Elizabeth Hatton - What Lies Behind The Legend

What Lies Behind The Legend

The legend of Bleeding Heart Yard is a fiction cobbled together from a series of unrelated facts:

• There was an illegitimate daughter of Sir Christopher Hatton named Elizabeth. She had an illegitimate daughter (also named Elizabeth) by Sir John Perrot (who may have been an illegitimate son of Henry VIII).

• "Hatton House" was originally part of Ely Place, the London residence of the Bishop of Ely. Elizabeth I compelled Bishop Richard Cox to surrender the residence to Sir Christopher Hatton in 1581.

• Two different Christopher Hattons (both related to the original Sir Christopher) lived at about the same time as the supposed murder. The first (d. 1619) was married to Alice Fanshawe (of whom, see more below); the second (1605-1670) was married to Elizabeth Montague.

• Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, conde de Gondomar ("Senor Gondomar") was the Spanish ambassador at the court of James I of England in the periods 1613-1618 and 1619-1622 (and Elizabeth Hatton's neighbour for at least part of that time).

The legend itself is a garbled version of a tale published as one of the Ingoldsby Legends by Richard Barham. The tale in question is called The House-Warming!!: A Legend Of Bleeding-Heart Yard.

In this version of the yarn, Sir Christopher Hatton has taken to wife a certain Alice Fanshawe, who is suspected of having made a deal with the Devil so that Sir Christopher might be a success at the court of Elizabeth I. Sir Christopher succeeds so well that he becomes Lord Chancellor, and the queen even goes so far as to force the bishop of Ely to give Sir Christopher the freehold of his London residence at Ely Place.

The housewarming party at the new Hatton residence is interrupted at midnight by the appearance of the Devil himself, who spirits away Lady Hatton.... All that can be found the next morning is "a LARGE HUMAN HEART!"