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

For example, Lord Beauchamp, who has been forgotten today but was prominent in his time, had a very strong blood claim, but the claim was clouded by “bastardy.” Elizabeth was apparently thinking of him and of his illegitimacy when she was upon her deathbed where, still undecided, she said, “I will have no rascall’s son succeed me.”⁴ Sir Francis Hastings (whose claim Ferdinando needlessly worried about, as shall be seen) was viewed in 1594 as too distant in the bloodline to be in the running, although he had been taken seriously by Burghley years earlier when Elizabeth was feared to be dying of smallpox. The Spanish infanta’s claim was more than adequate, but Isabella was ruled out not only because she was another woman and a Spaniard but mainly because she was a Catholic—and especially because she was known to be the favorite candidate of the exiled English Catholic leadership abroad and of all of the Catholics at home. (Anything they wanted, Elizabeth did not.) The Earl of Northumberland’s claim was also far too distant in the bloodline, and he was also a northern earl, which fact once again brought with it all of the old worries of civil war—raising memories of the Wars of the Roses, or the “Barons’ Wars.” The earl eventually saw the light and came down strongly for James VI of Scotland, who of course won out in the end. (His illegal private correspondence with James about the succession, written after he was certain James would be the king, actually still exists.)⁵

James had the strongest viable claim of all, logically, as the son of the executed Mary, Queen of Scots, but Elizabeth (who never met him) and her ministers had their doubts about his viability because he was seen as a “foreigner.” Besides, his wife was a Catholic, and some people amongst the highest levels of English leadership also feared that if he became king, he would try and then execute everyone who had been in any way involved in his mother’s recent conviction and execution. This list was thought to include several of the prominent players in this book, including Earl Henry Stanley, Ferdinando’s father, who had chaired the committee that tried Mary and found her guilty. Perhaps the toughest two strikes against James were that he was barred from the succession by the will of King Henry VIII—a stipulation which was further legitimated by