Ursula Stanley

The most fun I had was as Anne Vavasor and I got to be one of five of the queens maids of honor (See how I became one in my QE section). I was at the same time the queen's protector (I could fire16 arrows a minute and an expert with the sword), one of her many psychic advisers, her scribe and the bard. Later as I said earlier I added to this menagerie of jobs when I became her spy mistress and acting Secretary of State.

I was so protective of my freedom that I almost did not accept the position of maid of honor even though it was the highest position a women could ever hope for in England on her own and without marrying into it. I almost turned it down because of the possibility that I would lose some of my freedom. To make it totally understood what my feelings were I adopted the name of Vavasour (Vavasor) which means vassal or a servant of an aristocrat. The middle english dictionaries and encyclopedias all define 'Vavasour as a 'the servant of a Baron'. However it wasn't just limited to Barons but royalty also.

That is exactly what I had become as a maid of honor - a servant.

Another thing about Anne Vavasor is that I never officially died, which I liked a lot.

You can read an account of my first day here in my Queen Elizabeth section.

You might find me in many painting from the 16th & 17th century. Since I was a bit of a ham I put myself in lots of paintings. It's easy to find me. In the court of Queen Elizabeth I put myself in lots of them such as in the background of this painting my head

(in a red dress of course) and my sketch of the queen. my head

My face became gaunt whenever I got stressed out and lost a few pounds but it's still easy to recognize me. I'm the one with the prominent pointed nose, prominent widows peak (when not hidden by hair combed over it), recessed hair line above my ears, small mouth and fairly small hazel eyes.

I had too many men after me and I lived a life of high drama in the exact same nature as in my plays. Does the following excerpt from a PBS special sound like my life as the ultimate Elizabethan drama queen that I professed to have been and are in evidence on all the other pages of my shakespeareslove.com web site?

The case, however, turned slightly farcical as well as tragic. Apparently Oxford was somehow later convinced he had slept with his wife, when drunk, under the false impression that she was another woman. The situation was arranged by Burghley, so the story goes, to produce a child and help heal the foundering marriage. This is reminiscent of the plot device that brings Bertram to bed with his wife, Helena, in All's Well that Ends Well. In real life, however, it was many years before Anne and Oxford were reconciled.

Estranged from his wife, [the Earl of] Oxford took up with another Anne, this one Anne Vavasor, a woman who managed to have three husbands, two of them at once. When she had a son by Oxford, the outraged Queen had the lovers clapped in the Tower of London; whether because of the scandal or out of jealousy nobody could be sure. After his release, Oxford was severely wounded in a sword fight with one of Anne Vavasor's relatives in a London street. There were other set-tos between family retainers, a kind of serialized English version of the Capulets and Montagues. PBS

I'll share with you the truth. I was using the alias Anne Cecil (yes, I later married my non-brother Robert Cecil) in my private life when I was the Earl of Oxford's wife. We had a saying that went something like this: 'a man never marries his wife, he marries the person he thinks she is'. So I extended it to the obvious, 'a man never sleeps with his wife but the woman he thinks she is'. The conflict between the woman he thinks his wife is and the person she really cause's about one fourth of all impotency among men (and women too). The fantasy creates a conflict which can block trust and hence the proper response. When the Earl got drunk he thought he was the worlds greatest lover but he was usually a failure in bed. All that was combined to became this one line 'Apparently Oxford was somehow later convinced he had slept with his wife, when drunk, under the false impression that she was another woman.' It took a long time for Oxford to accept me for who I really was rather than the person he wanted me to be hence that became it was many years before Anne and Oxford were reconciled.

I thought it was too good to just leave in the court records so I put it in All's Well that Ends Well. The rest of his moral downfall was to help him catch spies but that i will go into in a second but first read the box.

I expanded the royal court records to explain better about the Earl of Oxford and what actually happened between us about our break up using alegory. The real drama was with me in the middle and the Earl of Oxford and several others including Robert Cecil vying for me.

In 1591 Richard Warburton was involved in a dispute with the copyholders of the manor of Over Whitley (Whitley Superior), a duchy of Lancaster manor in Cheshire, recently granted to him by the Queen. Robert Cecil was probably his patron at this time, and he certainly was in 1595, when, in Sep, Warburton wrote from Plymouth excusing his sudden return from a voyage, the purpose of which is not known. It is likely that it was Cecil who brought Warburton in for Bridport in 1601. Thomas Howard, 3rd Viscount Bindon, received nominations at several Dorset boroughs for this Parliament, offering them to Cecil. Warburton was named to one committee, concerned with the order of business, 3 Nov 1601. In 1602 Cecil secured Warburton a command at Brill under Sir Francis De Vere, who in 1605 urged Salisbury to allow him to return quickly to the Low Countries. The remainder of Warburton's career lies outside this biography. His widow was granted administration of his estate on 27 Jan 1610, and the new election return was dated 1 Feb 1610. The heir was his only child Cecil, so named after the godfather. Here

Better if I explain it as much as I can recall...for now. Richard Warburton was actually a play on words for the 'Richer Warrior' who was Sir Francis Drak e who lived in 'Plymouth' and who went on secret voyages to plunder the Spanish main and so was always 'suddenly returning from a voyage' and since they were done in secret we never knew where or what he did so it was always said ' the purpose of which is not known'. Drake was married but he was ready to dump his new wife of about two years for me! Queen Elizabeth (nor I) approved of it since she had set him up in marriage to Elizabeth Sydenham who was written above as ' a duchy of Lancaster manor in Cheshire, recently granted to him by the Queen.' but you could never tell Drake anything when it involved his heart. (Note: Elizabeth Sydenham was not her real name. It an alias since the Spanish were trying to kill anyone who supported Drake.)

The Earl of Oxford and I were separated and by then it had become obvious that the Oxford only wanted me for sex, my 'Low Countries'. He even tried to pressure and then he threatened my protector John Salusbury ( Salisbury) over it and John almost killed him.

On the other hand Robert Cecil was willing to actually promote Sir Frances Drake, his major rival for my affections, for the good of the country. That impressed me to no end. Robert Cecil's willingness to make his self interests second place for the good of the country is one of the main things that won me over to eventually marry him.

The statement about me being 'a woman who managed to have three husbands, two of them at once. All three husbands were in fact the same man but two of his names were aliases. Queen Elizabeth could never have had a lady in waiting who was breaking any law openly, especially a moral one such as marriage. The Catholics insisted that protestant marriages were not legal anyway. The Catholic Church would have used a bigamist that close to Queen Elizabeth to threaten and possibly start a war.

By the way there was never any child. That is why the infant disappeared and the history books have no further confirmed record of him.

And

On 16 December 1580 Oxford informed on three of his former dining companions, who in turn accused Oxford of murder, pederasty, necromancy, athiesm, lying, drunkenness, and sedition. On 21 March 1581 Anne Vavasor, one of the queen's maids of honor, gave birth to an illegitimate son and was thrown into the Tower. Oxford, the child's father, took French leave, but was captured and placed under arrest before 29 April. Here

I had to fake my death and change my identity because of he got exposed as a spy catcher so he was guilty of murder and while I was at it I lowered my official age and that meant when we first got married I was only 12 years old. That meant on our honeymoon he was guilty of pederasty and since I had officially died when we made love he was guilty of necromancy. The atheism was when he was a young child, the lying was when he laid down to sleep after he got so drunk he was impotent.

And here:

The birth of this child led to a long-running feud with Sir Thomas Knyvett, uncle of Anne Vavasour, which resulted in the deaths of three followers of De Vere and Knyvett as well as injury to both men.

That who thing with the Earl of Oxford went on endlessly and you can read about it in my one page sideshow here if you wish.

This is supposedly what happened after 1583 when I left the queens court thoroughly disgraced:

...after a succession of illicit love affairs, had married a sea captain named John Finche, but left him about 1589 for the redoubtable Queen's Champion, Sir Henry Lee, then nearly sixty years old and on the point of retiring. HERE

It's not true. I was still in the queens employ 20 years later as these paintings show and then I became another person 15 years after that in this photo. I remained one until her death of a brain hemorrhage.

However this invented relationship had a humorous outcome which becomes an excellent sub-plot you can read in my one page sideshow here.

1/05/06 About John Salusbury.

During the time that I was married to The Earl of Oxford and before then I had another alias. Officially under my birth name of Ursula Stanley my husband was John Salusbury. John Salusbury has everyone confused and is a mystery person that people try to answer on this web page.

Let me solve the mystery now. John Salusbury was my 'pretend' husband when I was a queen's maid of Honour. They give you a bodyguard as part of the deal. John was a guard or a warder who I knew from early childhood when I lived next to the Tower and he was there 24/7. He had been a good friend of mine for at least twenty years. Some of the queens men were stationed at the tower, not just warders as it appears there are now so he may not have been a warder like I assumed previously.

By the time I had grown up he did not have to take the job as he had 'graduated' to second in charge and was also in charge of maintaining 3 of the Queens large estates. He took the job of keeping me out of trouble.

How to invent titled people (using John Salusbury as an example):

We took a person who was the last in the lineage of a title who had been found a traitor and had been executed years before. In this case it was Thomas Salusbury who was executed for organizaing and paying for a failed rescue attempt of Mary Queen of Scots when Elizabeth was holding her in prison.

He became heir of his brother Thomas, who was executed, in 1586, for conspiring to deliver Mary, Queen of Scots, from imprisonment. Here

Then since Thomas had no brother or son and nobody claimed that title (nor was anyone ever likely too want to be associated with that family) we bought the unused title from the crown (secretly) and gave it to John.

Then we changed his last name to Salusbury. Then we made all the records appear as though John was Thomas' brother. Later, his family got to keep the title as a bonus. We did this a lot.

When we first started playing house together, for about a year, John had a different surname. He was also known under that surname for work and it is probably in the tower records. Of the guards he was the second most distinguished position at the tower. His orginal name may have been John Harrington who was also said to be royalty. Then the name John Harrington may have then been used by my 'new' husband Robert Cecil.

Actually John had a different name before Harrington but I can't remember what it was.

It also states in his bio that John Salusbury was an esquire of the body guard to Queen Elizabeth which was true but falls far short of all the responsibilities he avidly took on voluntarily. He essentially performed almost all of the day to day chores that a king normally performed.

He had access to everywhere in the queen's residences. If he wanted to go into a room and close the door behind himself, such as the queens bedchamber or where secrets were kept, then that was his right. He could write draft to pay out up to 1,000 pounds sterling for things such as ships or to pay for furs which was a monopoly of the queens.

He was that trusted an individual and I don't know if any other man that ever held that position. It was what the king normally did so after her reign there was no need for another person like him. It was both complicated work and needed absolute honesty.

The truth was that he was the man that Queen Elizabeth trusted the most.

It's stated that John was born in 1561 and died in 1613 and served two terms in Parliament in 1597 & 1601. I'm not certain about that part but since he was in charge of those properties he knew the issues in the area and he might have been. When I remember I'll update this.

Since I was related to King Henry VII we made the records show that John was also related to him except on both his father and his mother's side.

Catherine Tudor was daughter and heiress of Tudor ap Vychan of Berain. She was beautiful, rich, and of a royal race; the ward, companion, friend and relative of Queen Elizabeth. “Catherine Tudor, being great-grand-daughter of Henry VII, in female descent; and also descended from Sir Owen Tudor on her father's side.” Here

He was made to be a decendant of Henry VII on both sides so any assassins would want to kill him before me. However we had the records set up so that any assassin would look into it first and run right into our previously alerted clerk at the records office who would then have him picked up and deported or else tried.

I often became John when I needed to dress and pretend to be 'a man'. Often publishers would never talk with a woman since very few were educated.

Sir John was admitted a student of the Middle Temple in London in March 1595, Here

I even enrolled in Middle Temple to learn law as him. Then I went back to being his wife when I had to attend classes and take notes for him when he got kicked by a horse which broke his hip and could not attend classes for three years.

If you think this is confusing to you, then it is easy to imagine what it did to assassins and spies.

Here is a connection between me as Ursula Stanley and my poetry which is usually attributed to Shakespeare including the famous, 'The Phoenix and the Turtle'. It's from the book Love’s Martyr which I wrote and dedicated to my husband John Salisbury (Robert Cecil). The poem was about us and I guess you can figure out which of us was the turtle and which kept rising from the ashes like a phoenix.

It was said to have been written or edited by a person that never existed named Robert Chester (that name was a play on words or maybe a cypher but I forgot the details).

Salusbury was closely connected to William Stanley by marriage. Stanley grew up with Salusbury's wife and her sister and mother, literally in the same house. Salusbury's wife was Ursula Stanley, and in a surviving letter of William Stanley's, he addresses them as his "lovinge brother" and "good sister". She was the daughter of Joan Halsall, and fathered by William's father, Henry. Henry openly acknowledged his extra-marital relationship with, and children by, Joan Halsall. Derby and his wife visited Salusbury in 1597, at his home in Lleweni, where they were "very royally entertained". [2]

This is embarrassing since I also used my mothers name sometimes. Of course I had to invent a first name to go with it so I was also known as Dorthy Halsall as it kind of explains here: but they think I am a different daughter of Henry Stanley.

the name that most frequently appears in the acrostics is that of Dorothy Halsall. Brown writes:

in the lyrics addressed to [Dorothy Halsall] a warmth of passion appears which suggests that Sir John found her a thoroughly fascinating person. Dorothy was the natural daughter of Henry Stanley, fourth earl of Derby, by Joan Halsall of Knowsley [Stanley's home], and was accordingly a sister-in-law of Sir John Salusbury.

Dorothy Halsall was another daughter by Joan Halsall and Henry Stanley, who also lived at the Derby estate of Knowsley (she kept the Halsall name while her sister Ursula adopted her father's). [4]

I did have a sister but her name was not Dorothy. Dorothy Stanley was also me. You can prove it yourself since there is not a Dorthy Stanley listed as a daughter in my father bio.

This next person got pretty close to the truth:

Gwyn Williams, "Shakespeare's Phoenix," National Library of Wales Journal 22.3 (Summer 1982): 277-81, identifies the turtledove as Sir John Salusbury and his phoenix as Dorothy Halsall, his sister-in-law, on the basis of acrostic poems in MS Christ Church 184 . Here

They just read the account and assumed Dorthy was my sister and not me. This is what started my using other names besides Ursula Stanley. Not quite.

First I called myself Stallion when I was four and everyone else had to call me that until I found out what it was and that there was a difference. Then my name became horse for a long time.

By the way I wrote the above poem and guess who signed their poetry by encrypting their name in the poems?

Where my name (Dorthy Halsall) can be found in my work is in cryptography here:

William F. Friedman in his Shakespearean Ciphers Examined discusses an acrostic similar to what John Davies had performed [1]:

We have already remarked that acrostics were popular in Elizabethan literature; it should also be stressed that spelling in those days was erratic. Sir John Salusbury, 1566-1612 who was as devoted to acrostics as he was to a lady called Dorothy Halsall, enfolded her name in poem after poem [citing Bryn Mawr College Monographs, vol. XIV, 1913]. One of them runs [with critical letters shown as underlined]:

Tormented heart in thrall, Yea thrall to love,
Respecting will, Heart-breaking gaine doth grow,
Ever DOLOBELIA, Time will so proue,
Binding distress, O gem wilt thou allowe,
This fortune my will Repose-lesse of ease,
Vnlesse thou LEDA, Over-spread my heart,
Cutting all my ruth, dayne Disdaine to cease,
I yield to fate, and welcome endles Smart.

This, with occasional irregularities, conceals the name CUTBERT (Dorothy s husband) reading the initial letters upwards from the seventh line, and the two parts of the name DOROTHY HALSALL as the letters on either side of the break in the middle of each line; the initials I.S. (for John Salusbury) appear as the first letter of the first word and the first letter of the last word in the final line. . .In all, Salusbury uses six different versions of his own name in various acrostic signatures; spells the name Francis as Fransis wherever it suits him; regards I and IE as interchangeable with Y; and replaces J's with I's or I's with J's according to whim.

I'll try to recall which plays I put my name in using ciphers.

Here is the proof that I changed my identity. This account says that Ursula Stanley died in 1591 but this one says it was in 1636. The second date of 1636 is when I actually died and that date comes from this:

The record of administration of her (Ursula Stanley) estate, as of the town of Denbigh, is dated 9th May 1636. They had four sons and three daughters. Henry, the eldest and only surviving son, was created a baronet, as of Lleweni, 10^th November 1619, and died 2nd August 1632. His only surviving son was Sir Thomas Salusbury, author of “Joseph," a poem (1636)—who died in 1643 [n3The Bibliographers overlook that Sir John Salisbury has a longish poem prefixed to Eromena, 1632, folio.. Here

When I died the second time (and not like the first time) it was no longer necessary to keep my identity a secret so my real name was made public. The other listing of my death as being in 1591 is from when I had to change my identity because the Spanish wanted to murder me for writing the play The Tempest. It was about the defeat of the Spanish Armada and it was said by most including Sir Francis Drake that the play was so humiliating that it alone is what kept the Spanish from ever coming back (so I guess writing it was worth changing my name for).

also used the alias of Mary Rogers who was supposedly married to Sir John Harrington was known as Queen Elizabeth I's 'saucy Godson'. He was actually my husband Robert Cecil Rcecilakaharrington

and he was both fresh (both fun and interesting) and he remained fresh until he died.

Sir John Harrington's bio is a hilarious invention along with those letters and books it tells about. It's one of my better created bios which was in my mind and is now in yours. And don't forget the toilet was actually Robert Cecil's invention.

Click on my Mary Rogers picture for a big version and compare the other faces of me. This is the 2nd of the 4 Marcus Gheeraerts paintings of me on this page. The interesting thing that this one is right next to another of his painting of me on this page yet nobody even seems to notice that they are the same person, me. Drop down to this painting and this one he made of me when I was preggers and in the same dress.

Notice the first painting is said to be of an 'unknown woman' but they think they knoew who teh second woman is, Anne Pope. Strange how nobody sat and matched up these paintings as I probably added millions to their total value (because they cross confirm that they were all painted by Marcus Gheeraeerts). I'll take 10% of that added value as my fee. And if it gets known that the paintings are of the Bard/Lady Cecil and not unknown of an unknown woman then it's going to increase their value by probably 3X or more pretty quickly.

Notice that the Harrington bio is mostly opinions. That's to lend the high drama of a Bard's play and to prevent boredom. In the queens court, the records had to be highly factual and without either opinion or gossip. Unless I invented them. Then in that case they are usually totally outlandish so nobody in their right mind would confuse them with reality.

You are not going to tell me that eveyone now believes those records, are you?

You might notice one important thing. There is not a single link to a single member of his family including me. Did you read this?

Born in 1561 at Kelston, near Bath, son of John Harrington and his second wife, Isabella Markham. John Harrington, the elder, acquired considerable estates by marrying Etheldreda, a natural dau. of Henry VIII, and after his wife's death he was attached to the service of the Princess Elizabeth. He married Isabella Markham, one of her ladies, and on Mary's accession he and his wife were imprisoned in the Tower with the princess. John the elder was fined £1,000 for conveying a letter to Elizabeth from one of her friends while they were in prison. When Elizabeth became Queen she never forgot the loyalty of Harrington and in recognition of it she became godmother to the young John.Here
Did you notice that his fathers first wife, Etheldreda, was the natural daughter of Henry VIII JUST LIKE QUEEN ELIZABETH WAS? Since his father, John sr. and his new wife Isabella Markham were put in the tower with Princes Elizabeth that meant Isabella was Etheldreda (who had not died) and that Queen Mary was imprisonng the competition, her sisters, and she was one of them.

The spies realized that my husband John Harrington was the grandson of Henry VIII and nephew of Queen Elizabeth, not her godson. So the assassins had to kill them all first before they got to me since John and all those invented children were in line for the throne of England and also they were right at the very top of the suddenly much longer, list.

However their was a near tie for the kingdom. As Ursula Stanley I was also pretending to be married to John Salusbury who was another name for John Harrington. Salusbury's mother was Catherine Tudor was also of descent from King Henry VII except he was through both parents. (In fact that means that he should have been king.)

It was to confuse spies and make problems for them if they wanted to murder all the heirs to the throne of England. They would have been in real trouble if they had ever managed to track any of those children down. Those15 children would have probably killed them first. There were actually over 30 'children' who were mainly English spies who were using the name as an alias and they were often quite deadly. They always looked over their shoulders often anyway so they were a trap for catching assassins and spies. Did it work? Devistatingly well. Completely destroyed the Netherland's network and Portugal's network in England. Those were big ones that evaporated one night.

The Spanish spies that followed any of them kept having one accident after another, and then after another but they kept on until we nabbed them all but I won't say exactly how.

That was the main purpose for their almost queen mother and them as well. The fact that there are no links to the family members should give it away. Another give away is that there are 11 boys and only 4 girls since the spies were mostly men.

Other names I have been known as the Persian Lady. If you like the sonnets then this Lady should pretty much connect the dots and remove the doubts for you. The Persian Lady is a mystery to most but it's just an amusing multimedia presentation of a sonnet. Here is half of what it is about. Here is a really big version of the entire painting.

The whole thing was part of a masque, the meaning of which is described below about one page down here when I was dressed similarly and known as Lady Elizabeth Pope.

Robert Cecil had a secret identity as Sir William Pope of Wroxton, later 1st Earl of Downe and I as Lady Elizabeth Pope.

It was all an invention. The Earl of Downe (created 1628) is a barony that was created from the Pope of Wilcote (created 1611) and not Pope of Wroxton. Besides that was in Ireland (extinct 1668), no where near Wroxton England.

You may question those other paintings but you can't deny that this is the same person as in the above painting of Anne Vavasor. Do you notice anything about this 1615 painting of Lady Elizabeth Pope which seems unusual to you? I mean besides the fact that it's an older Anne Vavasour?

Yes, it is highly unusual for a corpse to look that great for 24 years since Anne Stanley (my real name) was supposed to have died twice once in 1591 but I mean other than that which is obvious. Come on, I put a couple of things that give it away for you to figure out. Think the Bard and double entendres like the word 'masque' (see Persian Lady above).

The text for this picture is below

She may be wearing a costume that relates to a masque – a court entertainment participated in by aristocrats. Her draped black cloak, or mantle, embroidered (like her hat) with pearls in a pattern of ostrich feathers, has classical precedents.

The clothing was a double entendre. Though dressed as an actor for one of King's masque performance the other meaning of the word masque is a device that is worn for hiding your identity from others. I had this painting made in part to hide my identity as disinformation' claiming I was someone else.

I'm am also partially nude and this was not done in English paintings especially not matronly aristocrats which even the French did not allow (and they allowed almost everything else). I'll tell why I was partly nude. I was very famous for the size of my breasts. (In my husbands trading company I was known as two ton Anne.) My huge breasts had migrated south in 35 years of breast feeding my own and wet nursing other's children but they were not nearly to the equator as they appear to be in this painting. The five extra inches of sag was added to hide my identity. I was pretending to be my own younger sister, and for awhile also as my niece, so my much higher breasts proved to any spy that I could not possibly be the same woman as the one in this painting. Proof positive they were about to assassinate the wrong person.

Then the plays made it too hot again so about 1615 and I became Lady Elizabeth Pope and played the part of the sister of Sir William Pope of Wroxton.

Remember that I was also supposedly both Robert Cecil's wife and his sister who had been married to the Earl of Oxford and according to the gossip we were married and living in sin.

Who took my place as Lady Anne Pope the wife of Sir William Pope? She died, supposedly. However to confuse spies and assassins...

..my daughter became me complete with pearls which I am often covered with.

daughter Anne

My very shy daughter Jane (or Frances) named after my own mother. She began her acting career in 1615 by playing the part of the young second wife of Sir William Pope who was also named Lady Ann Pope or was she supposed to be his unknown daughter? When this happened I became his sister Elizabeth which you read about above.

It was mainly to provide even more confusion for assassins. The proof of this fantastic sounding claim of mine is also on the same page.

The painting was in the same family collection, latterly at Wroxton Abbey until sold in 1933, as the portrait of the sitter's sister-in-law Elizabeth Pope (Tate T00067).Here

So it's not that fantastic and since it's is in the history books it's not even my claim. It's actually the claim of England's department of government records.

Are you more confused? Imagine how confused the assassins were. We had Spanish spies asking the doorman at the front door for the other Lady Anne Pope with the large protruding breasts. To confuse it more the pearls she held were a trademark of mine as in the next painting of me..

This is the 4th Marcus Gheeraerts painting of me and it is one of several paintings that I had Marcus make simultaneously in 1596 when I was very pregnant with Jane. There are two more Marcus Gheeraerts paintings of me around somewhere.

The man who wrote this next article is incredibly observant and isn't being paid enough. Most people miss so many things but he caught every thing I was trying to project except how incredibly happy I was. He came very close on that too.

Nothing in his oeuvre is more haunting than Portrait of an Unknown Lady. She is festooned unashamedly with pearls, which dance around her dark hair, dangle from her blanched forehead, curl round her neck and hang like plump white fruits from her ear-lobes.

Gheeraerts clearly intended an erotic frisson, and the lady’s smile may convey a tacit acknowledgment of her delight in display.

Authors note: Notice that this painting is said to be of an 'unknown woman' but they Lady Anne Hopton Pope is the lady in the next painting (scroll down) who is also identically pregnant and is wearing the same dress with a different collar. However both of these have lost value since they have never been confirmed to be Marcus Gheeraert originals.

Strange how nobody sat and matched up these paintings as I have since it probably adds several million dollars to their total value (because now the two paintings cross confirm each other and comes close to proving they were all painted by Marcus Gheeraeerts). I'll take 10% of that added value as my fee. And if it gets known that the paintings are of the Bard/Lady Cecil and they are not of an unknown woman then it's going to increase their value by probably 3X or more quickly. You can read why we had Marcus make so many paintings on this page about Hatfield House (it had to do with the plague and getting that nerd out of London since he would have stayed in London until he caught it).

I don't think there is a woman alive today of authority in government or the entertainment industry who exudes such eroticism when they are almost 8 months pregnant. However, 400 years ago there was never any doubt among European royalty that there was one person in England who did. However, it probably took some help. Marcus Gheeraerts was such an incredible artist that you could simply ask him to include certain emotions and he would 'cover the difference' if they were not there or were not strong at that time. This wasn't photography and he was a true artist so his paintings did not lie and you couldn't pay him enough to get him to paint in what wasn't there usually.

England was quite lucky to have Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger.

Truthfully, I felt that everything that I had done before my pregnancy and the birth of my child was noting more than mediocrity.

Now compare that dress with this next one.

Look at this Marcus Gheeraerts the younger painting of me with William , Frances and Catherine Cecil. (They are the right age and the right order.)

The sitter for this painting is one of my other aliases, Lady Anne (Hopton) Pope of Wroxton.

This page is of the painting in this National Painting Gallery pdf which was made of me in 1596 when I was pregnant. They are right about it being made by the best painter around Marcus Gheeraerts but just scroll up a page here and compare the details of the dress and you will see that it is the same dress except for the collar which was changed. (This was what was known as a 'second painting'. There is also a third one in this set that remember commissioning at the same time.)

B me under paste

ring the full size painting up in a separate window so you can compare the dresses directly but please ignore the changed faces. What is the matter with their faces? Why does it looks like a five year old painted the faces? **

I remember my husband Robert Cecil having a water based paste like mud put on our faces to disguise us. Notice there is great detail and color variation as well as great shading in every other part of the painting except the faces which are expressionless and a non detailed pink or red pastel. You can see such detail as the design of the filigree in my collar and the creases in the curtain but I have no eyelids at all. William Cecil

Poor William, the only thing that penetrates that muck on his face are my tiny eyes, pointed nose and his shallower-than-mine widows peak.

That is just a temporary paste that was supposed to get wiped off when Robert caught all the Spanish assassins that were running around the Hertfordshire countryside. (Every time he tried they ran off to the midlands where they would hide and he never found out where so the paste stayed on.)

If they would just wipe that stuff off they would find the long lost wife and children of Robert Cecil. HIDDEN TREASURE ALERT! It would make that nearly worthless painting a much more valuable piece of art.

I think this may be an incorrect assumption. Marcos did the same thing as DaVince and that was experiment. Da Vince tried different stucco's and some fell off. Marcus tried different coloring agents. I think he may have used a vegetable dye for the flesh tones. Then over time the reds and yellows faded out leaving me with a blue face like in the other painting that I had made at the same time this one was. Just go down here to this one. You can see it is preggers me with the same dress with just a different collar. I'm just as pregnant but it was made with out my children. (I had a third one also made.) Now on this one with my children, it looks like somebody tried to correct the color on the face by repainting those parts. So that might not be a water soluble paint. So it's best not to try to remove it from the faces. (I do recall we did covered some paintings with a paste to disguise it. It may have been a different one. I can't recall having it removed the paste but it probably was removed eventually. I'll probably sort these memories our after awhile. After 400 years I ocassionaly get my memories mixed up.) By the way I never was that blue faced in my life.

This may be the one that Robert had covered with a water based paint Then he decided that it was still to dangerous to leave out where people could see it even with that paint on it because it showed how many children we had and their difference in ages. So he stored it but I did not know where. That is the last time I can recall seeing that painting. He died or was killed about that time, that's the truth. So it could very well be the one I think it is and indeed has a water based paste on it. There is one easy way to know. That paste was a lot thicker and may have been used for frescoes. (An oil based paint would be a lot thinner.)
This is the one. By the time the threat of assassination had disappeared my children were grown up and it brought back such bad memories especially because it was associated with Roberts death that I ignored it. Robert did everything to protect us leaving himself vulnerable and King James essentially abandoned us all to assassins.

The historical records say that Robert died of scurvy, but good God how does a person die of scurvy who eats normal food, especially on the 24 of May. That is when Vitamin C loaded fresh fruit same into season and was in everyone's diet. Robert Cecil went to check on workers that did not show up. It only happened about once a year so there was a real concern when on supervisor did not show up. He had either smallpox or an African virus.

When Robert returned a day or two later the man and his entire family of 7 had all died so he left town so that we would not also die.

Such an advanced case left him with weeping tumours

The high lethality as well as the symptoms were very similar to Ebola. There were lots of hemorhagic fevers (like Ebola) from Africa. There are many hemorhagic fevers. They combine in African animals to produce new ones so the more animals there are the more types of fevers there aree. The kinds of hemorhagic fevers is almost square the number large animals in Africa. When you double the animals then you almost quadruple of kinds of hemorhagic fevers that pop up. Before the gun went to Africa there used to about 5 times the number of animals and 20 times the number of large animals as there are today. The Hemorhagic fever outbreaks would occur in England in the spring time since the infected lice and birds would migrate from Africa so people like Robert who died in May often had very strange symptom of unknown diseases. Those small epidemics almost always ended by July when the African ticks died out due to the milder weather. However, it could have been a rare but 100% deadly form of Smallpox. I am not certain even now what caused his death. (I explain this quandary of recall on my page about the errors I can accidentally make here.)