Garber - The Secret of the Virgin Queen: Cold Case: Reopened (Historical True Crime)

I wrote my first book Cold Case Reopened: Princes in the Tower, as a bit of fun, something to pass away the long hours after retirement from many years at the sharp end in the Metropolitan Police force. Those of you that read it, will no doubt recall that I stated it was my first book, and quite probably my last. However, I found that many people actually enjoyed the book, and many have actually gone as far as to ask me to write another one. So I decided that once more I would dip my nib into my metaphorical ink well and put my thoughts to paper again. My initial plan was to write a book looking at the death of Amy Robsart, the wife of Lord Robert Dudley, the favourite of Elizabeth I. However, my attention was drawn by something that I read elsewhere and, therefore, the book on Amy has been temporarily shelved and will become my third book later in the year.

I hope that those of you that enjoyed that first book will enjoy this one as well (although it is slightly different). I hope that I have learnt a little from some of the comments passed by those that didnt like it; although I accept that you cant please everyone and really dont aim to try. (I already know this line will get used in some reviews.)

I have already stated that this book is a little different than the Princes in the Tower, as I am not investigating a crime as such, but a theory. The idea for this book came from reading some articles that appeared in the press a while ago. The articles were based on an old country legend called the Bisley Boy. The legend had reared its head again as it was the basis for a new work of fiction.

The legend states that while a child, the young lady Elizabeth, later to become the legendary Elizabeth I, was staying in her manor house within the village of Bisley in Gloucestershire. During her stay, she caught a fever. So rapid was the fevers progression that Elizabeth died before the doctor had even been summoned. The girls household panicked, and understandably so. The loss of the daughter of the king to illness, without a doctor even attending to her, would likely have been seen as a huge neglect of duty possibly even treason itself. Lets face it, Henry VIII was not a man known for his forgiving nature.

The panic reached fever pitch when just hours after the death of Lady Elizabeth, news arrived at the manor that Henry VIII (who was hunting nearby) would be arriving forthwith to visit his youngest daughter. The household decided immediately that they were not going to tell the king the unfortunate truth. Instead, they chose a course of deception. They quickly hunted in the village for a girl to act as an imposter and to take the place of the recently deceased Lady Elizabeth. When the king arrived they would advise him that his daughter had just come down with a fever and the doctor had been called.

Knowing that Henry VIII had a fear of disease, they guessed that the monarch would probably not wish to stay too long with his daughter. In fact, they hoped that he wouldnt even go to her rooms, for fear of catching fever himself. However, there was a problem. There was no suitable girl in the village to take the place of the deceased child. All was not lost though, because there was a boy of similar build who had actually played with Elizabeth on occasion in the gardens of the manor.

In the absence of any better plan, they took the boy with them. The poor boy was dressed up as a royal princess and stuffed into the bed where the Lady Elizabeth had died a matter of hours earlier. The legend states that as bizarre as it would seem, the deception worked. Henry VIII either didnt attend his daughters rooms, or due to the fact he was such a poor father, didnt recognise the daughter he hardly ever saw. The king left to resume his hunting trip and the household breathed a sigh of relief.

It was here that the plotted thicken further though, at some point the decision was made that the deception would continue. The most obvious course of action would have been to summon a doctor and then present him with the body of the real Lady Elizabeth on his arrival. However, for some reason this did not occur. Once again, the members of Elizabeths household probably feared vengeance from Henry VIII. So legend has it that the boy continued his deception into adulthood and finally took the crown, albeit in the name of the woman he was impersonating.

Sounds completely implausible, doesnt it?

Yes, that was my initial thought as well.

Then I read the original 19 th Century published work that details the legend in depth (I am talking about the non-fiction work, not the fiction piece that generated the news stories) and I thought a little more. I considered who the author of this work of non-fiction was and then I thought deeper still. This was no tin-pot author looking for a quick pay day. The author of the original published version of the Bisley Boy was none other than Bram Stoker, the man whose legendary book, Dracula, spawned a whole new genre of fiction and has been a god-sent to Hollywood for years.

Stoker was a well-positioned, well-connected, wealthy, and successful man. This wasnt a case of publishing a sensational piece in order to cream off profits or make a fortune on the sly. Stoker must have believed that the legend had sufficient merit to be published, otherwise he wouldnt have risked the ridicule that certain sections of the press gave him after his release.

As I thought more about the legend, the more the pieces fell into place.

The Virgin Queen.

Why hadnt Elizabeth married in order to provide an heir? After all, the father she idolised married six times to ensure the succession. Why didnt Elizabeth do the same? Much has been written about the reasons Elizabeth chose not to marry. Maybe she simply didnt want to share power. If she married, she would have been deemed subservient to her husband, despite the fact she was Queen of England. Being subservient wasnt in Elizabeths nature; at no point did she ever see herself as the non-equal of any man. Maybe she had developed a phobia or created a link in her mind that equated marriage with death. The poor girl did not really have what we would consider a conventional childhood. Not only did her mother die on the orders of her father, but before she reached adulthood three of her stepmothers had died, be it at the hands of her father, or through natural causes associated with childbirth. Why wouldnt she have reasoned in her young mind that marriage equaled death?

But, could it be that there was a more fundamental reason she didnt marry? Something more basicsomething that wasnt due to sharing power or negative connotations with the prospect of marriage? Could that reason be that she was actually an imposter and really a man?

Just for fun, with absolutely no intention of writing a book on this topic, I looked a little closer at Stokers theory. As I researched, I was blown away by something that I found buried within its papers. It is something modern historians have touched upon, but the vast majority simply brushed over very quickly and failed to make the links and assumptions I have. The deeper I looked, the more the evidence made sense.

One thing I would like to state from the outset, is that is book is not written to demean or diminish the achievements of Elizabeth I. Elizabeths achievements are unrivalled and unmatched in history; she has become Englands greatest legend, Gloriana! No matter what this book concludes those achievements will still stand. Elizabeth I remains our greatest monarch and perhaps even our greatest leader.

This is my investigation. I was surprised by where it led and I hope you enjoy the journey.

As the investigation centres around Elizabeth, it is worth just indulging in a little basic background information on our key figure.