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Remembering Queens and Kings of Early Modern England and France pp 13–33Cite as

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Boudicca and Elizabeth Rally Their Troops: “Two Queens Both Alike in Dignity”

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Abstract

Fifteen hundred years separated them, but two British queens, both known for their long brightly colored hair, encouraged their troops against foreign invaders, with what was reported to be stirring rhetoric. The queens were Boudicca, head of the Celtic Iceni tribe, and Queen Elizabeth I. We know far less about Boudicca than we do about Elizabeth, but in both cases we do not have definitive evidence about the speeches they gave. This chapter analyzes depictions of Boudicca and how she is compared with Elizabeth, particularly as queens encouraging their troops, in Elizabeth’s reign. Both were powerful women who ruled on their own—Elizabeth as an unmarried woman ruling in her own right and Boudicca as a widow ruling for her young daughters.

My thanks to Jennifer Hammond for the help with the title. A version of this chapter was presented at the In the Light of Gloriana Conference, London, November, 2016. I am grateful to the organizers, particularly Estelle Paranque, who is also the editor of this collection.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Other scholarship on Boudicca in the early modern period includes Jodi Mikalachki, The legacy of Boadicea: gender and nation in early modern England (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), and Samantha Frenee-Hutchins, Boudica’s Odyssey in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 2014).

  2. 2.

    Paul E. J., Hammer, “Sharpe [Sharp], Leonell (bap. 1560, d. 1631), Church of England clergyman and author.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2008. Accessed on August 21, 2018.

  3. 3.

    Janet M., Green, “‘I My Self’: Elizabeth I’s Oration at Tilbury Camp,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 28, 2 (summer, 1997): 421–45.

  4. 4.

    Richard Hingley and Christina Unwin, Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen (London: Hambledon, 2005), 43.

  5. 5.

    Cornelius Tacitus, The annals of Cornelius Tacitus. The description of Germanie. (London, 1598), 209.

  6. 6.

    J.A. Giles (ed.), Six Old English Chronicles (London: H. G. Bohn, 1848), 301.

  7. 7.

    Giles, Six Old English Chronicles, 301.

  8. 8.

    Giles, Six Old English Chronicles, 301–02.

  9. 9.

    Frenee-Hutchins, Boudica’s Odyssey, 20.

  10. 10.

    Carolyn D., Williams, Boudica and Her Stories: Narrative Transformations of a Warrior Queen (University of Delaware Press, 2009), 40–41.

  11. 11.

    David Powel, Pontici Virunnii viri doctissimi Britannicae historiae libri sex magna et fide et diligentia conscripti: ad Britannici codicis fidem correcti, & ab infinitis mendis liberati: quibus praefixus est catalogus regum Britanniae (London, 1585).

  12. 12.

    Henry Ellis (ed.), Polydore Vergil’s English History: From an Early Translation Preserved Among the Mss. of the Old Royal Library in the British Museum: Containing the First Eight Books, Comprising the Period Prior to the Norman Conquest, Vol. 1 (London: Printed for the Camden Society by J.B. Nichols and Son, 1846), 70.

  13. 13.

    Ellis, Polydore Vergil’s English History, 70.

  14. 14.

    Ellis, Polydore Vergil’s English History, 70.

  15. 15.

    Watt Dianne, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2001), 90.

  16. 16.

    Marc Shell Elizabeth’s Glass: The glass of the Sinful Soul (1544) by Elizabeth I, and Epistle dedicatory and Conclusion (1548) by John Bale (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 3.

  17. 17.

    John Bale, (eds.), A godly medytacyon of the christen sowle, concerning a love towards God and hys Christe compiled in frenche by lady Margarete queen of Naverre, and aptely translated into Englysh by the right vertuouse lady Elyzabeth doughter to our late soverayne Kynge Henri the viii. (Wesel, 1548), 43v.

  18. 18.

    http://www.oed.com.libproxy.unl.edu/view/Entry/190736?rskey=29cCqW&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid

  19. 19.

    Bale, A godly medytacyon, 44–44v.

  20. 20.

    Bale, A godly medytacyon, 44–44v.

  21. 21.

    Bale, A godly medytacyon, 44v.

  22. 22.

    Bale, A godly medytacyon, 44v.

  23. 23.

    Rivkah Zim, “Batman, Stephan (c.1542–1584),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds.) (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. David Cannadine, May 2011, http://0-www.oxforddnb.com.library.unl.edu/view/article/1704 (accessed June 3, 2017); Batman, The doome warning, 348.

  24. 24.

    Janel Mueller (eds.), Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 29.

  25. 25.

    Shell Elizabeth’s Glass, 64.

  26. 26.

    Hingley and Unwin, Boudica, 119.

  27. 27.

    Raphael Holinshed, The firste [laste] volume of the chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande: Conteyning the description and chronicles of England, from the fist inhabiting unto the conquest: the descriptin and chronicles of Scotland, from the first original of the Scottes nation till the yeare of our Lord 1571: the description and chronicles of Yrelande, likewise from the first originall of that nation untill the yeare 1571 (London, 1577), 60.

  28. 28.

    Holinshed, The firste [laste] volume of the chronicles of England, 61.

  29. 29.

    Holinshed, The firste [laste] volume of the chronicles of England, 61.

  30. 30.

    Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose, (eds.), Elizabeth I Collected Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 59.

  31. 31.

    Holinshed, The firste [laste] volume of the chronicles of England, 64.

  32. 32.

    Mikalachki, The legacy of Boadicea, 13.

  33. 33.

    Holinshed, The firste [laste] volume of the chronicles of England, 64.

  34. 34.

    Paul Hughes and James F. Larkin (eds.), Tudor Royal Proclamations, Volume II: The Later Tudors (1553–1587) (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1969), 240–41; James A. Knapp, Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England: the Representation of History in Printed Books (Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2003), 87n41.

  35. 35.

    Roy C. Strong Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 12, 14.

  36. 36.

    For more on Gosson, see Arthur F. Kinney, “Gosson, Stephen (bap. 1554, d. 1625), anti-theatrical polemicist and Church of England clergyman.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2007). Accessed on November 22, 2018. http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.unl.edu/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-11120

  37. 37.

    Gosson, 21.

  38. 38.

    Gosson, 21.

  39. 39.

    William Camden, Britain, or A chorographicall description of the most flourishing kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the islands adjoyning, out of the depth of antiquitie: beautified vvith mappes of the severall shires of England: vvritten first in Latine by William Camden Clarenceux K. or A. Translated newly into English by Philémon Holland Doctour in Physick: finally, revised, amended, and enlarged with sundry additions by the said author (London, 1637), 49.

  40. 40.

    Camden, Britain, 51.

  41. 41.

    Camden, Britain, 52.

  42. 42.

    State Papers Dom, Eliz, xxxiv, no. 34 in Miller Christie “Queen Elizabeth’s Visit to Tilbury in 1588,” The English Historical Review CCIX (1919), 47.

  43. 43.

    Marcus, Mueller, Rose, Collected Works, 325.

  44. 44.

    Mikalachki, The legacy of Boadicea, 129.

  45. 45.

    Christie, 47; Thomas Healy, “Elizabeth I at Tilbury and Popular Culture,” Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England, Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield, eds. (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2009), 168.

  46. 46.

    Thomas Deloney, A New Ballet of the straunge and most cruell whipeps, which the Spanyards had prepared to whippe and torment English men and women. (London, 1588), 1.

  47. 47.

    Green, “‘I My Self’,” 426n24.

  48. 48.

    James Aske Elizabetha Triumphans (London, 1588), 1, 2.

  49. 49.

    Aske, 23.

  50. 50.

    Aske, 24.

  51. 51.

    Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene Disposed into Twelve Books, Fashioning XII, Morall Vertues (London, 1590), 340.

  52. 52.

    Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 441.

  53. 53.

    William Shakespeare, Henry V, Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, eds. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). All lines quoted are from this edition.

  54. 54.

    David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 301.

  55. 55.

    Anny Crunelle Vanrigh, “Henry V as a Royal Entry,” SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 47 (2) (2007), 367.

  56. 56.

    Holinshed, Chronicle, 62, 64.

  57. 57.

    For example, Robert Mathew paired Elizabeth “the Brave Queene” and Henry V, who “lead valiant” men into battle. Musarum Oxoniensium (1654), 66.

  58. 58.

    Holinshed, Chronicle, 63.

  59. 59.

    Holinshed, Chronicles, 62.

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  1. University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA

    Carole Levin

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  1. New College of the Humanities, London, UK

    Estelle Paranque

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Levin, C. (2019). Boudicca and Elizabeth Rally Their Troops: “Two Queens Both Alike in Dignity”. In: Paranque, E. (eds) Remembering Queens and Kings of Early Modern England and France. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22344-1_2

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