The world the cats lived in.  Digitised versions of the books published pre-1940 can be found free online at the Internet Archive or/and Google Books or/and the HathiTrust Digital Library.

The Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury (Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House) is a wonderful source of information, and available online, as are the relevant Calendars of State Papers.

I’ll be adding to this section over time.  Scroll down the page to check for new books and topics.

ANIMALIA

Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800 (1983).  Fascinating, but people who are very fond of animals should be wary.  Attitudes to animals often involved cruelty, both casual and calculated.  As did attitudes to humans, of course.

William Baldwin, Beware the Cat (1584).  First published in 1570 but thought to have been written in the early 1550s.  Four men sharing a room discuss whether or not birds and beasts have speech and reason.  The aptly-named Mr Streamer tells his chamber-fellows about the speech of cats and how he concocted and took a potion that enabled him to eavesdrop on Mouse-Slayer’s life story.  Perhaps not for the squeamish, but creepy, satiric, trippy, and comic by turns.  I wish it had been in the syllabus when I was studying English Lit.

HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, THIRD EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON

Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, The Life of Henry, Third Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s Patron (1922).  A remarkable achievement, completed towards the end of her long life when her eyesight was failing.  While Stopes has been criticised for inaccuracies in her reading and/or referencing of original sources, the sheer amount of her research is impressive.  This is the starter for anyone interested in Southampton.  I’m indebted to her and to G.P.V Akrigg (below) for transcriptions of, or quotes from, sources not available on line.

Both Mrs Stopes and Professor Akrigg were primarily interested in William Shakespeare, who dedicated one long narrative poem to Southampton in 1593 and another in 1594.  Neither found evidence of any other connection between the two men.  However, Mrs Stopes’ biography displays a genuine interest in Southampton for his own sake, and her imagined sections on his encounters with Shakespeare are clearly signalled and easy to skip.

G.P.V. Akrigg, Shakespeare & The Earl of Southampton (1968).  Professor Akrigg had access to more material than did Mrs Stopes, and his book benefits (to a degree).

Part I is an account of Southampton’s life.  The chapters on the Ireland campaign of 1599 and the treason trial of 1601 are particularly useful, but Akrigg’s interest in Shakespeare means he doesn’t go into Southampton’s life post-1616 in any depth.  Plus, his belief in a Shakespeare/Southampton connection leads him to look for clues to Southampton’s personal development in Shakespeare’s writing, rather than in the intellectual and political circles we know Southampton moved in.  He also misinterprets a few of the original sources.  Part 2 of the book (about Southampton’s “influence” in Shakespeare’s work) is speculative and, to my mind, highly improbable.

Speculation can be fun.  As Akrigg notes in his Preface, “All that is required is that neither author nor reader confuse speculation, however interesting, with proven fact.”  Unfortunately, he doesn’t always take his own advice.  Even more unfortunately, the entry for Southampton in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography reiterates a few of Akrigg’s opinions as though they’re facts.

In 1977 Akrigg contributed Something More About Shakespeare’s Patron to the Shakespeare Quarterly (Vol 28, No.1 Winter 1977).  The “something more” were two research finds.  The first, an early 17th century report by a French agent on the religious loyalties of several English noblemen, suggests that Southampton was of no particular religion.  Interesting (though Akrigg doesn’t say this) because Southampton’s religion is hard to pin down.  The second find was a small cache of Southampton’s personal correspondence relating to political and financial dealings from 1608 to 1621.  True to form, Akrigg concludes: “If in the files there were letters from an actor named Shakespeare, they were presumably deemed unimportant and not preserved.”

A. L. Rowse, Shakespeare’s Southampton, Patron of Virginia (1965).  Although A.L. Rowse was a professional historian, he saw no need to hunt for evidence of friendship between Southampton and Shakespeare.  His personal conviction was evidence enough.  His book doesn’t add much to that by Mrs Stopes, but there are interesting observations about Southampton’s career at the court of King James VI (of Scotland) and I (of England).

Meanwhile Southampton, who received many dedications from a variety of writers, remains an enigmatic figure deserving of a biography by someone other than a Shakespearean scholar.  Or a cat.

POLITICAL & RELIGIOUS CLIMATE

John Guy, My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (2004) and Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (2016).  The first is a biography with more emphasis on Mary as Renaissance Queen, less as hapless victim.

The second concentrates on the last two decades of Elizabeth’s reign.  Readers without a good handle on Elizabethan history might find it hard to get into, because the earlier chapters don’t deal with events in chronological order.  Worth persisting with for John Guy’s perspective on the ageing queen and the power struggles going on around her, though when it comes to Southampton, the earl of Essex, and friends, he repeats a few oft-told tales from questionable or unreferenced sources.

Stephen Alford, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (2008) and The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I (2012).  The title of the first book is self explanatory.  It’s a long read, more for nerds than general readers, and would have benefited from tighter editing, but is well worth the effort.  

The second’s an easier read, and tells you a lot about the dark and devious world of Elizabethan spies and spyery.

Jessie Childs, God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England (2014).  There’s an excellent review  of this on writer and historian  Mathew Lyons’ blog.  Plus, Mathew’s blog is full of very readable articles on Elizabethan politics, plots and conspiracies, writers, and the theatre. 

Both book and blog are highly recommended.

Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion c 1550-1640 (2006). Centered on the Browne family (Viscounts Montague) of Cowdray House in West Sussex, and their kinship and client networks.  The first Viscount Montague was the earl of Southampton’s grandfather.  The second Viscount, his cousin, was imprisoned briefly in the Tower under suspicion of having known about the Gunpowder Plot.  Otherwise, for such an overtly Catholic family, the Brownes kept out of serious trouble.  The book isn’t so much about the family itself, however, but about the web of relationships that make up what might be called a community of interest.

OF SPIES & SPYERY

In addition to Stephen Alford’s The Watchers (above), Charles Nicholl’s more speculative The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (1992) is fascinating.  But see also Paul E.J. Hammer’s  A Reckoning Reframed: the ‘Murder’ of Christopher Marlowe Revisited in English Literary Renaissance, vol. 26, no. 2, 1996, pp. 225–242. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43447518.

SCANDAL IN HIGH PLACES 

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was Queen Elizabeth’s close friend and long-term favourite.  In 1584 he was the target of a booklet purporting to be a letter written by a Master of Arts in Cambridge to a friend in London.  In fact, the booklet was a choice piece of Catholic propaganda, printed in France and smuggled into England.  Nowadays it’s referred to as Leicester’s Commonwealth, from the title it was given in 1641 when it was finally published in England.

It starts innocently, with a discussion about the need for religious tolerance, then launches into a lurid attack on Leicester as an evil genius with an insatiable sexual appetite and a propensity for arranging the death of anyone who gets in his way, including his first wife, Amy Robsart.  Given the general taste for scandalous accounts of the doings of the rich and famous (then as now), I suspect that many Protestants as well as Catholics lapped it up.

For more balanced consideration of Amy Robsart’s death (accident, murder or suicide?) there are Chris Skidmore’s Death and the Virgin:  Elizabeth, Dudley, and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart (2010), and Christine Hartweg’s Amy Robsart: A Life and Its End (2017).  Christine’s blog, All Things Robert Dudley is a mine of information on Dudley and his family.

SEAFARERS, PIRATES, & WAR

Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (1932).  An overview of piracy around the world from classical times to the late 19^th century, and an enjoyable classic that often appears in the bibliographies of more recent works.

Sir Francis Drake’s Memorable Service done against the Spaniards in 1587 by Robert Leng, Gentleman, one of his co-adventurers and fellow-soldiers.  Edited by Clarence Hopper, this is a contemporary account of Drake’s attack on Cadiz.  Hopper also includes Appendices of official papers and correspondence relating to the raid, including the San Felipe’s cargo and the division of the spoils.  Published in 1863 by the Camden Society.

The legendary Sir Francis Drake has been the subject of many biographies.  George Malcolm Thomson’s Sir Francis Drake (1972) is not as adulatory as some, but still rose-tinted.  A ripping yarn.

Harry Kelsey’s Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate (1998) is a thoroughly-researched and altogether sharper view.  However, Kelsey’s eagerness to make clear that he’s debunking myths about Sir Francis, few of which were held dear by the time this book was published, can be irksome.

For accounts of the Armada of 1588, there’s Robert Hutchinson’s The Spanish Armada (2013), and The Spanish Armada by Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker (1988; more recent revised versions).  The latter has great illustrations, with information about the wrecks and photos of recovered items. 

A vivid sense of the scramble to prepare for the Armada, and the plight of the English mariners left to starve or die of disease afterwards, is conveyed by the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth I 1581-1590, edited by R. Lemon (1865).  The entries (pp 466-541) for Lord Admiral Charles Howard’s correspondence indicate his increasing frustration with the Queen’s apparent inability to grasp how serious the situation was.  His post-Armada plea for help for his sick or wounded men is disturbing even at this distance in time.

Sources relating to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, are listed further down this page, but I’m including his sea voyages here. 

A Briefe and True Report of the Honorable Voyage unto Cadiz 1596, of the Overthrow of the King’s Fleet, and of the Winning, Sacking, and Burning of the Citie, with all other accidents there unto appertaining.  Written by an Essex supporter, probably his secretary Henry Cuffe.  The political and personal tensions following the 1596 Cadiz expedition meant that publication of all such accounts was banned.  However, this one was included in Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, collected by Richard Hakluyt (1598) and later edited by Edmund Goldsmid and republished (vol VII 1888).  A slightly different version is in Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchase his Pilgimes (vol XX, reprinted 1907).

There are several contemporary accounts of the Islands Voyage of 1597.  All differ on the details and are sometimes contradictory, as you would expect: the people who wrote them were on different ships. The naval historian Sir Julian S. Corbett draws on them for the relevant chapters (VII to IX) in The Successors of Drake (1900).

The official version, probably written by Sir Arthur Gorges but signed by the Earl of Essex and his senior officers, is The Voyage to the Iles of Azores, under the conduct of the Right Honorable Robert, Earl of Essex, 1597 and is reprinted in Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchase his Pilgrimes (vol XX 1907).  Following it as Part II is Gorges’ more chatty A larger Relation of the said Iland Voyage, written some ten years later.  

Sir Francis Vere gives the voyage a chapter in his Commentaries (1657).  

Sir William Monson captained the Rainbow on the voyage.  His version of events, also written some years later, is in The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson (vol II, edited with a commentary by the naval historian M. Oppenheim 1902).

Paul E. J. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars: War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544-1604 (2003) provides an overview of England’s military development in light of its limited resources, and the challenges Elizabeth faced as that rarest of beings: a sole woman ruler at a time when women weren’t thought fit to rule.  The tensions were compounded by her preference for a defensive (rather than offensive) war strategy.

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S ROYAL VISITS

John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Progressions of Queen Elizabeth (1823). Along with information about the progresses, John Nichols includes accounts of other events and entertainments, lists of New Year gifts given to and by Elizabeth, expenditure in the royal household, correspondence, and poems written to the Queen.  Volume III contains a reprint of a contemporary pamphlet (1591) which describes her reception at Cowdray House by Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montague and Lady Montague.

Zillah Dovey, An Elizabethan Progress: The Queen’s Journey into East Anglia 1578 (pub.1996?).  A detailed account of an 11-week journey from Greenwich to Norfolk and back:  the places, the people, and the work done by the Privy Council, who were expected to maintain business-as-usual while they accompanied her.

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S COURT

An early book about the women of Elizabeth’s Court is Violet A. Wilson’s Queen Elizabeth’s Maids of Honour and Ladies of the Privy Chamber (1922).  Although it contains a few errors and unlikely stories – inevitable when historical research was far more labour-intensive than it is in our electronic age – it’s a useful starter that often appears in lists of secondary sources consulted by modern historians.  The emphasis is more on the maids than on the Queen’s senior ladies, but a maid of honour who conducted herself well could rise higher and have a long career at Court.

Anna Whitelock’s Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of Elizabeth’s Court (2013) corrects the balance.  The bedfellows are the select Ladies of the Bedchamber, the inner sanctum of Elizabeth’s household.  However, this book isn’t a collection of their stories, but an account of Elizabeth’s reign that references the roles, influence, and occasional falls from favour of her female courtiers.  It also includes behind-the-scenes snippets about life in her palaces.

For information on any woman of Tudor times, I recommend Kathy Lynn Emerson’s comprehensive and carefully researched website Who’s Who of Tudor Women.

Susan Doran, Elizabeth & Her Circle (2015) takes a detailed look at Elizabeth’s personal and political relationships with members of her family (including her cousin Mary Queen of Scots and son James, and the cousins on the Boleyn side), three of her councillors (Walsingham, and the Cecils), three male favourites (Dudley, Hatton, and Devereux) and some of her female courtiers.

Susan Doran makes extensive use of contemporary documents to provide a variety of viewpoints, and challenges popular misconceptions about Elizabeth and her relationships with others, including her male favourites.  My only quibble is that the text could have done with tighter proof-reading.

SOURCES OF GOSSIP

Rowland Whyte was the London agent of Sir Robert Sidney.  In 1589 Sir Robert was appointed Governor of Flushing (Vlissingen), and Whyte wrote frequently to keep him up with Court news. The Letters (1595-1608) of Rowland Whyte, edited by Michael G. Brennan, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Margaret P. Hannay have been published with modernised spelling by the American Philosophical Society (2013). 

Sir Robert Sidney (pictured on the cover) was well-connected.  His mother Mary Dudley was the sister of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.  His older brother was Renaissance male role model Sir Philip Sidney, whose widow (Frances Walsingham) married the earl of Essex.  His sister was the poet and scholar Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, and his aunt was Anne, Countess of Warwick.

Many doors were open to Rowland Whyte, and he got his information from highly-placed sources.

Sir John Harington’s Nugae Antiquae, being a miscellaneous collection of old papers… edited by Thomas Park (2 vols, 1804).  Sir John is another with good sources, though I suspect he liked to make a tale worth its telling.  His mother, Isabella Markham, was a long-serving Lady of the Queen’s Bedchamber, and he was one of Queen Elizabeth’s many godchildren.  Elizabeth seems to have been genuinely fond of him, though at times he annoyed her.  

Sir John’s letters and his report on Essex’s 1599 Ireland campaign are also printed in The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington, edited with an introduction by Norman McClure (1930).

Letters Written by John Chamberlain during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, edited by Sarah Williams (1861).  John Chamberlain seems to have been a gentleman who liked the quiet life, but he was an assiduous news-gatherer with a dry sense of humour.  He wrote regularly to his friend Dudley Carleton, packing his letters with information ranging from affairs of state to any snippet of news that caught his interest.  There’s also a two volume edition of his letters that takes us into the reign of Elizabeth’s successor, King James: The Letters of John Chamberlain edited by Norman McClure (1939). 

A. L. Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age (1976).  Shakespeare himself didn’t consult astrologer/medical practitioner Simon Forman, nor did any of Forman’s clients mention him.  Even so, Rowse convinced himself he’d discovered the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets among Forman’s clients: Emilia Lanier, nee Bassano.

Nowadays the case books are available on line, but Forman’s handwriting is nigh on impossible to decipher.  A.L. Rowse may have read some things wrong and been carried away by wishful thinking, but his book provides a glimpse of the everyday preoccupations of Forman’s clients.  The glamorous Mrs Prannell  (nee Frances Howard) definitely had her eye on the earl of Southampton.

ROBERT DEVEREUX, SECOND EARL OF ESSEX

Historians have traditionally taken a bleak view of Essex as an over-ambitious lightweight whose chief claims to fame are being Elizabeth I’s last male favourite, leading a rebellion, and losing his head.  An exception is Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, who praises him in her biography of Southampton.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography offers a balanced account of Essex’s life, but online access requires a subscription.  (Most public libraries in the UK provide access for their members, as do some libraries and educational institutions worldwide.  Otherwise, a private subscription is necessary.)

Many letters to, from, and about Essex are included in W. B. Devereux’ Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex, in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, 1540 – 1646 (2 vols, 1853) 

Robert, Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus (1971) by Robert Lacey is the most recent biography.  Lacey repeats a few questionable tales and his writing style is sometimes overly dramatic, but it’s an introduction to Essex’s story. 

Paul E.J. Hammer’s The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics:  The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2^nd Earl of Essex, 1585-1597 (1999) challenges the traditional view of Essex and covers his career from his arrival at Queen Elizabeth’s court in 1585 to his appointment as Earl Marshal in 1597.Paul Hammer’s writing is engaging.  The footnotes – on the same page rather than the back of the book, always a plus – are often as interesting as the text.  A must-read for anyone interested in Essex.  I’m looking forward to a subsequent book on the next (and last) years of his career.

In the meantime, Paul Hammer’s paper Shakespeare’s Richard II, the Play of 7 February 1601, and the Essex Rising in Shakespeare Quarterly (Vol 59, No.1 Spring 2008) provides background to the rising and discusses whether or not the play a handful of Essex’s supporters saw was Shakespeare’s and its relevance, if any, to subsequent events.  

Shakespearean scholar Jonathan Bate is more interested in the playwright than the politics, but his 2008 lecture to the British Academy Was Shakespeare an Essex Man? is also worth reading. 

James Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005).  Since starting this blog I’ve become wary of any book with “Shakespeare” in its title.  So much speculation, so few facts.  That said, there’s no question that 1599 was a definitive year in the life of Essex, and James Shapiro captures it well.  He’s also relatively restrained in his speculations about what Shakespeare could’ve/ would’ve been doing that year.  In this article from The Irish Times, Shapiro outlines the background to his own thinking, and how the preoccupation with the war in Ireland might be reflected in several of Shakespeare’s plays.  (I don’t agree with his assessment of Hugh O’Neil, Earl of Tyrone, as a better military tactician than Essex: Tyrone had other advantages.)

For a quick overview of Essex in Ireland, see Hiram Morgan’s Earl of Essex Conference presentation (February 2002). 

Richard Bagwell’s Ireland under the Tudors (Vol III, 1890) provides a well-referenced account of the 1599 campaign.  Contemporary sources include the Calendar of the State Papers relating to Ireland… 1599 April – 1600 February (1899), the Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts 1589 – 1600 (1869), Sir John Harington (already noted above under Sources of Gossip), and John Dymmok’s A Treatice of Ireland.  Harington and Dymmok must have compared notes: their reports on Essex’s first excursion south of Dublin are almost word for word.

Alexandra Gajda’s The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan Political Culture (2012) opens with an account of the Essex rising in February 1601, then goes back to explore the cultural climate of the 1590s.  An aged Queen, unwilling to name her successor and considered by some to be governed by an unscrupulous few with little interest in the good of the realm.  Peace with Spain, or not?  Religious divisions, and the possibility of toleration?  The influence of both Roman writers and the popular stage on Elizabethans’ understanding of history… 

Alexandra Gajda’s overly academic style grates occasionally, but her use of a wide range of contemporary sources makes this fascinating.

The official version of Essex’s misdeeds, A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert Late Earl of Essex and his Complices…, was written by Francis Bacon and first published in 1601.  I read it in James Spedding’s The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon… vol II (London, 1862).  Caution: the official version of any event isn’t necessarily the most reliable or even-handed.  This one certainly isn’t: Bacon was on the prosecution team.

Other sources available online are The Lives and Criminal Trials of Celebrated Men by David Jardine (1835), and A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors . . . , ed. T. B. Howell, vol 1 (London, 1816).

State Trials Political and Social by H.L. Stephen Second Series vol III (London 1902) contains an edited transcription of the Helmingham Manuscript belonging to the Tollemache family.  This vivid account of the trial may have been written for or by Lionel Tollemache (1562-c.1621), brother-in-law to Edward, Lord Cromwell (c.1560 -1607) who was tried and imprisoned for his part in the Essex rising.

Eye-witness accounts of the rising, and prisoners’ confessions are in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth 1598-1601 (1869) and the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth 1601-1603 (1870), both edited by M. A. E. Green.  There’s also a number of reports and letters in the Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury (“the Cecil papers”) vol XI.

TALES FROM THE TOWER

Not much is known about Southampton’s life in the Tower of London, though snippets can be found in Lord Henry Howard’s letters to a Scottish ambassador (and therefore to King James) in The Secret Correspondence of Sir Robert Cecil with James VI King of Scotland, ed. David Dalrymple (1766).

Lord Henry reports allegations made by Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland about Southampton’s behaviour.  This behaviour included frequent visits from fellow prisoners (one of whom was Northumberland’s brother Sir Joscelin Percy) and plots for escape or worse – though we don’t know what the “worse” was.  Lord Henry Howard’s letters are also printed in Charlotte Carmichael Stopes’ biography of Southampton.

Most articles relating to John Gerard’s escape from the Tower of London reference Autobiography of a Hunted Priest: John Gerard S.J. translated from the original Latin by Philip Caraman (1951).  My source was an earlier translation in the Internet Archive: During the Persecution: The Autobiography of Father John Gerard, by G. R. Kingdon (1886).  The escape is only one part of the story.  Gerard’s autobiography is an inside look at the Roman Catholic underground, priest holes and all, along with many glimpses of everyday life.

1603: SUCCESSION

There are several accounts of Queen Elizabeth’s last days and death.  The letter writer John Chamberlain (see above, under Sources of Gossip) sent one to his friend Dudley Carleton on 30 March 1603.

Elizabeth Southwell, one of Queen Elizabeth’s maids of honour, left a startling account: hints of witchcraft, apparitions, and an exploding corpse.  Not entirely reliable, but not necessarily entirely wrong.  It’s discussed by Catherine Loomis in Elizabeth Southwell’s Manuscript Account of the Death of Queen Elizabeth [with Text]. English Literary Renaissance, vol. 26, no. 3, 1996, pp. 482–509. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43447531.

Law student John Manningham kept a journal from 1602 until 1604.  He recorded the Queen’s deteriorating health and death, and the subsequent proclamation of King James in the city of London. Diary of John Manningham, edited by John Bruce (1868).

The Memoirs of Robert Cary, Earl of Monmouth, edited by G. H. Powell (1905) gives Carey’s version of her death and his subsequent ride to Scotland to be first to King James with the news.

Anne Clifford’s memoir of 1603 is in The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford edited by D.J.H. Clifford (2003; subsequent reprints).  She was 13 at the time, and gives a vivid glimpse of her preoccupations and those of the adults around her.

(More coming soon.)

WARDS & WARDSHIPS

H.E. Bell’s An Introduction to the History and Records of the Court of Wards & Liveries (1953) is in the series Cambridge Studies In Legal History.  The emphasis is on the workings of the Court: its officers, revenues, and judicial business, but the chapter on The Welfare of Wards and Idiots gives a good insight into why the Court became so unpopular.

Joel Hurstfield’s The Queen’s Wards: Wardship and Marriage under Elizabeth I (1958) focuses more on the people involved and the personal and social consequences of the buying and selling of wardships and rights to the wards’ marriages.