English School

Speaking out against Queen Elizabeth I, especially on the fraught matters of marriage and succession, carried serious risks, as the sitter in this rare, concealed portrait discovered.

John Stubbs trained as a lawyer and possessed an enviable combination of wit, intelligence and social connections. Born around 1541, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1555 before entering Lincoln’s Inn, where he moved among a circle of committed Puritans.[1] With friends such as Vincent Skinner and Michael Hickes – both of whom later became secretaries to William Cecil, Lord Burghley – he developed a reputation for his caustic criticism of the church. A particular objection of Stubbs and his peers lay with the retention of clerical vestments, which they viewed as dangerously reminiscent of Catholic tradition. These debates underpinned a broader appetite for reform and fuelled several pointed attacks on figures like Archbishop Parker, whose resistance to puritan concerns was a source of continued frustration. Stubbs’ family life also connected him firmly to the Puritan movement. His sister Alice married the prominent Puritan Thomas Cartwright (c.1535-1603), while Stubbs himself married Anne, widow of Christopher Sharnborne of Norfolk, sometime between 1575 and 1579.[2]

Stubbs practised law following his call to the bar in 1572, although by this stage, he had become better known for his fiery political views. There was one particular view, which he made public, on which his fame rests. In August 1579, he produced The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf, a vehement denunciation of Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to François, Duke of Anjou. His objections were framed in religious terms, asserting that it was against God’s law for a Protestant monarch to wed a Catholic, but the tract also directly challenged the arguments marshalled by Thomas Radclyffe, Earl of Sussex in favour of the match. It has been suggested that Stubbs was provided information on the proposal by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Francis Walsingham, who were known dissenters of the marriage.[3] Elizabeth certainly believed that Stubbs was assisted in his endeavours by members of her court, and when questioned, Stubbs revealed that an unnamed councillor had advanced knowledge of his text but did nothing to prevent its publication.[4]

Regardless, Stubbs was the author, and his critique was bold, personal and deeply unwelcome. Elizabeth, already sensitive to public scrutiny of her marriage plans, was furious. A royal proclamation swiftly banned the pamphlet. The consequences were immediate and dramatic. On 13 October 1579, Stubbs, printer Hugh Singleton, and the MP William Page were arrested. Elizabeth initially demanded their execution, but they were instead tried under a revived statute aimed at sedition. When the jury refused to convict, the men were retried and sentenced to the brutal punishment of losing their right hands. The sentence was carried out in Westminster marketplace, where surgeons stood ready to prevent the men from bleeding to death. Stubbs’s remained composed and, prior to receiving his punishment, declared his loyalty to the Queen and lamented that she denied him mercy despite having pardoned more serious offences committed by others.

The antiquarian William Camden attended the gory event and later described how the spectators were ‘altogether silent, either out of horrour of this new and unwonted punishment, or else out of pity towards the man being of most honest and unblameable report, or else out of hatred of the marriage, which most men presaged would be the overthrow of religion.’[5] After the punishment was inflicted, Stubbs removed his hat with his left hand and shouted ‘god save the Queen’.[6]

Stubbs continued to write; now signing himself ‘John Stubbs, scaeva’ (the left‑handed). He left the Tower in 1581, the same year that parliament passed the Act against Seditious Words and Rumours Uttered against the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty. He remained active in public life and became steward of Great Yarmouth in 1585 and MP for the borough four years later. During this period, he served on several parliamentary committees and drafted a petition challenging the use of the ex officio oath against Puritan ministers, though he did not have sufficient time to present it. In 1587, he was commissioned by Lord Burghley to respond to Cardinal Allen’s critique of the government’s treatment of the Jesuit Edmund Campion, though no printed version survives.

Beyond his political and religious activities, Stubbs also served Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, acting as secretary and assisting with diplomatic and household affairs. This role took him to the Low Countries in 1588, and the following year, he accompanied English forces to France. There he died in early 1590. His hurriedly written will, proved in June that year, reveals a man still loyal to the Queen and devoted to his wife, to whom he left the bulk of his estate.

Stubbs’s turbulent life, vividly encapsulated by the severed hand painted on the reverse of this panel, stands as a testament to the perilous politics of Elizabethan England and to the uncompromising integrity of one of its most memorable dissenters.

A Concealed Likeness

At first glance, the Elizabethan viewer of this work would have encountered a bucolic image of the three graces, representing ideals of beauty, charm and virtue, standing within an ornate architectural setting. After gently gripping the right section of the frame, they would have slid the covering panel to the right to reveal the portrait of Stubbs beneath. Dressed in a fashionable black outfit with short lace colour, Stubbs stands in a confident pose, showing the viewer a locket – possibly inset with a cameo or portrait miniature – worn on a red ribbon around his neck. A striking omission, of course, is his right hand, of which only a bloodied stump remains. Inscriptions recalling his virtues and mourning his early death could be read in Greek and Latin, and the date 1579 served as a grim reminder of the year in which his famous text was published. The final surprise for the viewer would come with the removal of the cover panel, for hidden on the reverse, they would have encountered the gruesome image of his severed hand.

The practice of concealing portraits was not uncommon in the Tudor period. Private panel portraits were often covered with curtains in long galleries or other spaces occupied by visitors, and their diminutive counterparts, portrait miniatures, were frequently set in lidded wood or ivory cases and kept out of sight. Examples such as the present work, however, which was concealed with a decorative panel painted on both sides, are rare. The tradition of concealed portraits in the format we see here, with a sliding panel covering a person’s likeness beneath, can be traced back to antiquity, with surviving examples from Roman Egypt dating to the second century.[7] It was only much later, in mid-to-late fifteenth-century Europe, however, that secular portraits with hinged or sliding covers began to flourish. Generally, the covers were decorated with armorial designs indicating the illustrious lineage of the sitter beneath, but examples of covers inscribed with personal messages of friendship also survive.[8] On other occasions, portraits were concealed by sliding panels decorated with allegorical scenes referencing the various pious attributes of the sitter hidden beneath. The process of revealing the portrait was part of the viewer's experience and a playful way to engage with a familiar likeness.

The present work is an exceptionally rare survival, not only because the original cover has survived intact with the portrait, but also because the cover is painted on both sides and was evidently intended to be removed and studied alongside the likeness of Stubbs. Together, the images formed a narrative, and this playful requirement of engagement between a painted likeness and the viewer is a curious anomaly in portraiture from this period.

Background

The circumstances surrounding the commissioning of the work are unknown, though several clues suggest where and when it was painted. Although the date 1579 appears on the portrait of Stubbs, this is a reference to the date the cleaver fell, not when the work was painted. In fact, we know from the English and Latin inscriptions on the reverse of the cover panel that the present work was created after Stubbs died in 1590. The wording refers to Stubbs and his hand being ‘severed by Land & Sea’ – his body was buried in La Havre – which is further confirmed by the last two Latin lines of the same inscription, which translates to: ‘Here lies part of thy Stubbs. Whoever seeks the rest/Heaven will hold it, and France keeps what remains.’ Above the inscription is a depiction of Stubbs’ hand on a memorial plinth inscribed with the Latin word ‘VIXI’ (‘I have lived’). The intriguing combination of multi-lingual inscriptions is apparent again on the portrait of Stubbs: to the left is an inscription in Greek, and on the right, a different inscription in Latin. They speak to his moral integrity and the courage he showed in enduring punishment for expressing his convictions, while also mourning the premature end of his life.

The two panels comprising the present work were recently subjected to dendrochronological analysis (tree-ring dating) to establish an earliest plausible creation date. Whilst analysis results were not obtainable on the covering panel due to the absence of discernible tree growth rings, the panel depicting Stubbs was found to have derived from an English tree and was likely used from c.1516 onwards. In all likelihood, therefore, both panels were probably recycled from an earlier item such as a cupboard or door.[9]

[1] Natalie Mears, (2004) "Stubbe [Stubbs], John (c. 1541–1590), religious writer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep 2004; Accessed 10 Mar. 2026. https://www-oxforddnb-com.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-26736.

[2] Ibid.

[3] For a complete overview of the conflicting points of view on this subject, see Mears, Natalie. “Counsel, Public Debate, and Queenship: John Stubbs’s ‘The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf’, 1579.” The Historical Journal 44, no. 3 (2001): 629–50. http://www.jstor.org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/stable/3133577.

[4] Mears, Natalie. “Counsel, Public Debate, and Queenship: John Stubbs’s ‘The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf’, 1579.” The Historical Journal 44, no. 3 (2001): 629–50. http://www.jstor.org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/stable/3133577, fn.13.

[5] William Camden, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, 3rd ed. (London, 1635), p. 239.

[6] Ibid.

[7] See Egyptian Portrait of a Woman, 50-70 CE, The British Museum, (1889.1018.1)

[8] For an example of a sliding cover decorated with an armorial design see Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), Hieronymus Holzschuher with sliding cover with coat of arms, 1526. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Gemaldegalerie (557E). For an example of a cover inscribed with a personal message see Attributed to Ludger Tom Ring the Younger (1522-1584), Portrait of a Woman with sliding cover, c. 1560, Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen (GK 431).

[9] We are grateful to Ian Tyers for providing his thoughts on the dating and origin of the panels. see Ian Tyers, Dendrochronological Consultancy Report 1676, November 2025.