The story of Esther Ingles is one of those that may never fully emerge from the mist of history – in part because her particularly skill, astonishingly neat, tiny handwriting is not a form that has real respect in the present day, but even more so if Tricia Bracher is right and her involvement in the messy politics of the end of the reign of Elizabeth I was so close.
The writer, in a chapter titled “Esther Ingles and the English Succession Crisis of 1599”, in the text detailed below (pp. 132-146) suggests that the book of psalms she had written which were carried from Scotland by her husband, Bartholomew Kello from the Scottish court to London was part of efforts to “promote a secret or not-so-secret alliance” between James VI of Scotland and the Essex faction of the English court.
From Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450-1700, James Daybell (ed) Ashgate 2004. (Other women covered include Lady Mary Sidney and Kat Ashley, Lady Ralegh, Elizabeth Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick”), Anne of Denmark, Mary Carleton and Aphra Behn.
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