Life of Elizabeth I (54 page)

In July 1576, the Earl of Essex returned to duty in Ireland. His marriage was foundering and he had quarrelled with Leicester over Lettice. Two months later, when he and several other people fell ill with dysentery in Dublin Castle, he concluded that he had been poisoned with 'some evil' in his drink. Neither he nor anyone else at the time 
suggested that Leicester was responsible. After Essex died on 22 September, Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, ordered an immediate post-mortem, but, as he reported in detail to the Council, there was no evidence of foul play, nor did the doctors who had attended Essex believe that he had died of anything other than natural causes.

Essex was succeeded in his title by his nine-year-old son, Robert Devereux. The dying Earl had sent a message to the Queen hoping 'it will please Your Majesty to be as a mother to my children', especially his son, who would now be dependent on her. Elizabeth cancelled the debts the boy had inherited and gave his wardship to Lord Burghley, who had brought Robert up in his own household since the age of six. The young Essex was presented to the Queen that year at Cecil House in London. His mother, Lettice, had retired to her father's house near Oxford, her other children having, according to her husband's last wishes, been sent to live with the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon at Ashby-de-la-Zouche in Leicestershire.

Another boy who was much in Elizabeth's thoughts at this time was her fifteen-year-old godson, John Harington. His parents had served her well: Sir John Harington had been one of her father's courtiers and had later acted as an intermediary between Elizabeth and Admiral Thomas Seymour. In 1554, after Wyatt's rebellion, when Elizabeth was sent to the Tower, he and his wife, Isabella Markham, were both imprisoned on suspicion of being in league with her. Their loyalty was rewarded when Elizabeth came to the throne: Isabella was appointed a lady in waiting, and in 1561 the Queen stood godmother to the Haringtons' eldest son.

Young John was a bright, intelligent and creative boy, with a dry sense of humour that came to appeal to Elizabeth. Her first surviving letter to him dates from 1576, when he was still a schoolboy at Eton College. Obviously she thought it was time he started taking an interest in public affairs, for she enclosed a copy of her closing speech to Parliament, in which she had expressed her preference for the single life. She wrote:

Boy Jack, I have made a clerk write fair my poor words for thine use, as it cannot be such striplings have entrance into Parliament assembly as yet. Ponder them in thy hours of leisure, and play with them till they enter thy understanding; so shall thou hereafter, perchance, find some good fruits hereof when thy godmother is out of remembrance. And I do this because thy father was ready to serve and love us 111 trouble and thrall.

Later on, Harington came to court, and his letters and published writings would become some of the richest sources of information about the Queen's later years.

During the past months, Elizabeth's relations with Archbishop Grindal had rapidly deteriorated. In the autumn of 1576, she summoned him before her and commanded him to ensure that all Puritan forms of worship were suppressed. Grindal, a Puritan himself, could not in his conscience obey her, and in the weeks that followed prepared a written defence of his objections.

In December he gave it to Leicester to submit to the Queen, but Elizabeth was most displeased by it. She barred the Archbishop from court, and all communication between them was conducted through Leicester. When the Earl, who was sympathetic towards the Archbishop's viewpoint, tried to suggest a compromise, neither Elizabeth nor Grindal would give way. Thus a deadlock was reached, which lasted until the following spring.

In May 1577, the Queen asked Archbishop Grindal one final time if he would prohibit Puritan practices within the Church. He refused, and begged to remind Her Majesty that she too was mortal and would have to answer for her actions at God's judgement seat. He declared that he would rather 'offend an earthly majesty than the heavenly majesty
of
God'. Mortified at his continuing defiance, Elizabeth placed the Archbishop under house arrest at Lambeth Palace, thus effectively preventing him from exercising his authority as Primate of England. She also ordered Burghley to command her bishops, in her name, to suppress all forms of Puritan worship.

In taking such a stand, the Queen was demonstrating that it was she, the Supreme Governor, and not the Archbishop, who was the ultimate authority in the Anglican Church. Even so, her councillors thought she was unfair to Grindal, and spoke up in his defence, urging her to treat him with greater moderation. If the Archbishop persisted in his stubborn attitude, she raged, he must be deprived of his See. In the event, thanks to the intercession of Leicester and others, he remained in office, but the Queen never again permitted him to carry out any of his archiepiscopal duties. For the next five years, therefore, the Church of England was effectively without a spiritual leader, and Elizabeth gave orders directly to her bishops. Her actions rebounded against her in the long run, however, for they only served to weaken the Church and give impetus to the Puritan movement.

Although Sir Christopher Hatton's enemies were of the opinion that his chief talents lay in dancing and jousting, Elizabeth recognised that he had real abilities that could be put to good use. He also shared her 
contempt for Puritanism and, anticipating that he would back her in her stand against Grindal's supporters, she knighted him, made him Vice- Chamberlain of her household, and appointed him to her Council on 11 November 1577.

In February 1576, Philip II had sent an envoy, the Sieur de Champigny, to Elizabeth to ask her, quite candidly, if she intended to give aid to his Protestant rebels in future. After keeping the envoy waiting for two weeks, she evaded giving him an answer, and complained instead that Philip had not written to her, which she found most hurtful. She added that Spain's attempt to establish absolute dominion in the Low Countries was intolerable to her; her beloved father would not have tolerated it, and she, though a woman, 'would know how to look to it'. However - and here she had smiled mischievously - she had a great personal liking for King Philip. Poor de Champigny withdrew in a state of bewildered perplexity.

Elizabeth was still keeping up the pretence that she was contemplating marrying the Duke of Alencon, if only to give Philip pause for thought, but by the spring of 1576, even she had to concede that the project was moribund. 'No one thing hath procured her so much hatred abroad as these wooing matters,' observed an exasperated Walsingham.

Elizabeth had by then decided to turn down the sovereignty of the Netherlands. When, in the summer, Spanish troops there mutinied and rioted over non-payment of their wages, their behaviour caused Dutch Catholics and Protestants to unite against a common enemy under the leadership of William of Orange. Later in the year, the rebels agreed at Ghent that they should elect their own assembly and fight for independence. Philip reacted angrily to this rebellion and appointed a new Regent, his half brother Don John of Austria, the most renowned soldier in Europe, who had commanded his forces at a recent naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto.

Elizabeth, whilst remaining outwardly friendly towards Philip, was still sending money to the rebels, while Leicester, possibly without her knowledge, had offered to support William of Orange with an English army if need be. The Dutch rebels, meanwhile, were urging that England and the Netherlands should combine their military forces to form a Protestant army with Elizabeth as its leader. The Queen rejected this proposal because she did not want to finance such a costly venture. She had already given the Dutch - 20,000, and loaned them another _ 106,000 - almost half her annual income. Furthermore, she feared that, if she joined them in this war, she would risk losing her throne.

Elizabeth had offered to act as mediator between the Dutch and Don John of Austria, though in January 1577 the Dutch rejected this, being 
more interested in Leicester's offer of military assistance. However, when, later in the year, Don John offered them favourable terms for a peace, they wrote to the Earl to say that his help was no longer needed. This was perhaps as well, since Leicester had not served in a military capacity for over twenty years. He was now forty-four, 'high coloured and red-faced', and, having grown portly through good living, no longer even jousted. He was nevertheless bitterly disappointed not to have been given the chance to earn international renown as the armed champion of Protestantism.

'I am melancholy,' he wrote to a Dutch associate. 'I have almost neither face nor countenance to write to the Prince [William of Orange], his expectation being so greatly deceived.'

During the early months of 1577, Walsingham's spies gradually exposed a Catholic conspiracy masterminded by Don John of Austria, who, assisted by the Duke of Guise, was plotting to invade England with ten thousand troops, depose Elizabeth and return the kingdom to the Catholic fold. Don John then planned to marry Mary Stuart and rule jointly with her. Walsingham urged the Queen to take punitive measures against Mary, but once again she refused. She did, however, knight Walsingham that year for his services to the state. Fortunately, Don John was too preoccupied with affairs in the Netherlands to put into effect his plans for England.

In May, 1577, the Queen visited Gorhambury again. Mindful of his sovereign's remarks during her earlier stay in 1572, Lord Keeper Bacon had enlarged his house to twice its original size, and had added a Tuscan colonnade for good measure. The Queen was impressed by the changes and also by the lovely gardens and the 'noble' standard of living enjoyed by Bacon, who 'at every meal had his table strewed with sweet herbs and flowers'. Her Majesty stayed for five days, taking picnics in the little banqueting house in the orchard, or feasting on food prepared by twelve cooks specially brought from London. Although the Puritanical Lord Keeper considered courtly revels to be sinful, he swallowed his principles and laid out 20 for performers for his sovereign's sake. Altogether the visit cost him 577.

Gorhambury, like many other noble palaces of the age, is no more. It was a ruinous, ivy-shrouded shell by the end of the eighteenth century, and was pulled down soon afterwards.

The summer of 1577 brought with it a particularly bad outbreak of plague, which prevented the Queen from going on her usual progress. Instead she remained at Greenwich, although she is recorded as having spent two very pleasant days at Loseley House near Guildford in Surrey.

In June, Leicester, whose health was no longer so robust, travelled north to Buxton to take the waters. On the way he stayed as the guest 
of his friends the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury. The Countess, Bess of Hardwick, was now back in favour after her spell in prison, and the Queen had already written in mischievous vein to warn her of Leicester's voracious appetite.

'We think it meet to prescribe unto you a diet which we mean in no case you shall exceed,' she advised, 'and that is to allow him by the day for his meat two ounces of flesh, referring the quality to yourselves, so as you exceed not the quantity, and for his drink the twentieth part of a pint of wine to comfort his stomach, and as much of St Anne's sacred water as he listeth to drink. On festival days, as is meet for a man of his quality, we can be content you shall enlarge his diet by allowing unto him for his dinner the shoulder of a wren, for his supper a leg of the same, besides his ordinary ounces.'

History does not record whether Bess attempted to follow the royal advice, but what is certain is that, while at Chatsworth, Leicester was presented to the Queen of Scots. Their conversation was limited mainly to pleasantries, although when Mary complained about her continuing confinement, Leicester expressed polite sympathy. Afterwards he wrote an account of the meeting for Burghley, which prompted the Lord Treasurer to ask the Queen if he might visit Mary himself. But she refused, having heard too often how her cousin's beauty and charm were capable of making the wisest men act foolishly.

Bess of Hardwick also produced her infant granddaughter, Arbella Stewart, for Leicester's inspection, hoping he would agree with her that Arbella's claim to the throne was better than Mary's and that he would try to persuade Elizabeth to name the child as her successor. Arbella was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, and was being brought up in England in the Protestant faith, untainted by treason and scandal: in every respect she would be a better candidate than the Queen of Scots. Urged by her grandmother, Leicester could see that this was sound reasoning, and also perceived that there might be some advantage to himself in it. He was now resigned to the fact that he would never wear the crown matrimonial, but his ambition would be satisfied if his descendants were to occupy the throne of England. With this in mind, he suggested that Bess marry her granddaughter to his 'base son', a suggestion which the formidable matriarch accepted with alacrity, since the Earl, with his considerable influence and wide net of patronage, could do much for her and her family.

The Elizabethan age was one of discovery and geographical expansion. During the century before Elizabeth's accession, Spain had established colonies in the Americas and the Indies, whilst Portugal had colonised large parts of Africa and what is now Brazil. New trade routes meant 
wider markets and better opportunities for plunder, and there were several English privateers who, succumbing to the lure of adventure and easy spoils, ventured upon the high seas in a quest for riches, new markets for English goods, the chance to discountenance the Spaniards, or even the opportunity to found new colonies in the Queen's name.

Such a man was Francis Drake, a Devon mariner, who, on 24 May 1572, had sailed from Plymouth to the New World, his purpose being to exact retribution from the Spaniards, who had attacked and harried his ships during earlier voyages. Fifteen months later he returned from the Americas with a fabulous horde of treasure looted from Spanish ships. This was not the first time that English privateers had seized Spanish treasure, but it was the greatest haul.