Picture the Tower of London on a humid summer morning in 1592. Two prisoners are being escorted

through its gates, not traitors or spies, but lovers. Sir Walter Raleigh, the Queen's

favored adventurer and Elizabeth Bess Throckmorton, one of her maids of honor. Their crime

was not plotting a rebellion or betraying their country.

It was marrying each other without Elizabeth's permission. In a court built on flattery, secrecy,

and the queen's jealousy, love could be fatal to your career.

Hey friend, welcome back to the YouTube channel for the Renaissance English History podcast. I am your host, Heather. I've been podcasting on Tudor England since 2009 with

my show, which makes it the original Tudor History podcast. I am, as always, delighted,

thrilled, so very happy and grateful that you are here with me today to talk about one of the

greatest romantic scandals of the Elizabethan period. Let's dig in. Best Throckmorton was born in

1565 into one of those webs of family connections that

seemed to bind every tutor, courtier, together. I could talk. Her father, Nicholas Throckmorton,

was a skilled diplomat and cousin to Queen Catherine Parr, Henry the 8th, six wife. Her mother,

Anne Karoo, descended from the Karus of Beddington, old friends of

Henry's circle. That made Bess a sort of Tudor Blueblood, well-born, clever, and used to moving

among people whose fortunes rose and fell with royal moods. By her early 20s, she had secured one of the most sought-after

roles at court, gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, attending directly on Elizabeth I. That meant

that she lived constantly in the Queen's presence, helped her dress, carried her jewels, and was

expected to reflect the Queen's own virtue and loyalty.

It also meant she was supposed to have absolutely zero private life.

Into that world strode Walter Raleigh, tall, confident, hungry for advancement,

the son of a Devon gentry family he had climbed from

...