So England goes back to being Catholic under, let’s see the next one, Mary, Mary Tudor, Mary Tudor, who reigned from 1553 to 1558. She had an absolutely tragic life. She was a pawn in the game of her parents’ divorce. She adored her mother, she’d been brought up as a Catholic. And finally she takes the throne and she is determined to bring England back to the true faith. And there are burnings, there is heresy. Anyone who is found to be a Protestant is guilty of heresy, think Catholicism, and she marries. She marries a man she was desperately in love with.

Let’s have a look at him, Philip II of Spain, Philip II, the son of Charles V. After Charles V, he actually abdicates, they split the Habsburg empire between Spain and the low countries and most of the new world and Austria, the Austrian empire, which of course rules much of Europe. So this is a very, very powerful Catholic family. And Philip II of Spain, who marries Mary for no other reason that he wants England, he’s hardly ever there, but she falls madly in love with him, it’s tragic. She has phantom pregnancies, but she dies probably of cancer. Who is going to inherit the throne? Now Elizabeth has lived a very, very difficult life. But finally Elizabeth becomes Queen of England and she’s going to take England into an incredible period. It is going to become The Golden Age. Now Elizabeth realised from the beginning, she rules through succession.

There is no, look, in the end, the other three children of Henry VIII, she is on the throne, she has a very good first minister, Cecil, and she was very good at choosing people. And she also had a very good spy master, a man called Walsingham. Tiny little England, she had to keep him secure. She flirted with men, she probably had an affair with the Earl of Leicester. Later on, when she was quite elderly, she fell in love with another noble. But she has to keep the balance of power. Philip of Spain wanted to marry her. Her relationship with Catherine really develops because Catherine wants to marry her off to one of her sons. And the son, who later becomes Henry III, comes to England to court her. But although Elizabeth was very polite, she had no intention of marrying him.

But she and Catherine begin to cement a relationship. And later on, after he’s King of France, Catherine’s fourth son, the Duke of Alencon, also courts Elizabeth. But Elizabeth has made the decision that she is never going to marry. And it’s under Elizabeth, under Protestant Elizabeth, Elizabeth has more power because whereas Catherine rules through her regency, Elizabeth has is queen in name. And not only that, Henry VIII, what Henry VIII had done, the act of supremacy, he had declared himself head of the English Church. Elizabeth was head of the English Church and she was a very sensible woman. She said religion was a private matter, it’s about private conscience.

So consequently, under Elizabeth, it was a period of great stability. And also it was a period of the Buccaneers, people like Francis Drake, adventurers, explorers, as I said, it’s known as The Golden Age of England. And the other point to know about this period is that Elizabeth, playing around with all these ideas of trying to keep England safe and to be wily, finally in 1570, she is excommunicated by the Catholic church. Philip of Spain is her mortal enemy. So in February, 1570, she is finally excommunicated by Pius V. Now this is disastrous for trade because English wool was exported mainly to the low countries, ports like Antwerp. They are under the control of the Habsburgs. And it’s at this stage that the spy master, Francis Walsingham, begins negotiations with the Ottoman Empire.

And over the next 10 years, there’s going to be very interesting relations with Murad III. Already Catherine has been, the pragmatic Catherine de Medici, has been in negotiation with his father, Selim, and with his father’s wife. Now Elizabeth is in negotiation with Murad. Now, we know that she sent her first letter to the sultan in 1579. And basically the letter said, “Look, we are both fighting Spanish Catholicism.” And there’s a record of how Murad received her letter by the English traveller Fynes Moryson. And when the sultan is shown the location of England on a large map, he wondered why, he actually said, ‘cause England, compared to the Ottoman Empire, which controlled, you know, the Mediterranean, it controlled Egypt, it controlled much of the Middle East and Hungary, why doesn’t the King of Spain take a spade, dig it up and throw it into the sea? But he did, because he loathed the Spanish, he offered safe access to and from Ottoman ports and accepted England as an ally.

It was beneficial for him, trade with his empire, and the letters she received from him, can you imagine the impact it made on the court? Because already her privateers were really snubbing Philip II of Spain. I want you to think of all those great ships that came from the New World that were captured by the English pirates, she loved it. When she received her first letter from Murad, it’s written about, it was covered in gold dust and delivered in a satin bag, clasped in silver. And in 1579, there is a formal alliance and it’s a commercially driven relationship. Think what it brought into England, spices, silks, carpets, currents, other luxury goods to be brought directly to England. And it gave England a trading advantage because there was a terrible relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Spain. And if you think about it, the Spanish have trouble with the Ottoman Empire having control of the Mediterranean.

Now it’s going to have a huge impact on the Tudor court. Just think of some of the paintings you’ve seen of Elizabeth, the Oriental pearls, the silks from Iran, cotton from the empire itself, and Moroccan silk, Moroccan sugar. And in fact, Moroccan sugar, Elizabeth developed an absolute passion for it. And you know, she had black teeth, you know, she rotted her teeth. And consequently, a lot of the court also, they blackened their teeth so that, you know, they couldn’t have been a very attractive lot. By the 1580s, there’s a resident ambassador in Constantinople, there are consols in North Africa. There’s one in Aleppo. And in fact, many Protestants felt it’s safer in the Ottoman Empire than in Catholic Europe, because Catholic Europe, they were subjected to the Inquisition because they were heretics.

You know, Elizabeth, she even stripped lead and tin from Catholic churches, which were now no longer in use, to export them to the Turks for their war. Huge trade with Morocco. And we know that many Moroccan trade delegations visited London, but the Ottomans never visited. England was much too unimportant. It also had a very big impact on the British stage. Think about Shakespeare, think about Marlowe, think about Tamburlaine, where the Koran is actually burnt. So what we know that what then happens next though, of course, finally Philip has had enough because of one act of Elizabeth. Can we see the next slide, please? That’s Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary, Queen of Scots, who was the granddaughter of Henry VIII through one of his daughters, and through one of his sisters, I beg your pardon, she had married into France, the first son of Catherine de Medici, and she was quite an arrogant woman.

And Catherine never really liked her. And then of course when he died, she went back to Scotland, she became Queen of Scotland. She was a foolish woman in many ways. She had too many love affairs, too many husbands. And in the end she had, Catholic Mary in Protestant, Scotland had to seek refuge in England. But there were lots of plots. She becomes the focus of plots. Now there are letters between Catherine and Elizabeth. There was quite a bonding between these two women. They both were women trying to rule. In many ways, Elizabeth held far more cards than did Catherine because as I said, Elizabeth was the supreme ruler. She was head of the church. Consequently, and she was, in many ways, she didn’t have these awful sons that she had to try and keep in power.

Catherine does it as a regency. And what is also fascinating, all these women are, these four, if you think about it, Roxelana is dead, but it’s her daughter-in-law and her granddaughter-in-law, who are in correspondence with both Catherine and with Elizabeth. And more could be said, it’s backdoor diplomacy because sultans, you know, the official letters of the Sultan of Turkey are far more formal, but you get also presents are exchanged. And they talk about children and things like that. Catherine develops a very interesting relationship with Nurbanu. But what happens with Mary, Queen of Scots, in the end, Elizabeth is persuaded by her advisors, particularly Walsingham, that it’s too dangerous to let Mary, Queen of Scots live. And she finally reluctantly executes a crowned queen. Because remember, she rules through divine right. This is the notion of queenship or kingship, and that is what unleashes the Armada. Let’s see the next slide. And that of course unleashes the Spanish Armada against the British. And this is Elizabeth’s hour of glory because in the end, the Armada is defeated.

So if we look at these women that I’ve examined, I suppose as a ruler, Elizabeth is by far the most successful. She managed to keep England away from civil war. She was wily, think of all the hands she had to deal, all the marriages that she was meant to make, and she made none. In the end, though, that was the fatal flaw because she left the throne to the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, who’d been brought up as a Protestant. And the stewards weren’t very good rulers. And this is always one of the problems of succession. Catherine tried so very, very hard. And as her son-in-law, Henry of Navarre, said, she did her best with what was dealt her. Her ridiculous sons, trying to keep them safe, they were ill. Henry III, who she absolutely adored, was a very vicious character. And then of course, you had Roxelana, maybe the most ruthless of them all, who ruled by allure. And then her daughters, her daughters-in-law. And it was that change of succession that led to the decline of the Ottoman Empire. So I’m going to stop there. I thought it was time to have a little bit of fun because I know a lot of these things we are dealing with are very, very dark and very, very difficult. So let’s have a look at questions.

Q&A and Comments

Gita’s saying, “Not raining in Manchester.” This is from Margaret, “Fascinating story about Roxelana. It must have been used as the basis for a novel I read years ago about a French subject who was captured by pirates, sold in Constantinople, became the favourite, advised the sultan on political matters as she too hid to observe cabinet meetings. But I’m sure Roxelana must have been the inspiration.” Yes, I think so, I think this is a, you are talking about fiction, but Roxelana, it happened. You couldn’t have made it up. This is from, “Some years ago, my husband and I watched a marvellous series called 'The Magnificent Century,’ it was quite extraordinary, on the Ottoman period of which you think. The woman who played the concubine was actually a German actress. The series no longer on Netflix. If you do a search, I’m sure you’ll find it. The costumes, the sets were out of this world.” Yes, I remember it, it was about Roxelana. It was a Turkish series I think. It was a joint Turkish German production. Yet it was very interesting.

Q: Ron, “It is available on YouTube. Why did Elizabeth never marry?” A: She never married because who could she have married? Protestant Europe, Catholic Europe? She had to keep England safe and if she’d married one of the nobility, all the other nobles would’ve gone crazy. So the way she was wily, she realised that the only way she could keep England safe was not to marry and to rule as the Virgin Queen. Of course she wasn’t a virgin, you know, it’s very likely she had an affair with the Earl of Leicester. She later on fell madly in love with, oh, what was his name? The gorgeous guy, when she was an old lady, she fell madly in love with a young man and sent him to Ireland as a captain. He betrayed her and she had him executed.

No, Elizabeth was a fascinating woman. Yes, of course they were all ruthless. But as rulers go, the fact that she allowed religion to be a private affair, the fact that she kept England safe and enabled it to have its Golden Age. And you see, in a world that was riven by religious dispute, I don’t think Catherine or Elizabeth were religious, not really. I think they wanted to keep their country safe. Margaret liked it.

Q: “Roxelana’s story sounds like the book of Esther. What do you think?” A: Well, it’s actually the wife of Selim who is thought to be Jewish. And she’s the one, there’s lots of letters between her and Catherine de Medici. In fact, I saw one going up for auction recently that Catherine had written from her favourite chateau. And definitely her advisor was Jewish and very close to the Duke of Naxos. Don’t forget that Selim II, one of his closest advisors was Joseph Nasi, the Duke of Naxos, whose mother was Dona Gracia. Remember when we were talking about that? So it all kind of slots together. The Jews are not centre stage at this at all, but they’re an interesting adjunct to history. Essex, thank you.

• [Host] Do we have?

• [Trudy] The Earl of Essex, yeah.

• [Host] Trudy, Wendy is here with her hand up. I don’t know if she wants to.

• Hi, Wendy, how are you, darling, Wendy?

• [Wendy] Oh, hi, sorry.

• Hi, Wendy, did you want to say something, darling? No, lovely to have you. Do you want to say hello to the gang? Hi, Wendy.

• [Wendy] Hello, everyone.

• Where are you, Wendy?

• [Wendy] I’m on an aeroplane going back to New York.

• Oh, darling, it’s lovely to hear from you.

• [Wendy] I did the gala, I listened to the gala in a hanger and now I’m flying back. So just in a nut, quickly, I wanted to what the name of the YouTube? It was amazing, thank you.

• Roxelana.

• [Wendy] What’s the name of the YouTube?

• I think it’s called Roxelana, isn’t it? Maybe someone can help us on that. It was about an 18 part series. It’s a wallow, it’s a real wallow. You know, if you want to sit, where are you going to find 18 hours to watch television ? You know, it’s good fun.

• [Wendy] That’s true, that is true, thank you, thank you very much.

• And there’s some wonderful movies on Elizabeth and there’s “La Reine Margot,” a French film about the daughter of Catherine de Medici. Poor old Catherine gets a terrible press. Elizabeth, of course, there are many, many films. One of my favourites is Bette Davis playing Queen Elizabeth, “Elizabeth and Essex.” Some of you may know it.

• [Wendy] Maybe Trudy.

• Yeah?

• [Wendy] Trudy, maybe you can make a list and you can put it on the website.

• Yes, of course, because I thought I wanted to lighten it today. Yeah, okay, I’ll make a list of, and the Earl of Essex is played, it’s extraordinary. Yes, it’s Bette Davis playing Queen Elizabeth. And who played Essex? Oh, does anyone know, can anyone help me, who played Essex? I’m sure someone will, I’m just going to see. But “The Magnificent Century.”

Q: “Before Selim married, how did the Ottomans handle session between the many children?” A: They chose before, no, it’s before Suleiman, they chose, it was the eldest son of the first wife. But when you find a favourite, can you imagine what it must have been like in the harem? And that really did lead to the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The putting away of the, you know, of the favourite child of the concubine. So you know, you have to train people in state craft. It’s not easy to rule an empire. So has anyone remembered the?

“It seems that most of the royalty didn’t live long lives.” Well, Elizabeth lived quite a long life. None of Catherine’s sons lived long. But they had tragically, think about it, syphilis was a terrible disease and they got it from both their grandfathers. So genetically they didn’t have much of a chance, did they? But this period of history is absolutely fascinating. It’s set against the discovery of America, it’s set against all the trade, it’s set against the split in religion. And really it’s the seeds of modernity. Never forget though, Catherine de Medici, she was a Renaissance princess, she was a de Medici. Just think of some of her ancestors and what they gave to the world with the beauty of Florence. So, and Elizabeth, I think probably one of England’s greatest rulers, but the flaw, she couldn’t provide for the succession because if she did, who could she have married? Oh, Errol Flynn, thank you, Nancy. Errol Flynn of course plays the plays the Earl of Essex. Those wonderful films of the ‘30s and '40s.

Anyway, I wish you all a good evening and we’ve got a very important political lecture at seven o'clock. So take care everybody, and bye.