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cahnBackground: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
Essex Erections: The Original
Date: 2024-01-11 07:49 am (UTC)Anyway, Abbot assures his readers that Essex was an upstanding manly man and Frances an evil hussy. And yeah, Essex did say he never had sex with her in the three years they lived as man and wife together after his return, but that was totally not his fault, it was Frances' fault for being such a bitch. For verily, one morning Essex was visited by five or six "captains and gentlemen of worth" , his friends, who teased him about not getting it up with one of the most beautiful women of the realm, whereupon Bob of Essex, and now here's the original:
rose out of his bed and, taking up his shirt, did show to them all so able and extraordinarily sufficient matter that they all cried out shame of his lady and said that, if the ladies of the court knew as much as they knew, they would tread her to death.
(Pithy commentary from modern writer: "The ability to obtain an early morning erection prior to urinating is not necessarily indicative of sexual potency."
Anyway, the other hilarous impotency musings of Abbot comes when he writes indignantly that Frances' lawyers pointed out there's precedence, because Henry VIII himself pleaded impotence with Anne of Cleves as a reason for his divorce. First Abbot is indignant on Henry's behalf. Then he says Henry with his divorces was a weirdo anyway. Then he says he looked it up, and those lawyers were lying, but because while Henry did plead impotence with Anne of Cleves, he a) said he still had many wet dreams, thus proving the impotence was just Anne-related and not general, and b) actually used as the more defining reason for the Cleves divorce the eminently respectable one of pre-contract (on Anne's side, with a Lorraine prince), and that is totally different from the Frances & Bob case.
Interestingly: Frances and Bob were married when they were barely legal for the era, she was thirteen and he was fourteen. This is is important because while the nobility did make a lot of child contracts to ensure themselves alliances and cash, the law left a loophole for the unfortunate kids in that when they were legally able to marry, which was twelve for girls and fourteen for boys, they could refuse any marriage their parents or guardians had arranged for them. But show me the twelve years old girl and the fourteen years old boy able to withstand parent pressure who does that. Anyway, at the time, they were married but apparently everyone was clear that these two kids could not yet live a married life together, which was why Bob of Essex was sent on his grand tour abroad for two years. Frances when Abbot targets her for being such an evil conniving hussy set on slandering the noble Essex was all of seventeen going on eighteen.
Re: Essex Erections: The Original
Date: 2024-01-11 03:23 pm (UTC)So to speak. *sniggers*
so able and extraordinarily sufficient matter
Riiight. Thanks for tracking down that quotation, it was hilarious.
And also thanks for giving the context--marriage at 12 and 14, wow. : (
Re: Essex Erections: The Original
Date: 2024-01-11 05:01 pm (UTC)Anyway, this post mortem fandom must always be kept in mind. Because the main reason why teen Frances and teen Bob were maried by their respective families was because Robert Cecil - who had been Essex' main rival back in the Elizabethan day and was very much blamed by the people for his downfall (unnecessarily so, since Essex did most it of it himself, but the evil advisor trope is so beloved, especially since they didn't want to blame Good Queen Bess) - had married one of hs sons to Frances' older sister, and suggested the match to James as a way to reconcile himself to the Essex fans and the Essex family. Basically they'd be in laws. Robert Cecil as the Earl of Salisbury had become James' most important advisor, so James okayed it as a good idea to spread harmony among his new courtiers. (Salisbury was dead when the whole Somerset-Overbury thing went down, which was part of the problem, because there was no one to replace him till young George Villiers/Buckingham thought he could be Carr and Cecil BOTH for James, and then for Charles.)
Also, Essex fandom along with traditional misogyny and fear of women who cast doubt on your sexual prowess was a big reason - when combined of "OMG not the Howards and their crypto Catholicism, DOWN WITH SPAIN!" feeling - why so many people sided with Bob even before the "Overbury was poisoned!" news made the rounds. Surely the son of the wonderful Essex could not help being a wonderful manly guy himself!
And then when he became the first army leader for the Parliamentarians, every Civil War era scribe was retrospectively on his side as well. The fact that he managed to fuck up his second marriage, too, was regarded as incidental.
Back one more time to Elizabethan Essex: whenever I see someone, be they a biographer, historian or contemporary, talk about how sure, he was rash, but at least he was always honest, not calculating like the Cecils and Bacons of the Elizabethan world, I roll my eyes, because: just ask poor Dr. Lopes how good a guy Essex was. Ugh.
Re: Essex Erections: The Original
Date: 2024-01-12 03:05 pm (UTC)Re: Essex Erections: The Original
Date: 2024-01-12 04:59 pm (UTC)Re: Essex Erections: The Original
Date: 2024-01-12 04:57 pm (UTC)rose out of his bed and, taking up his shirt, did show to them all so able and extraordinarily sufficient matter that they all cried out shame of his lady and said that, if the ladies of the court knew as much as they knew, they would tread her to death.
Lol, I'm laughing so hard.
(Pithy commentary from modern writer: "The ability to obtain an early morning erection prior to urinating is not necessarily indicative of sexual potency."
So, not an expert on erectile dysfunction here, but what I've read is that if you go to a doctor these days complaining of ED, one of the first things they'll ask you is whether you can get erections in your sleep. If you can, any impotence during the day is probably psychological, not physical.
So yeah, if he can get it up at night/early in the morning, it doesn't necessarily mean that he can get it up with ladies who aren't his wife--but it means he might!
Re: Essex Erections: The Original
Date: 2024-01-13 08:59 am (UTC)Another thing: Frances was investigated by eight women - two midwives and six respectable London ladies - and declared a virgin. This was met with great scepticism and ridicule. Pamphleteers speculated that surely, an actual virgin was substituted. (Interestingly, they didn't speculate Frances and/or her family bribed the lot.) But contrary to her post scandal(s) reputation, where people declared she was a murderous nymphomaniac, the fact is that between her marriage and the start of her entanglement with Carr/Somerset, there is no scandal attached to her name, or even a rumour about affairs. There is just one remark that she was one of the ladies participating in a court masque staged by Ben Jonson, and that's it. She might even have done what her older sister - the one married to Robert Cecil's son - did and not been present at court for the majority of Essex' absence; after all, she was still very young. But because everyone from Abbot in his divorce write up onwards went on about how corrupting court life is, you have even today writers declare Frances had something of a reputation before she and Somerset ever fell for each other, and some even declare she had an affair with Henry Prince of Wales. (This is something that was part of the ever more outrageous stories circling at the time of the Overbury trials, which even upped the ante so Prince Henry himself, that champion of Protestantism, was really poisoned by the evil Catholic conspirators, sincle clearly Overbury couldn't have been the first victim.) For which, again, there is no contemporary indication, no gossipy envoy letter (and Henry as Prince of Wales was watched like a hawk), no pamphlet, to letter between nobles.
Of course, Frances and Carr/Somerset were clearly lovers by the time she had her divorce proceedings with Essex. And you can have sex without vaginal penetration. (Given Carr was also James' lover and maybe also overbury's, see other comment I'm about to write, he'd know.) And maybe Frances did bribe all eight women to deliver a false testimony as to her state of virginity. (If so, it's still remarkable that Team Abbot-Southhampton-Pembroke, all of whom also had lots of money, didn't get one of these women to recant. It seems still more likely than substituting another woman.) But still, it seems Frances and Bob of Essex spent three years of married life without penetration happening. Their mutual loathing undoubtedly contributed to it. Then again: Philippe d'Orleans managed to get Minette pregnant repeatedly in a state of mutual dislike and no desire; presumably wanting to exercise power helped.
And with Bob of Essex' second wife, reminder, relations got bad so quickly hat he humiliated her in public by saying he'd only accept paternity if the kid was born before a certain date (which it was), meaning marital relations can't have taken long, either. Basically Bob of Essex strikes as a guy who doesn't like women in any sense of the word, though there's no sense of him desiring men, either - maybe he just was ace.
Re: Essex Erections: The Original
Date: 2024-01-14 02:46 am (UTC)But still, it seems Frances and Bob of Essex spent three years of married life without penetration happening. Their mutual loathing undoubtedly contributed to it. Then again: Philippe d'Orleans managed to get Minette pregnant repeatedly in a state of mutual dislike and no desire; presumably wanting to exercise power helped.
I also got the impression that it was pretty important for Philippe and Minette to have kids in a way that it doesn't seem that Bob and Frances had it as a priority? I mean, again, having kids may just not have been a priority because they were TEENAGERS. (again, !)
Re: Essex Erections: The Original
Date: 2024-01-13 11:18 pm (UTC)This is amazing, thank you for sharing!
while Henry did plead impotence with Anne of Cleves, he a) said he still had many wet dreams, thus proving the impotence was just Anne-related and not general
I did not know about this either, lol!
Frances when Abbot targets her for being such an evil conniving hussy set on slandering the noble Essex was all of seventeen going on eighteen.
Oh, oof.