One of the most unusual conspiracy theories in history involved Queen Elizabeth I, the daughter of King Henry VIII of England, and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. During the first half of the 16th century, Elizabeth was born to the tyrannical English king. When she was about ten years old, she was taken from Henry’s court in plague-ridden London to Bisley, a small town southwest of London, because he wanted to protect her from getting sick.
According to legend, young Elizabeth died at Bisley. Her caretakers panicked when they found her body and learned that Henry would be back sooner than expected to visit his daughter. Fearing for their lives, they anxiously searched the city to find a girl who looked like Elizabeth. After a futile attempt to find a red-haired girl, they found a red-haired boy who was about the same height as Elizabeth. This boy, whose name was Neville, was actually a friend or relative who played with Elizabeth. They took him back to his house and dressed him in Elizabeth’s clothes. Apparently, when Henry returned, he couldn’t tell the difference between the boy and Elizabeth. So, the boy continued to assume the role of the dead princess and continued to pretend to be the future queen.
Bram Stoker, the famous author of the novel. draculawrote a book called famous imposters in 1910. In one of his chapters called, the bisley boy, Stoker presents strong evidence that Elizabeth was actually a man. Stoker defends this story with the following facts:
1. In the 1800s, a trusted clergyman living in Bisley reported discovering a coffin in Bisley, containing the skeleton of a young woman dressed in upper-class Renaissance clothing.
2. Despite legitimate offers, the adult Elizabeth never consented to the marriage. In fact, she had no intimate relationship with any man. This fact could contribute to the reason why she was called “The Virgin Queen”.
3. In most of her portraits, Elizabeth has a male face.
4. Historians have described her as acting to protect England, more like a confident king than a “girly” queen.
5. A nobleman had once written about Elizabeth that “for some reason given to me recently, I understand that she will have no children.”
6. There was a marked difference in the form and content of the letters he wrote before and after his stay at Bisley.
7. She owned a large collection of wigs and wore them on every occasion she was seen.
8. Only carefully selected doctors would see her.
9. Elizabeth made her doctors not autopsy her body after she died.
Although Stoker makes a strong case that Elizabeth I was actually a man, her story was not well received by readers. Many thought the story was absurd because if she had been a man, someone close to her court would have known about it and the news would have leaked out. However, when Stoker researched the story, he met a large number of people who actually believed the story. Interestingly, those who supported the story lived in Bisley a few years after the discovery of the skeleton of a little girl, dressed in Renaissance clothing by a trusted clergyman. Whatever the case regarding the queen’s identity, “Elizabeth I” ruled England with true loyalty to England and her people and was committed to preserving English peace and stability. After her death in her seventies in 1603, she was missed by many of her subjects.
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