Queen Elizabeth I, Edward Coke and the “Queen Bee” Parliamentary Speech of 1593

Or, What Queen Elizabeth I Had to Sit Through While Men Explained Things

The biology was wrong. The politics were fascinating.

Crowned, scepter in hand and in parliamentary robes, the absolute ruler of England realizes she is listening to a lecture mansplaining bees.

In April 1593, the English lawyer and future legal giant Edward Coke stood before Queen Elizabeth I in Parliament and compared her to a bee.

In one of the stranger Parliamentary speeches ever delivered to Queen Elizabeth I, Coke droned on, comparing England, Parliament, the Spanish and the Queen herself to the inhabitants of a bee hive.

It was usually good to be a reigning Tudor Queen. But sometimes, to achieve her goals, Queen Elizabeth I had to hold her sting and listen to highly annoying speeches from courtiers, ambassadors and churchmen trying to impress her.  Four centuries later, Coke’s “Queen Bee” speech offers a rare glimpse into Queen Elizabeth I’s personality, Edward Coke’s early fumbles at flattery, and how the Elizabethan Parliament worked.

🛶 The Royal Commute Down the Thames

The evening of April 10, 1593 began as an ordinary one for Queen Elizabeth. She was rowed on her golden barge on the Thames to the strains of sweet music on her way to dissolve Parliament. If you’d enjoy more details about travel on Queen Elizabeth’s barge, or want to join her as she floated down the Thames like Cleopatra down the Nile on another eventful evening visit: Secrets from Inside Queen Elizabeth I's Barge.

But on this particular April evening, she arrived at Parliament without incident between five and six. Surrounded by her officers and attending ladies-in-waiting, looking fabulously queenly in her Parliamentary robes, she settled in to hear the final speeches of the session. She was in a good mood. Parliament had just granted her a subsidy. The chamber hummed happily.

And then the newly appointed Speaker rose.

🐝 Enter Edward Coke, Jurist Extraordinaire, But Clearly Not a Beekeeper

That speaker was Edward Coke (1552-1634), the future legal titan who would later outmaneuver Francis Bacon, become Attorney General, then Chief Justice, and go on to shape English common law for centuries to come. Today, we remember him as a foundational figure in constitutional and legal history.

But on this particular evening, he was just the newly appointed Speaker and he chose to address her Majesty and Parliament about . . . bees.

📜 The Speech That Launched a Thousand Eye Rolls

Coke launched into a lengthy oration comparing England to a hive of “little bees” and Elizabeth to its sovereign insect:

“This sweet Council of ours I would compare to that sweet Commonwealth of the little bees… The little bees have but one governor whom they all serve, for he is their King… They forage abroad, sucking honey from every flower to bring to their King… The drones they drive away out of their hives… Your Majesty is that princely Governor and noble Queen whom we all serve. Being protected under the shadow of your wings we live.”

Ahem. Let us press pause.

🔬 A Brief Lesson in Bee Biology (That No One Asked For)

A true queen bee, attended by her all-female court. Note the absence of male parliamentary oratory.

First: The bees serve a king? Really?

Second: The queen bee is not, in fact, a majestic winged monarch shading her people beneath her wings. She is biologically specialized, larger than the rest, and exists primarily to lay eggs.

Constantly. Industriously. Relentlessly.

One doubts that Elizabeth I, who had spent her entire reign artfully deflecting discussion of her womb, was thrilled at being cast as an oversized reproductive engine in a wax box.

Third: Worker bees are all female.

Fourth: The male drones exist to mate with the queen bee. If they mate successfully with her, they die immediately afterwards. Those that fail to mate are expelled from the hive at the season’s end.

The English Parliament in 1593 was entirely male and Coke’s honeyed words went on to make an analogy between the discarded male drones and the Spanish who were repelled from their attempted invasion.

👑 When Metaphor Goes Rogue

So, to summarize Mr. Speaker’s metaphor:

• The decidedly female monarch of the last 35 years was a “king”. (This misstep may reflect an error of Aristotle’s that male bees made babies. Or that Mr. Speaker forgot to whom he was speaking.)  

• All the all-male members of Parliament are really industrious females. (Maybe there is a stinging point being made there).

• The queen’s worth to her hive is biologically defined by her egg production; she mates with multiple males who then die. (That metaphor may have carried unintended resonance in Elizabeth’s case).

• The discarded male drones are really Spanish. (Are we to feel relieved that the Queen is not having affairs with the Spanish?)

• The Queen is sheltering the realm under wings that, in biological reality, are insufficient to shade even herself.

It is a brave man who improvises entomology before the highly intelligent and educated Queen of England.

💰 Subsidies Sweeten Everything

Parliament held its collective breath. Well acquainted with Elizabeth’s famous fits of temper (to experience some of them, if you dare, see:  Did Queen Elizabeth I Have a Violent Streak? and  Did Queen Elizabeth I Use Swear Words?) How would she take it?

Coke, to his credit, had requested permission to use the comparison. The Queen paused, then, had “approved the comparison of the bees.”

Why?

It is no Elizabethan Secret that subsidies sweeten everything. Parliament had just voted her a pile of money, indeed, an unprecedently large pile of money, more than had been granted to any of her ancestors. And if you have secured the funds necessary to keep Spain at bay and Ireland suppressed, you do not publicly humiliate your Speaker or kick him out of the hive over flawed apiculture. You yield to political instinct, answer sweetly and grab the funds.

🎭 The Real Buzz About the Virgin Queen

Sir Edward Coke: formidable in court, less so in beekeeping.

Coke’s speech survives as one of the more unusual recorded encounters between Queen Elizabeth I and Parliament.

By 1593, Elizabeth had become one of the most experienced monarchs in Europe, having ruled England for more than three decades and long adept at dealing with misogynistic opinions [ See:  John Knox's Trumpet Blast Against the "Regimens" of Mary Queen of Scots, Mary I and Elizabeth I]. Imagine the sheer quantity of this kind of thing Queen Elizabeth had to endure, syrupy speeches and overwrought metaphors from loyal, but tone-deaf men with half her intelligence. Convinced that they were dazzling her with flattery they droned on and on, mansplaining, while she calculated finances, foreign threats, succession anxieties, and whether she that would have to endure this all over again tomorrow.

The mythical cult of the “Virgin Queen” has left us with jeweled portraits, white face paint, and rainbow-colored sleeves. But perhaps the truer mark of her endurance lies here: a woman in her sixties, steady-faced, listening politely, eyes on the prize, mind busy elsewhere, while a future giant of English law explains bees to her in the most insulting way possible.

If ever there were a Queen Bee, it was Elizabeth I, ruling her male advisors, nobles and Parliament, surviving the Armada, rebellion, and assassination plots, and inane speeches like this one.

At least Shakespeare knew to keep the bee-talk succinct:

“Where the bee sucks, there suck I.”

         The Tempest, V.i

Absolute monarchy is one thing. Absolute patience may be the greater achievement.

🐝 There are always more secrets buzzing beneath the surface of Tudor history. Join me inside the hive! Subscribe by clicking this link —  Send me the Elizabethan Secrets! — and explore the politics, personalities and hidden stings of outrageous fortune in the Elizabethan court.