SAT Conference 2019 - 2 - Paul Hammer - The Essex Rising in Historical Context

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Professor Paul Hammer, author of 'The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585-1597' delivers a lecture on 'The Essex Rising in Historical Context' at the Shakespearean Authorship Trust conference 2019, Shakespeare, Essex and Authorship.
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Filming: Tim Pieraccini, Sound: Malcolm Blackmoor

[@rooruffneck]

Great lecture. Thanks to everybody who helped make the conference and thereby this video possible. There is something refreshing about hearing a scholar stick with the basics and carefully differentiate various levels of speculation. I'm not sure why we almost never get to hear questions and answers. Maybe they don't happen anymore after speeches with this organization. But if they do, and even if the sound quality goes down, please include them in these videos. After such a richly detailed and carefully presented talk, it is fascinating to hear how the speaker situations the good questions that arise. Anyway, thanks again to everybody who made this video possible.

[@werocktheplanet]

Wonderful! Thank you so much!

[@dianasitek3595]

..and to think we were told at school and university that the Cecils were wonderful men!

[@WJRay44]

Would there be any reason why Southampton was treated so solicitously as soon as James VI became accepted as King James I of England? Southampton was freed from the Tower, returned his lands, offered extensive and profitable privileges, and received back his aristocratic station. These are not obvious acts to someone traitorous to the previous monarch.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Robert Cecil advocated for clemency after the Essex rebellion, resulting in only five executions. He orchestrated James' succession and became his closest advisor. It was Cecil who got the death sentences of Cobham and Raleigh commuted and it was he who secured Southampton's release from The Tower.

[@denisekeay3614]

Robert Cecil soon developed a good relationship with James, who came to value Cecil's political acumen. However, James continued to regard Essex as the champion of his succession, so he was quick to reward Essex's leading supporters where he could.

[@denisekeay3614]

@@Jeffhowardmeade I'd say that after the Essex Rising Cecil went into major damage control mode. The person he really wanted out of the way was Essex, but - given the seriousness of the charges laid against Essex himself - more than one execution was necessary. Cecil always seems to have had a soft spot for Southampton. Southampton was guiltier than some (all?) of the others who were executed, but Cecil lost no time in going in to bat for him. As for Cobham and Raleigh: I don't think you meant to imply that their trial and sentencing was part of the immediate aftermath of the Essex Rising, but that's the way your reply reads. They were still in cahoots with Cecil, though that alliance was never going to last. Their trial in 1603 was for plotting against King James.

[@dannoakl]

One possibility might be that James had heard of Southampton being beautiful and effeminate and was eager to get to know him. James was into boys and young men.

[@billycaspersghost7528]

That`s correct. Just like Edward De Vere the Earl of Oxford, who had a choir boy as companion and kept a company of young boys as actors. Oxfords Boys who he would molest and assault attempting to slake his debauched degenerate lusts Outside that ,the point of the pathetic "rebellion" ( a handful of misguided idiots who had misread the level of support … none) had been in Support of James VI succession .So why would he not favour Southampton ?