The Ermine Portrait

The secret of the Ermine Portrait is as wild as Queen Elizabeth really was. 

Ermine is referred to as a royal badge and both Princess Elizabeth I and  Princess Elizabeth II wore the fur at their coronations.

Historically in western societies, the fur was considered to be a badge of royalty. Here

Back then only about about 3 out of 100 peasants could read simple English but most knew what ermine fur looked like. Hence, it was often used to indicate a person who was royalty. So only royalty cound wear it. That is why it is called a badge of Royalty.

It was considered a high crime for anyone but royalty to wear ermine since it was a method used by criminals to impersonated royalty.  That law might still be on the books.

Real Ermines, aka stoats or Mustela erminea are ferocious little monsters. 

You may be thinking of DaVinci's painting 'Lady with the Ermine' but that is an entirely different animal. Though they were often called the same that is really a Ferret, aka polecat or Mustela putorius furo. Ferrets are completely different. They are larger and pesky but manageable as pets. Maybe 'manageable' isn't the right word, let's change 4 letters and say they are 'marginal' as pets, since they are at least nice and can be quite sweet. Ferrets look a lot like ermines but they are a lot larger and not at all like that nasty animal on the queen's dress in that painting in the Hatfield House art collection.  

In order to separate ermine from friendly ferrets they are often called stoats. No one has ever tamed one.  A stoat or ermine is four ounces of a mean and fiendishly dangerous 15 times a second biting machine which is not afraid, at all, of humans.They will bite you until you get away. Then they might run after you and attack you again and again and even again until the devil inside them becomes satisfied. In the ultimate reversal they well known to hunt and kill cats for food. Their teeth are long enough to sever the spine of a smallish cat  in a tenth of a second. For larger it was more complex. They would do in medium to large cats by severing all the ligaments in the back of neck until it's head fell forward. Then they would bite into the cat's brain stem about five times until it was hash leaving the cat completely paralyzed and at it's mercy. This entire complex process from beginning to end took less than 5 seconds. 

They are so vicious that animal rights groups don't like them one bit.

Most groups referred to the inhumane w a y stoats treated the animals they attacked, and this was seen, in part, as a
j u s t i f i c a t i o n for less-than-humane treatment of stoats in turn: stoats aren’t h u m a n e (Maori); the stoat is a vicious killer, and any way of controlling it is a good way .Download pdf here

New Zealanders have little illusion about these escaped convicts from the north who have invaded their nation from local fur farms:

T h e negative perception of stoats that was evident in the focus group d i s c u s s i o n s was confirmed in the survey when it came to respondents d e s c r i b i n g a stoat’s character: stoats were commonly characterised as feral,
p r e d a t o r y hunters and killers to the point of being ‘aggressive’, ‘vicious’,‘ m e a n ’ , and ‘nasty’, as well as ‘quick’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘cunning’. A clear majority o f respondents disagreed with the notion that stoats are ‘cute’ and ‘native to N e w Zealand’, and they especially disagreed that stoats are ‘basically harmless’ O n the other hand, there was general agreement that stoats are a threat to N e w Zealand’s birdlife, a problem for New Zealand’s environment, and a p r o b l e m for domestic poultry. It was not surprising then, that the majority of p e o p l e felt a degree of personal concern about stoats. Download Pdf here

They are smart, ruthless, merciless victimizers that even know the most vulnerable part of a man. 

'The ermine is curious by nature and seems relatively unafraid of people, they have been known to attack those who release them from traps and scurry up the pant legs of an unsuspecting person to grab some food. CentralPets.com

Even church magazines have nothing at all good to say about them,

These attractive but vicious little animals will tackle an animal three times their size. Here

Queen Elizabeth knew the difference between the two animals and found a way to use it for a trap. There were a certain group of women who tried to take her crown. They would always start out copying whatever she wore to show that they were exactly the same as her. Then they would point out every fault of the queen. Then it was how she would have done things better and of course it ended up that she should be wearing the crown instead of Queen Elizabeth. 

That ermine on her dress was to stop these women before they brainwashed their husbands and sons, then sent them off to be captured and sentenced to death for treason. Dozens of husband and sons had been stopped on the road to London. Having been convinced by the woman into thinking that no one liked or supported the queen and that what they were doing was actually quite legal they often openly stated to one and all that they had been sent by their mother, sister or wife to get the crown for them.  Court testimony of all these men, before they were all sentenced to death, show one thing in common. The woman who caused it all started out wearing exactly the same thing as the queen. 

The painting was just one facet of the trap. Publicity about the ermine was released to the public numerous way. She invaribly was compared to DaVinci's painting 'Lady with an Ermine'. The main reason for the painting was so the two paintings would then support and confirm each other's valid nature. Almost everyone knew about the DaVinci painting but they never saw it since it was in Italy so they never knew it was about a ferret.  They only knew that two women were wearing ferrets. So they should be able to as well.

It appeared the queen had not only tamed an ermine but from it's position in the painting it actually loved her.* Anyone who copied her this time was doomed to fail, not once but twice. Once trying to tame a ermine and the other...whoa, I'll get to that in a few seconds.  

At least one woman died from bite infections they received while trying. Another was killed by her own husband when she was jumping around and he was trying to stab the ermine that was biting her neck. Dozens and dozens were bitten and found out.

Here is the other reason they were doomed. The judges said that the law against wearing ermine, as it was written, applied to both live and dead ermine (though they added that had not been the intent when the law was written and passed). Those who were found out were arrested and tried for breaking the law. Testimony showed that each woman had pestered half a dozen people to get her an ermine and had been warned 'not to try to wear an ermine' by an average of three people but the woman almost always  tried anyway.  

She wore an ermine off and on at functions where lots of people saw and did do for a year and a half. There were several great stories about the ermine affair that were so funny they spread like the plague. The queen began to worry about it getting out that it was a trap before she had a chance to spring it.

*From this page about a possible treasure at the Hatfield house:

When you see an animal in a 1600's painting affectionately posed like in this painting it's an indication that the person's kinship with animal's is of prime importance. When that is true then animal know it and respond with affection like the dog is. It is not necessarily that the dog is a special pet. If that were the case here then the dog would be posed high up, next to her, like on a table or in her arms. (So it's not a good idea to invite them on a hunt and you might ask if they are vegetarians before having them over after a successful hunt when you have killed, cooked and are serving up Bambi at your feast.)  Here

The queen had to show up with a live ermine at church so that the word would get out. So she got a live one that was already sentenced to become a fur stole. That cute little collar the ermine is wearing in the painting was the first of three straps mounted on a short metal rod which was sewn solidly to the sleeve on her dress. She managed to get the opening of a falconers glove over the ermines head and then held it in place with another even heavier falconers glove while her falconer strapped it down solidly to the metal. Besides the collar there were two other thinner body straps that were covered by the fur and two on it's lower legs. .

She decided that it should go to church with her for the best exposure. Now church was a different experience every third time she went.  Since it was the main church and she was the head of the church once a month they allowed ministers to come from the countryside to say the sermons.

It was these ministers moment of fame. Every four months there would be one would talk until the cows came home if they were allowed to. Someone had to stop them and of course nobody else dare do so when the queen was there so she had to do it. (I even read about how Queen Elizabeth would just yell for the minister to hurry up and finish but I have lost the reference. In any case now you know why she had to.)

After awhile the ermine started to hiss. Everyone started wondered who was hissing and what for and then turned around and there was Queen Elizabeth and they would turn away and wonder why she was hissing at the minister since he had not been talking that long and she was known to like this one. They would not dare look around a second time and so they didn't realize that the ermine on her sleeve was doing the hissing.

Then the minister started to get really upset and his sermon got stalled several times. The ermine would quiet down for awhile and then it would start again. Once the queen made what it thought was a threatening move and it got really angry and it's hissing got so loud that it even woke everyone up who had fallen asleep

She asked those around her for a knife to dispatch it with but not one of the knights would dare own up to taking a weapon into church. Of course they were all were armed with concealed weapons. That is why she brought them as protection and she would never had brought them if she thought they didn't have hidden weapons.

So she started considering alternatives. Maybe if she just whacked it once very sharply against the wall and killed it that way. Then when people turned to see where and what the loud band was they would see nothing going on then turn back around.  So she smartly slammed it against the side of the pew.'Wham' and Hiss then  wham and HISS and it also screamed at her.

Then she realized she wasn't going to kill it that way since ermine are made to be smashed by huge animals as they are being bitten to death so she stopped.

That ermine didn't seem to even mind being smashed so she then put a shawl over it and it quickly shredded the shawl to pieces and then got restless again. Finally one of the men owned up to having a very small knife (7 inches) and tried to dispatch by severing it's spine at the neck but it was able to twist around to clamp down on the knife every time. 

Then she thought she could squeeze the breath out and thereby suffocate it to death by holding her arm against the wall. However when she tried she felt this incredible pain in her arm. The ermine rolled off the rod sideways under the pressure and could finally twist his head around and get what he wanted, mouthfuls of royal flesh. This time it was her that screamed bloody murder. That pressure also had worked loose the lower of the three ties and his hind legs were clawing her arm at 50 times a second but their claws are not sharp so it didn't go through her dress. It made more noise than the minister did.  

The real problem was that it might escape with the crown/collar which was loaded with the most expensive jewels there were and she made the importance of the stones in the ermine crown very public. She had added the crown/collar on purpose so that the women who copied her would have to have one too for their ermine. She tried to figure a way to actually put it on the ermines head with a strap but it reacted so violently when she tried that she gave up and made it into a collar. The crown with expensive jewels was intended to drive their husbands into poverty but not before they bought those stones and had them mounted at jewelers. The jewelers had all been tipped off to report, for a very sizable reward, any one who had dealing with or requests for those specific stones. 

UPDATE: Maybe this one was killed and the one she had at a later reception got away. I did not pay too much attention to the whole thing though I was around. To me it was like the rats I often stepped over at the theatre which were attracted to the food left there by the audiences.  Only this one was the rat of all nightmares, larger and meaner than all the rest so I would have nothing to do with the little devils, hence my memories are poor and often out of sequence. 

However, I looked closer at the painting and it appears that the painting was made after this event at church and after she had the expensive jewels removed from it's crown after the little monster almost stole it. It had rubies and sapphires but what I recall were two diamonds that were very large.

She finally got an ermine that would sit still for this. It was never tame by any means but it figure out that there was no escape. Resolved to it fate, everyone thought, it became quite friendly and would allow people to pet it. It was fine with the whole thing as long as it got feed raw meat whenever it screamed or it would scream, claw and tear at every thing and every one until it got fed. That ermine was just waiting for the first opportunity which was after over a year and then it escaped in a shot through an open door and made it's escape with it's gold crown. Queen Elizabeth had strangely grown attached to that Machiavellian nightmarish devil as did several maids of honor and half her guard. 

So they set out lots of traps that would catch it alive but they never caught it. That was near the end of the operation and it may have been because the statue of limitations was about to run out. Most of the arrests were for attempting to buy life ermine from licensed trappers. 

There were about 300 women that were arrested and as the Queen would have hastily added 'up to twice that number of men who were spared a death sentence because of those arrests'. (They actually brought in 500 women and when they knew the right women they released 200 without charges. This way nobody escaped by pretending they were someone else.) This also exposed a huge black market in furs including wool which had never been brought down. Many of the women turned states evidence to avoid prison and that split the ring wide open. They could not figure out which of the 300 women had turned them in so they could threaten them. Normally they had many men who were as willing to gut a person as a sheep and that they a lot. This time it came at the leaders from so many accusers that they could not threaten them all and were powerless.

With the addition of the ermine charges it took their crimes to a whole other level with much higher charges than what the smugglers had been facing before. The state had convicted individuals like Shakespeare s father John but never the leaders.

All furs and even the wool of England  belonged to the queens monopoly. It was to keep the price low in England so poor  people could afford wool to stay warm in the coldest Little Ice Age winters that England had ever faced in recorded history. What am I saying 'winter', it froze in July in one year. Shakespeare's father John was actually convicted of attempting to smuggle 200 tons of wool out of the country to (I think) France to sell at a higher price. It was almost 1/4 of England's yearly production. All the estimates made were that it would have caused 10,000 to 20,000 deaths of the poor due to hypothermia.  The lowest estimate being 'at least 8,000 deaths' but one estimate was 50 and another 80 thousand.  

Whatever the number, it was murder, actually mass murder and they did not get those that ran the crime ring. Finally  because of 'The Ermine Portrait' the principle members of this ring, which included an Earl or a baron who lived not far from my family's estate at Derby, got exposed and brought to justice. William Shakespeare was involved.

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