Abstract
In December 1602, the 69-year-old Queen Elizabeth I attended housewarming celebrations at the newly built London residence of her Principal Secretary, Sir Robert Cecil. Among the lavish entertainments Cecil provided for his mistress that evening was a dramatic dialogue between a Gentleman Usher and “a Post” (i.e., a courier), written by the poet John Davies. As the queen looked on, the Post burst upon the stage declaring that he had letters “from the Emperor of China” to deliver post-haste to Secretary Cecil. No doubt playing up the dramatic irony afforded by the situation, the Usher asked why he did not present the letters directly to the queen (who was seated in the audience). The Post explained that they were written “in a language that she understands not,” but the Usher informed him that all great princes (including the “Great Turke”, another of Elizabeth’s well-known correspondents) always sent translations of their letters in Italian, French, Spanish, or Latin, and so the queen could read the letters from the Emperor of China “if they be in any Christian language.” This led to a lengthy dialogue in praise of Elizabeth’s great learning and linguistic skills, after which the Post confessed himself too shy to approach the queen. The Usher admonished him to overcome his fear and, perhaps with an encouraging gesture toward the audience, declared: “Draw nere her, knele downe before her, kisse thy letters, and deliver them, and use noe prattling, while she is reading.”
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Notes
“Articles of Agreement” between the Governour of the East India Company and George Waymouth, 11 January 1602, in Thomas Rundell ed., Narratives of Voyages towards the North-West, in search of a passage to Cathay and India, 1496–1631 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1849), 62.
According to D. F. Latch, Halkuyt gave a “balanced, adequate picture of China” derived from both English and foreign sources, and only used first-hand accounts to ensure accuracy. D. F. Latch, “The Far East”, in David B. Quinn, ed., The Hakluyt Handbook, 2 vols (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), I: 214.
Henry VII financed the voyages of the Italian John Cabot in 1497 and his son Sebastian in 1508–9, who both searched for a north-west passage to Asia. Stanley Bertram Chrimes, Henry VII (1972; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 229–30.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi to the Viceroy of the Indies, 1591, in Ryusaku Tsunoda, W. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene, eds., Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 316–18.
See Nabil Matar, “Elizabeth Through Moroccan Eyes” (145–68) and Anna Riehl Bertolet, “The Tsar and the Queen: ‘You Speak a Language That I Understand Not’” (101–24) in Charles Beem, ed., The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
If Elizabeth’s letters to her European neighbors had any ornamentation at all, it was usually in the form of colored silk threads or “floss” used to seal the letters closed. See Heather Wolfe, “‘Neatly Sealed, with Silk, and Spanish Wax or Otherwise’: The Practice of Letter-Locking with Silk Floss in Early Modern England,” in S. P. Cerasano and Steven W. May, eds., “In Prayse of Writing”: Early Modern Manuscript Studies Essays in Honour of Peter Beal (London: British Library, 2012), 169–89.
Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. Hugh Murray, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1845),152.
Carmen Y Hsu, “Writing on Behalf of a Christian Empire: Gifts, Dissimulation, and Politics in the Letters of Philip II of Spain to Wanli of China,” in Hispanic Review 78, 3 (2010): 335, n.30.
Several hundred thousand kilos of silver mined by the Spanish at Potos í flowed into China during this period; cf. William S. Atwell, “International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy circa 1530–1650,” Past & Present, 95 (1982): 70–73.
David E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 4–8.
China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800: Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions, eds John E. Willis Jr. and John Cranmer Byng (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 7.
Wanli was highly impressed by Ricci’s map of China; Kenneth Ch’en, “Matteo Ricci’s Contribution to, and Influence on, Geographical Knowledge in China,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 59, 3 (1939): 346.
Sir Francis Drake seized a load of valuable Chinese goods from Spanish ships he encountered along the Pacific coast of North and South America in 1579. Derek Wilson, The World Encompassed: Drake’s Great Voyage, 1577–1580 (London: Allison & Busby, 1977), 148.
Samuel H. Baron, “Muscovy and the English Quest for a Northeastern Passage to Cathay,” Acta Slavica Iaponica 3 (1985): 5.
Eleanora C. Gordon, “The Fate of Sir Hugh Willoughby and His Companions: A New Conjecture,” The Geographical Journal 152, 2 (1986): 243–47.
For more on Burrough’s expedition see Kit Mayers, North-East Passage to Muscovy: Stephen Borough and the First Tudor Explorers (Stroud: Sutton, 2005).
Memorial addressed by Anthony Jenkinson to the Queen, May 30, 1565, SP 12/36, fol. 134v; reproduced in Felix Pryor, Elizabeth I: Her Life in Letters (Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 44–45. Jenkinson may have been reading Marco Polo’s Travels: “Here are wild elephants, and unicorns not much smaller, being double the size of a buffalo. They have a large black horn in the middle of the forehead, and beneath the tongue sharp prickles, which can inflict severe wounds.” Polo, Travels, 282–83.
Kenneth R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, 1583–1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963) 219 n.2.
A draft of this letter dated July 16, 1596 can also be found in W. Noel Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, East Indies, China and Japan, 1513–1616 (London: HMSO, 1862; henceforth CSPColonial), 98, no. 250; See also John Bruce, Annals of the Honorable East-India Company (London: Cox, Son, and Baylis, 1810), I: 110.
Elizabeth to Wanli, July 11, 1596, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, II: 852–54. For more on Elizabeth’s correspondence with Ivan the Terrible, see Rayne Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 111–30.
Marguerite Eyer Wilbur, The East India Company and the British Empire in the Far East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951), 318. The East India Company grew out of the Levant Company, and both shared many members and financial connections in common.
K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company (London: Routledge, 1999), 12–14.
Elizabeth to Ivan IV, June 5, 1583, Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow, fund 35, opis’ 2, no. 4; reproduced in Britannia & Muscovy: English Silver at the Court of the Tsars, ed. Olga Dmitrieva and Natalya Abramova (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 211.
Anthony R. J. S. Adolph, “Segar, Sir William (b. in or before 1564, d. 1633),” ODNB; H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 74.
Ray Huang, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 15–16.
Anthony Farrington, ed., The English Factory in Japan: 1613–1623 2 vols (London: The British Library, 1991).
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© 2014 Carlo M. Bajetta, Guillaume Coatalen, and Jonathan Gibson
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Allinson, R. (2014). The Virgin Queen and the Son of Heaven: Elizabeth I’s Letters to Wanli, Emperor of China. In: Bajetta, C.M., Coatalen, G., Gibson, J. (eds) Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137448415_9
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