The Assassination of Shakespeare's Patron: Investigating the Deat ...

believed that Burghley wanted to further empower one of the largest earldoms in England by linking it by marriage to that of the powerful earl of Oxford, Elizabeth’s father and also that Burghley, as the Queen’s right-hand man, was doing so in order to obtain more control of both baronies/earldoms in the Queen’s, and his own, behalf. The political game on the part of Elizabeth and Burghley was to give lip service to the claims/rights of Ferdinando’s widow, Alice, while working behind the scenes—where the money was—on behalf of the new Earl William (and thus ultimately for their own gain.) But Elizabeth and Burghley, as well as other powerful earls, especially Essex, had never quite trusted Ferdinando, and Ferdinando knew it. He knew that it had a lot to do with his mother’s divination work with her soothsayers on the succession question and with her arrests and imprisonments. He also knew that it had a lot to do with his Catholic (but previously trusted loyalist) cousin Sir William Stanley, who had turned out to be the most famous traitor of the age. After taking the town of Deventer in 1587 while commanding his huge regiment of English troops, Sir William had immediately (and enthusiastically) handed it back to the enemy, Spain, and joined them, thereafter becoming the main agent of the attempts to wrest the throne from Elizabeth—attempts which included several assassination plots. Ferdinando also now knew that he and his father, Earl Henry, had made a big mistake in assenting to Sir William’s request that they take over the official guardianship of his two young sons while he was away fighting under Leicester (and then for King Philip of Spain and the exiled Cardinal William Allen). The fact that these boys lived with Ferdinando at Lathom Hall was also widely known and had led to yet more guilt by association from the government.

There were actually a large number of plausible claimants—plausible in their own minds, anyway—far too many in the minds of Elizabeth and her chief ministers. But almost none, for various reasons, was really viable. Ferdinando’s mother, Margaret, as mentioned, was never in the running. First, she was a woman. People had horrible memories of Elizabeth’s sister Mary, “Bloody Mary,” being on the throne, whereas