Speech to the Troops at Tilbury

File:Elizabeth I (Armada Portrait).jpg

The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth made to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), depicted in the background. Elizabeth's international power is symbolised by the hand resting on the globe. Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.

The Speech to the Troops at Tilbury was delivered on 9 August Old Style (19 August New Style) 1588 by Queen Elizabeth I of England to the land forces earlier assembled at Tilbury in Essex in preparation for repelling the expected invasion by the Spanish Armada.

Before the speech the Armada had been driven from the Strait of Dover in the Battle of Gravelines eleven days earlier, and had by then rounded Scotland on its way home, but troops were still held at ready in case the Spanish army of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, might yet attempt to invade from Dunkirk; two days later they were discharged. On the day of the speech, the Queen left her bodyguard before Tilbury Fort and went among her subjects with an escort of six men. Lord Ormonde walked ahead with the Sword of State; he was followed by a page leading the Queen's charger and another bearing her silver helmet on a cushion; then came the Queen herself, in white with a silver cuirass and mounted on a grey gelding. She was flanked on horseback by her lieutenant general the Earl of Leicester on the right, and on the left by the Earl of Essex, her Master of the Horse. Sir John Norreys brought up the rear.

First version

The version that is most widely considered to be authentic was found in a letter from Leonel Sharp to the Duke of Buckingham.<ref name="CW">Leah Marcus, Janel Mueller and Mary Rose (eds.), Elizabeth I: Collected Works (The University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 325, n. 1</ref> Sharp had been attached to the Earl of Leicester at Tilbury during the threatened invasion of the Armada and he later became chaplain to Buckingham.<ref name="CW"/> Sharp wrote: "The queen the next morning rode through all the squadrons of her army as armed Pallas attended by noble footmen, Leicester, Essex, and Norris, then lord marshal, and divers other great lords. Where she made an excellent oration to her army, which the next day after her departure, I was commanded to redeliver all the army together, to keep a public fast".<ref name="CW"/> He also claimed: "No man hath it but myself, and such as I have given it to".<ref name="CW"/> It was published in 1654 in a collection titled Cabala, Mysteries of State. (pp.372-374)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="CW" /> A late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century copy of this speech (with minor variants to the published version) exists in the Harleian Collection of the British Library.<ref name="CW"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Authenticity

The speech's veracity was accepted by the historian J. E. Neale in an article, 'The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth': "I see no serious reason for rejecting the speech. ... some of the phrases have every appearance of being the Queen's, and the whole tone of the speech is surely very much in keeping even with the few Elizabethan quotations that I have had room for in this article. ... I have little doubt that Sharp's version is a copy, at two or three removes, of a speech actually written by Elizabeth herself".<ref>J. E. Neale, Essays in Elizabethan History (London: Jonathan Cape, 1958), pp. 105–106.</ref> The speech has been accepted as genuine by the historians Mandell Creighton,<ref>Mandell Creighton, Queen Elizabeth (Boussod, Valadon & Co, 1899), pp. 234–235.</ref> Garrett Mattingly,<ref>Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (London: The Reprint Society, 1961), pp. 328–329.</ref> Patrick Collinson ("...there is no reason to doubt its authenticity"),<ref>Patrick Collinson, 'Elizabeth I (1533–1603)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2012, accessed 17 June 2013.</ref> Wallace T. MacCaffrey,<ref>Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I (London: Edward Arnold, 1994), pp. 239–241.</ref> Lady Anne Somerset,<ref>Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I (London: Phoenix, 1997), p. 591.</ref> Antonia Fraser,<ref>Antonia Fraser, The Warrior Queens. Boadicea's Chariot (London: Arrow, 1999), p. 249.</ref> Alison Weir,<ref>Alison Weir, Elizabeth: The Queen (Vintage, 2009), pp. 393–394.</ref> Christopher Haigh,<ref>Christopher Haigh, Elizabeth I (Longman, 2000), p. 25.</ref> Simon Schama,<ref>Simon Schama, A History of Britain, Volume 1: At the Edge of the World? 3000 BC–AD 1603 (London: Bodley Head, 2009), p. 326.</ref> David Starkey<ref>David Starkey, Monarchy: From the Middle Ages to Modernity (Harper Press, 2006), p. 87.</ref> and Robert Hutchinson.<ref>Robert Hutchinson, The Spanish Armada (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013), p. 179.</ref>

Janet M. Green of Kent State University in an article for the Sixteenth Century Journal in 1997 states that "substantial evidence exists for believing the Tilbury oration is genuine, which falls into three categories: First, internal rhetorical characteristics link this oration very strongly to Elizabeth's others. Second, there is considerable contemporary evidence that she delivered a speech at Tilbury whose phrases, often remarked, were like those of the speech we have.... The internal evidence of the Tilbury oration provides the best argument for Elizabeth's authorship".<ref>Janet M. Green, "I My Self": Queen Elizabeth I's Oration at Tilbury Camp, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 421–445</ref>

David Loades has written: "Whether she used these words, we do not know, although they have an authentic, theatrical ring".<ref>David Loades, Elizabeth I (Hambledon Continuum, 2003), p. 252.</ref>

However, there are some historians who question its authenticity, such as Miller Christy, in 1919.<ref>Miller Christy, 'Queen Elizabeth's Visit to Tilbury in 1588', English Historical Review (1919) XXXIV (CXXXIII), pp. 43–61.</ref> Also sceptical were Felix Barker<ref>Felix Barker, 'If Parma Had Landed', History Today 38 (May 1988), p. 38.</ref> and Susan Frye.<ref>Susan Frye, 'The Myth of Elizabeth of Tilbury', Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992), pp. 95–114.</ref>

Physical appearance at Tilbury

Elizabeth's physical appearance was vital to the historical event and just at least as important as the actual speech. Dozens of descriptions of Elizabeth on that day exist, with slightly differing details. Similarities between descriptions indicate that she at least wore a plumed helmet and a steel cuirass over a white velvet gown. She held a gold and silver truncheon, or baton, in her hand as she rode atop a white steed. As quoted in J. E. Neale's Elizabeth, her demeanour was "full of princely resolution and more than feminine courage" and that "she passed like some Amazonian empress through all her army".<ref>J. E. Neale, Elizabeth (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, Inc., 1934), p. 296.</ref> That striking image is reminiscent of several literary and mythological figures. One of those is Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of war, who was often classically portrayed as wearing a helmet and armour. Another figure that Elizabeth represented during this speech was Britomart, originally a Greek nymph and more recently the allegorical heroine in Edmund Spenser's epic The Faerie Queene. The etymology of the name "Britomart" seems to suggest British military power. Spenser deliberately wrote the character to represent Queen Elizabeth I<ref>Mary Villeponteaux, "Spenser's Amazon Queen." Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana. Ed. Julia M. Walker. Durham, North Caroline: Duke University P, 1998. p. 218.</ref> and so in essence, they are the same. Her subjects would have been familiar with both Athena and Britomart, and Elizabeth's adoption of their personas would have been fairly recognisable. Besides representing the figures, by wearing armour, Elizabeth implied that she was ready to fight for and alongside her people. However, as Garrett Mattingly put it: Template:Blockquote

Speech

After she had made her rounds through the troops, Elizabeth delivered her speech to them. Leonel Sharp's version is accepted as the speech that she gave, and it best captures her rhetorical strategies as opposed to the versions of William Leigh and James Aske. In the past, Elizabeth had defied gender expectations by refusing to marry or produce heirs, instead opting to rule alone, with God and England as her soul mates. Elizabeth practically claims that she is both King and Queen of England in the most famous line of the address, "I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too." At the same time that she claims the power, she acknowledges her physical weakness and condescends to the level of soldiers and subjects to whom she lovingly refers in the speech. Elizabeth calls upon God in the speech and asserts confidence in her own faith and the salvation of herself and her people, thereby placing Spain and the Pope as the ones in the wrong, calling them "tyrants" and "enemies" of both Elizabeth and England.

If the speech is accepted as the true speech given at Tilbury, it is worth noting that Elizabeth wrote it herself. As a writer, she wrote many of her own speeches,<ref>George P. Rice, Jr., The Public Speaking of Queen Elizabeth: Selections from Her Official Addresses. New York: Columbia U P, 1951.</ref> as well as poems.<ref>Leicester Bradner, The Poems of Queen Elizabeth I. Providence, RI: Brown University P, 1964.</ref>

Second version

Another version of the speech was recorded in 1612 by William Leigh. His version reads:

Third version

In Elizabetha Triumphans, published in 1588, James Aske provides a version of the speech, reworked in verse:

Summary

A summary of the speech appears in Lewes Lewkenor's The Estate of English Fugitives<ref name="Sadler Papers">Template:Cite book</ref> written in 1595, which mentions the Spanish Armada.

Lewkenor says,

In popular culture

Reports of the queen's visit to Tilbury circulated rapidly in the popular media of the day. On 10 August, one day after the speech, a broadside ballad describing the events was registered by the printer John Wolfe in the Stationer's Register of London.<ref>The Queenes visiting of the Campe at Tilsburie with her entertainment there, reprinted in Francis O. Mann, The Works of Thomas Deloney (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), pp. 474–478; facsimile and transcript at the English Broadside Ballad Archive.</ref> The ballad, written by Thomas Deloney, one of the most popular poets of the day, corresponds fairly closely to John Aske's description of the events in Elizabetha Triumphans.<ref>Mann, The Works of Thomas Deloney, pp. 597–598.</ref> A second ballad on the same subject, likewise printed by Wolfe, also survives.<ref>A Joyful Song of the Royall receiving of the Queenes most excellent Majestie into her highnesse Campe at Tilsburie in Essex on Thursday and Fryday the eight and ninth of August 1588; facsimile and transcript at the English Broadside Ballad Archive.</ref>

Parts of the speech were quoted in the television series Elizabeth R (1971), The Virgin Queen (2005) and Elizabeth I (2005), as well at the films Fire Over England (1937) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).<ref>Erzsébet Stróbl,"The Tilbury Speech and Queen Elizabeth: Iconic Moments of English History on Film," in: Contemporary Perspectives on Language, Culture and Identity in Anglo-American Contexts, edited by Éva Antal, Csaba Czeglédi and Eszter Krakkó (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 251–267.</ref>

External links

• Photograph of a page of the Sharp letter held at the British Library
• Transcription of the Sharp letter on a website called tudorhistory.org