Elizabeth I's Censored Annals: A Major Discovery

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Did King James VI of Scotland plot to assassinate Elizabeth I? Did she name him as her successor? For centuries, dozens of pasted-over passages in the original manuscript of William Camden’s Annals have been inaccessible. But now, technology has made them visible for the first time, offering new insights into the political machinations of Elizabeth’s court.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out more from researcher Helena Rutkowska and Calum Cockburn from the British Library.

This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to not just the tutors from HistoryHit.
0:03.2	To listen to all of our episodes, add free and watch hundreds of history documentaries,
0:08.4	download the HistoryHit app or go to HistoryHit.com forward slash subscribe.
0:15.4	And if you're an Apple listener, you can subscribe for new,
0:18.8	add free episodes within the app.
0:27.6	The first biography of Elizabeth I, and the first history of Elizabeth in England,
0:33.6	was the analysis, rareum, anglicarum known simply as the annals written by William Camden
0:40.8	and first published as you may have guessed in Latin in 1615.
0:45.8	It's often been regarded as one of the best sources about the Queen from an impartial
0:52.0	eyewitness, although the fact he gets a bunch of things about Ambulin wrong at the beginning
0:56.6	should have warned us. Camden also wrote Britannia, which is a county by county guide to the
1:02.6	ancient and medieval history, geography and topography of England, Scotland and Ireland.
1:08.3	He was an antiquarian. He more or less founded the Society of Antiquaries. He was a historian
1:13.2	and he was a herald with the title Clarenceau King of Arms. His friends included Philip Sidney,
1:18.8	William Sissal or Burley, John D and Edmund Spencer. Ben Johnson was his pupil when Camden
1:24.4	was headmaster at Westminster School. And crucially for our purposes today, Camden left his papers
1:31.2	and books to his friend Sir Robert Cotton, who created the Cotton Library, which later became
1:37.1	the foundation of what was the British Museum, now the British Library. That means that the
1:43.1	British Library holds all Camden's manuscript drafts of his annals. In July 2023, it was announced
1:52.6	that a team of scholars at the library had uncovered hitherto hidden and self-sensitive passages
1:59.8	in Camden's text, and being able to read them gives us fascinating new insights into Elizabeth
2:06.0	I and her era. Some of the scholars in question joined me today. At the heart of the action
	...

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