The Pirate Queen (77 page)

Martin Frobisher, like Drake, was essentially a pirate, though he lacked Drake’s navigational and strategic abilities. Frobisher’s Northwest Passage venture ended in failure, with his business partner and many gentlemen adventurers financially ruined.

While Sir Walter Raleigh was highly favored by the queen, and granted his half brother’s lands in North America—over a million acres of “Northern” and “Southern” Virginia—he failed to make a viable settlement work in Virginia and dreamed of the gold of “El Dorado.” On Elizabeth’s death, he was implicated in a plot to put Arabella Stuart on the throne instead of James Stuart and, after many years in the Tower and a doomed expedition to “El Dorado,” was executed for treason.

Sir Henry Sidney, lord deputy of Ireland and close confidante of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley. He married Robert Dudley’s sister, Mary.

Sir Philip Sidney, courtier and poet. Sidney was the most influential and gifted poet of his day and was Robert Dudley’s heir until his violent death in the Netherlands in 1586.

Robert Devereux was Robert Dudley’s stepson. After his time in Holland, and throughout his campaigns in Ireland, he grew a beard and apparently cared far less about his personal appearance. He was willed Philip Sidney’s “two best swords” and was a patron of the arts and a friend of Shakespeare. Devereux, despite being one of the queen’s favorites, masterminded an ill-fated rebellion in London and was beheaded as a traitor.

The Deed of Grant for Virginia to Sir Walter Raleigh from Elizabeth. Note that the official Privy Seal is still attached.

This is how the Thames looked at Greenwich from Elizabeth’s reign through to the 1630s.

An artist’s impression of troops arriving for the Siege of Antwerp. The city fell and was razed to the ground in what became known as “the Spanish Fury.”

A letter written in Elizabeth’s own hand around two
A.M.
to Sir William Cecil, demanding a stay of execution for her cousin, Thomas Howard, who had been found guilty of treason and of plotting to marry Mary Queen of Scots, against Elizabeth’s will. The letter has little of Elizabeth’s exceptionally fluid penmanship, and her agitated state of mind is reflected in her handwriting.

A map of London and the Thames to the Tower of London showing the detail of the river and streets.

The original Flemish-made Armada Tapestry hung in the Houses of Parliament at Westminster but was destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century. This is a copy made to commemorate the single most important battle in British history, and is historically accurate.

Matthew Baker, one of Elizabeth’s most trusted shipwrights, is designing a ship.