This Week in YouTube February 9
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Hey friends, welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast. This is the weekly highlight reel of videos that I have put out on YouTube. So in case you don't know, you can go over to YouTube and watch all my videos. The channel is History and Coffee, and you can just search for my name as well, Heather Tesco, History and Coffee, and you will get it. And you can subscribe there. Thank you to the many people who already subscribe. And then what I've started doing is

weekly highlight reels of some of the videos that have gone out on YouTube that would be of interest to the podcast listeners as well. So thanks for listening. And you can also, like I said, go over and join me on YouTube history and coffee and search for Heather. And there I am. So let's get right into it.

So today we are going to talk about a woman who lived a very scandalous life. Could have been any kind of soap opera, really. And that is Dorothy Percy, born Dorothy Devereaux. We've talked about some of the other Devereaux children, her siblings, like Robert Devereaux, who was the Earl of Essex, who famously rebelled against Elizabeth after having been her favorite for quite some time. Also,

Penelope Devereaux was her older sister. She was linked to Sir Philip Sidney, who was supposedly the muse for Astrophel and Stella. These children, they lived life on their own terms. Sometimes for better, sometimes for not so better.

So Dorothy Percy, born Dorothy Devereaux, lived a life that could rival any soap opera. She made bold choices, there was family drama, and she had her fair share of scandal. She was the daughter of Lettice Knowles and Walter Devereaux, the first Earl of Essex, which made her part of one of the most influential families of the time. So if we remember her mother, Lettice Knowles, supermodel.

secretly married Elizabeth I's favorite, Robert Dudley, her true love, after it became clear that Elizabeth wasn't going to marry Robert Dudley, Robert marries Letitia Knowles, and, um...

Elizabeth flips out and banishes Latisse from court. Latisse actually gave that streak of defiance to her daughter. So the thing about Latisse as well that is important is she was the daughter of Catherine Carey. Catherine Carey was the daughter of Mary Boleyn. Mary Boleyn was having an affair with Henry VIII at the time when Catherine Carey was born. So there's a pretty hefty chunk of historians who think that Catherine Carey was Henry VIII's daughter.

So, you know, Latisse and Elizabeth looked a lot alike and they were quite potentially cousins. So there was that side of it as well. Okay, so Dorothy, her daughter, potentially Henry VIII's great-great-granddaughter. Wait, daughter, Catherine Carey, granddaughter, Latisse Knowles, great-granddaughter.

Potentially Henry VIII's great-granddaughter. She was not content to let life happen to her. She made life happen herself. She grabbed it with both hands for better or for worse. And along the way, she made a lot of headlines for her controversial marriages, clashes with the queen, and determination to chart her own course. So Dorothy's first marriage was one for the gossip columns.

She eloped in 1583 with Sir Thomas Parrott. Now, Sir Thomas Parrott also has a link to the 8th because he was the son of John Parrott, Sir John Parrott. John Parrott had a reputation of being a hothead, but also was rumored to be one of Henry VIII's illegitimate children. So I did a video on Henry's illegitimate children. We talked about him.

For another, Dorothy didn't ask Queen Elizabeth's permission before she got married, something that she was supposed to do because she was one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting. You couldn't just go off and get married without the Queen giving you permission. So she eloped. Very not cool. Her sister Penelope helped her plan this secret wedding. Also super not cool. So 1583, she elopes. It's all in secret.

Now, the wedding itself was actually pure chaos. Servants apparently tried to break down the chapel doors to keep it from happening. The vicar argued over whether the proper procedures were being followed. And eventually, the Bishop of London's license was thrown into the mix to settle things, though it only caused more trouble later. When Elizabeth found out, she was furious. Dorothy was banished from court. Thomas ended up in the fleet prison. Not a great place to be.

And as for the Queen's chief advisor, William Cecil, he got himself involved. He tried to have the marriage annulled, but with six witnesses and a legitimate priest, the union held up.

This drama would set the tone for Dorothy's relationship with the court and with her family. So then, apparently, Robert, her brother, tries to smooth things over. He's rising in influence at this point. And he tries to smooth things over with the queen. And then Walter Raleigh steps in and he gets himself involved in the drama. And the whole thing blows up. There's a huge fight. And Robert and Dorothy need to leave the house that they were staying in in the middle of the night because the drama is so bad. So...

That's weird. She did have four children with Sir Thomas Parrott and then he died and it's only then that Dorothy is allowed to return back to court and Queen Elizabeth forgives her and she kind of rises again through the ranks. Then in 1594, she marries again, this time to Henry Percy, the Percy family, the ninth Earl of Northumberland.

This time she does have the queen's full permission, though, and approval. Now, Henry was known as the Wizard Earl for his love of science and alchemy. He's due a video all of his own for all of that. He wasn't exactly a very easy partner. The marriage wasn't happy. It was driven more by Henry's need for an heir than by any kind of romantic connection.

But still Dorothy managed to hold her own. They had four children, including Algernon Percy, who would later become an important figure during the English Civil War on the parliamentarian side. But the strain on their marriage only grew, and by 1599, five years later, they had separated.

Even then, Dorothy found herself caught up in Henry's world when he was implicated in the gunpowder plot in 1605. So Henry spent years imprisoned in the Tower of London. Dorothy steps in. They're still married at this point. She steps in during that time and runs all of the Percy family estate. So she's just kind of in charge of the whole Percy family estate, even though she's separated from her husband, but they're still legally married. So he's in jail. She's running the family.

Apparently, he wasn't directly involved in the failed attempt to blow up Parliament, but his connection to some of the conspirators landed him in the Tower of London. He was there for almost 20 years, two decades. During this time, like I said, Dorothy stepped into this position of authority. She managed the estates and the family affairs.

It was a massive task for her, especially given all of the political scrutiny surrounding Henry's imprisonment. Dorothy visited her husband in prison a lot. It actually stood out, her level of loyalty, even though they were separated and their marriage hadn't been ideal. I guess she kind of thought, well, once he's in prison and I'm out here managing the family estates, I can be a little bit more gracious. And so she visited him quite a bit and would bring him things and made sure he was

as comfortable as he could be in the Tower of London. Dorothy died in 1619. It was two years before her husband was released from the Tower, so he was still in the Tower. And she was laid to rest in the Percy family vault at Patworth. So like I said, she had four children with Henry.

And one of them, Algernon, went on to have quite a prominent role during the English Civil War for the parliamentarians. So Dorothy Percy, her life was not a fairy tale. It was complicated. It was messy. But it also showed her determination to carve out her own path. She had this chaotic elopement and then she managed all of her husband's estates during his imprisonment. Her story reminds us of the fact that women were able to carve out roles and authority where they could.

And I think she's a pretty badass woman. So Dorothy Devereaux Percy, perhaps the great-granddaughter of Henry VIII.

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Today, we are going to talk about a woman who was not native English. She lived a fascinating life. She was actually from Persia, and her name was Teresa Samsonia Shirley. So we are going to talk about her. Okay, so Teresa Samsonia Shirley is not a name that you often hear in history class, but her life was nothing short of extraordinary. She was born into a noble Circassian family in Persia.

She went on to marry a Robert Shirley who was an English adventurer and diplomat. And together they crisscrossed continents on missions for Shah Abbas the Great. They went through the courts of Europe. They defied expectations at every turn. So Teresa's story is about courage, love, and bridging two very different worlds.

She was born right close to the end of the Elizabethan period and lived into the Stuart period. So she kind of goes a little bit beyond our time, but she is super fascinating. And I mean, she was born in the Tudor period. So we are going to talk about her. So she was born in 1589 into a noble Circassian family in the Safavid Empire, which is what we now think of as Iran. She grew up in a very vibrant city, Isfahan.

and she was immersed in the culture of shah abbas's court.

in sixteen o eight she married robert shirley now he was an englishman who had been sent to persia on a diplomatic mission their union was a bit of a political statement actually with shah abbas's blessing theresa converted to catholicism she adopted the name theresa and she set out on a journey that would take her far from her homeland so robert her husband had been at the court of shah abbas the great

As part of this diplomatic and military mission, he had been sent to Persia by his elder brother, Anthony Shirley, who had initially established some ties at the Safavid court. The Shirlies wanted to secure alliances between the empire and the European powers against their mutual rival, the Ottoman Empire. I actually did a series on the Battle of Lepanto, which

which was the biggest naval battle in history, I think. Definitely European history. I think all of history. Somebody will correct me on that if I'm wrong, I'm sure. But anyway, so this is right around that time when the Ottoman Empire is right up against Europe, has Vienna like right there, and Christendom is very nervous. It was actually a really big deal for England to come in and fight in Lepanto because Elizabeth had to...

ally with Catholic Europe. So I actually did a series on the relationship that Elizabeth had with the

with the Ottoman. It was kind of this like the enemy of the enemy is also my friend. And it was really unclear for a little while who Elizabeth was going to support, if she was going to support the Ottoman Empire or if she was going to support Catholic Europe, the people who had excommunicated her. So this is a period where there's a lot of movement happening with the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman Empire threatening Europe. And we had this big naval battle.

And so anybody who was also an enemy of the Ottomans was of interest to England and to Europe.

So Robert Shirley went to Shah Abbas to advise on military reforms. They were modernizing their military to compete with the Ottomans, and he wanted to introduce some European-style tactics and training and weaponry. Also, he was there as a diplomat. He wanted to act as an intermediary between the European powers and the Safavid court. Shah Abbas had sought European allies, a

against the Ottomans, who could help him fight off the Ottomans. And so having somebody there who could negotiate that was important. And then with his wife, Teresa, they became a bit of kind of like this bridge between the East and the West. So that's what we're going to talk about now. They actually went on this whirlwind series of diplomatic missions. They went to Moscow, they went to Poland, Rome, Madrid, and finally back to England.

Each stop came with its own set of challenges and dangers, of course. One of the most dramatic moments came pretty early on in their travels. They were somewhere around kind of Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and they were ambushed by enemies of Shah Abbas. And so Robert was actually taken prisoner.

carmelite monks chronicled this journey and according to these accounts teresa played a crucial role in rescuing her husband she apparently reportedly managed to save him and drive off some of the attackers and that earned her the title from the carmelites of being a true amazon

She already had this reputation of being incredibly brave, rescuing her husband, pretty big deal. So in 1611, the couple arrived in England and Teresa made quite an impression at court. She gave birth to their son, Henry, whose godparents were Prince Henry Frederick and Queen Anne. But their time in England was brief. By 1613, they were on the move again, quite nomadic, leaving their young son in Sussex as they returned to Persia.

Teresa had this reputation of being incredibly brave during these travels. Another contemporary traveler called Thomas Herbert said he considered Robert Shirley the greatest traveler of his time, but said that the undaunted Lady Teresa was actually braver than he was. Teresa's life also made her a symbol of cultural exchange at this point. She arrived in the courts of Europe as this Persian noblewoman in the early 1600s wearing her heritage pralines.

proudly. She would often dress in elaborate Persian attire that must have turned heads everywhere she went. Her presence challenged stereotypes about women from the East, and she was widely respected for her intelligence, for her poise, the way she handled herself. Robert died in 1628, and Teresa faced enormous pressure at the Persian court.

Some accused her of being a secret Muslim before her conversion. There were threats against her life, but she held firm. She refused to renounce her faith, and eventually she had to leave Persia. Things got too dangerous for her. She found refuge in Rome, where she spent the rest of her life devoted to charity and religion. It was there at the Carmelite convent of Santa Maria della Scala that she had Robert's remains brought from Persia to be buried alongside her.

And in fact, the headstone is inscribed as something that Teresa had written herself in the church where they're buried. It says, to the best and the greatest for Robert Shirley, most noble Englishman, Count Palatinate, Knight of the Golden Spur, Emperor Rudolf's envoy to Shah Abbas, King of Persia, the representative of the same king to the popes of Rome, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Teresa Samsonian, native of the land of the Amazons, daughter of the

the prince of circassia set up this monument for her most beloved husband and for herself as a resting-place for his bones brought to rome from persia for dutiful devotion's sake and for her own aged seventy nine sixteen sixty eight

But anyway, Teresa Samsonia, she was a remarkable, remarkable woman. She died at age 79. She had spent more than half of her life in Europe. She was a noblewoman, a traveler, a diplomat's wife, and above all, a survivor. So it is interesting that outside of England, she is actually remembered much more widely and seen as a figure...

of importance in her own right. In English chronicles and places where she's remembered, it's seen as the wife to her husband. Maybe that's some good old-fashioned sexism. It's also maybe because she was the foreign one and she wasn't there that long and Robert was actually English. I don't know. But either way, in the other parts of the world where she's remembered, she is remembered on equal footing with her husband.

And in 2009 in London, there were two simultaneous exhibitions which featured Teresa and her husband, Shah Abbas, The Remaking of Iran, which was at the British Museum, and then Van Dyke and Britain, which was at the Tate also in 2009, which had her portrait. So there we go. A little bit about Teresa Samsonia Shirley. Had you ever heard of her before? She's fascinating. Very cool. My life is a little bit richer for having learned about her.

Thanks so much for listening to this week's YouTube highlights. Remember, you can go over and subscribe. History and Coffee, Heather Tesco, you will find me there. And we'll be back again next week with more highlights from what went out on YouTube throughout the week. Thanks so much. Have a great week.

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