Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsElizabeth I and Her Circle. By Susan Doran.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xx+398. $39.95.Norman JonesNorman JonesUtah State University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIn the mid-twentieth century historians wrote biographies of Elizabethan courtiers, councilors, and members of parliament. Prosopography was important, and the ruling classes were studied in their relational networks. Conyers Read, A. L. Rowse, J. E. Neale, Wallace MacCaffrey, Robert Tittler, and others wrote on Burghley, Walsingham, Raleigh, Bacon, members of parliament, and the council. Then biography went out of fashion, though not out of importance. Susan Doran, one of our leading experts on the Elizabethan court, reminds us that Elizabeth and the people she chose to run her state were important, closely linked, and essential to understanding the history of Elizabethan England.Robert Naunton, in the seventeenth century, had divided Elizabeth’s leading servants into men of the sword and men of the gown. Doran organizes her chapters more capaciously, writing about the queen’s kin, the “courtiers,” and “the councilors,” naturally recognizing the importance of women within Elizabeth’s circle.Doran recognizes that the queen valued her relatives very much, promoted them, and expected them to serve her. And like all unhappy families, Elizabeth’s family was unhappy in a very special way. Elizabeth’s surviving Suffolk cousin, Katharine Grey, secretly married the earl of Hertford. Elizabeth had the marriage annulled and never recognized its two male offspring. Even more problematic were the descendants of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret, Mary, Queen of Scotland and France, and her son James VI of Scotland. By looking at these families as Elizabeth’s kin, Doran gives a much more human face to the succession, a tale usually told as policy and high politics. After a judicious treatment of the correspondence between Mary and Elizabeth, Doran concludes that each believed herself betrayed, concluding honestly, “Mary evokes my sympathy but Elizabeth earns my respect” (89). Doran’s willingness to offer professional judgments is refreshing.Of the courtiers, she chooses Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester; Sir Christopher Hatton; Robert Devereux, earl of Essex; and “the women who served.” These male favorites ascended at different times in Elizabeth’s life. Dudley, of course, was her reputed romantic partner beginning in 1559, remaining a favorite until he died in 1588. Hatton rose to prominence in the 1570s and died as lord chancellor in 1591. Essex rose in the later 1580s, a war hero whose prickly aristocratic self-esteem and quarrelsome nature ended with his execution in 1601. Doran personalizes these men while rehearsing the history of the regime from the inside. All of them were targets of opprobrium and romantic speculation during their lives and after, but Doran cuts through all that. Essex, she observes, destroyed his own career by politically isolating himself at the court. Leicester, a man of refinement who the queen enjoyed as a friend long after the romantic attraction faded, brought Elizabeth emotional strength and comfort along with talented service. Hatton was gentle and diplomatic, totally Elizabeth’s servant, and she valued his loyalty and skill, as well as his flirtatious style. But all of them were her servants; she was good at keeping them bridled to her will.The women who served her are much harder to know, since they left little in the written record. Some had deep affective relationships with Elizabeth, judging by how she mourned for them, but Doran believes most of the ladies of the privy chamber were not Elizabeth’s friends. They served her, and probably never spoke frankly to her. Importantly, Doran explores Elizabeth’s behavior toward those of her ladies who married, correcting the perception that the queen never wanted them to marry and flew into rages when they did. She did fly into rages, but it was the ones who betrayed her by not getting permission to marry that provoked her anger. However, Elizabeth’s expectations were almost impossibly high. Their personal and family lives were sacrificed to Elizabeth’s needs.As for the councilors, Doran chooses Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley; Sir Francis Walsingham; and Sir Robert Cecil. Each was her principal secretary and much more. Once again, choosing these lives allows an overlapping discussion of the history of the reign, since Burghley’s service began on her accession day; Walsingham was principal secretary in the middle years, and Robert Cecil dominated in the 1590s as his father’s health slowly collapsed. It is hard to research Walsingham because his personal archive has disappeared. It is hard to write about the Cecils because their huge archives have survived. Doran parses this well, but inevitably her treatment of these men of policy is more about policy than the men.She is strongest on Burghley. Elizabeth and he were in constant communication, and it is hard to tell one from the other at times. But Doran gets it right when she says “Burghley did not challenge Elizabeth’s royal prerogative nor flirt with positions that nowadays would be called ‘republican’” (243). I take issue with some of her analyses of Burghley’s actions, especially in the financial realm, but not with her sure grip on his work with his sovereign.For each of the people she considers, she talks a bit about their historiographical and popular culture representations, including calling Shekhar Kapur to account for his films. Sometimes one must read between the lines to see that she is debating and correcting her colleagues. In that sense, this book is aimed more at a trade audience than a scholarly audience.Doran has expert knowledge of the material culture of the court, and her interest in the visual is used to good effect here. Her “reading” of the “Sieve Portrait” of Elizabeth is full of details that tell much about Christopher Hatton’s message in commissioning it.This is a readable, lively revival of a field that has languished in scholarship, despite the enthusiasm in popular culture for all things Elizabethan. The Elizabeth that is set within Doran’s “circle” comes across as a smart, passionate, and effective leader who understood the frailties of her courtiers and had her own. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 89, Number 1March 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/690156 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.