Hidden Text Within Camden’s Annals Shines a New Light on Elizabeth I’s Life

Now, thanks to advances in enhanced imaging, these concealed lines can be read for the first time using transmitted light, offering a deeper insight into the political machinations of Elizabeth’s court.

Camden’s Annals is one of the most valuable sources on early modern Britain and is considered the official contemporary account of Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603). Often regarded as the most important source in shaping the image of Elizabeth I and her reign, modern historians have relied on the manuscript to be an impartial and supposedly accurate record.

This new research reveals that key sections of the Annals were revised before publication, implying that the manuscript was deliberately rewritten to present a version of Elizabeth’s reign that was more favourable to her successor.

The handwritten manuscript drafts are still being analysed in detail, with the previously hidden sections being revealed for the first time and translated from Latin into English. Here are some of them:

• Did James plot to assassinate Elizabeth? In 1598, a man named Valentine Thomas confessed to having been sent by King James to murder Queen Elizabeth. Newly studied passages reveal that Camden initially intended to keep this shocking information in the Annals, but he subsequently amended and softened the confession to say that Thomas ‘had accused the King of Scots with ill affection towards the Queen’. James had never plotted against Elizabeth, but he was highly sensitive to any slander against him, having sent other writers to prison for offending him.

• Did Elizabeth I name James as her successor? Camden’s Annals ends with Elizabeth I’s obituary, in which she is said to have named James VI of Scotland as her successor on her deathbed. Elizabeth never married and died childless in 1603, to be succeeded on the English throne by Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland. Analysis of the manuscript drafts shows that the deathbed scene was a fabricated addition that Camden did not intend to put into his history. He presumably included it to appease James so that his succession looked more predetermined than it had actually been. Elizabeth was too ill to speak in her final hours, and no other historical evidence points to this deathbed scene being true.

Image : British Library