Life of Elizabeth I (7 page)

Lack of money was a major problem that would have to be addressed. Elizabeth's annual income was about 250,000, out of which she had to finance the needs of court and government and p ay off Queen Mary's debts of 266,000. Prices were rising all the time, yet Elizabeth set herself to live within her means by practising the most stringent economies and selling off Crown lands. As a result, her annual expenditure never exceeded 300,000 throughout her reign.

Elizabeth went in state wearing her coronation robes, attended by forty-six peers, to open her first Parliament on 25 January 1559, after postponing the ceremony for two days because of her cold and the atrocious weather, which had delayed the arrival in London of many MPs. De Feria informed King Philip that 'the Catholics are very fearful of the measures to be taken in this Parliament' and Elizabeth's own behaviour gave a hint of what was to come. On her way to the House of Lords for the opening of the new session she was met by the Abbot of Westminster at the head of his monks, all carrying lighted tapers, symbols of the old faith that were frowned upon by Protestant divines.

'Away with those tapers!' snapped the Queen tartly. 'We see well 
enough!' As she was standing on sanctified ground, the Abbot was profoundly shocked by her words. Still in a bad mood, she stamped to her throne by the high altar in the Abbey, and was only partially mollified when she heard Dr Richard Cox, formerly tutor to King Edward VI, preach a vituperative sermon against monks in general, accusing them of participating in the burning of Protestants. God, he thundered, had raised His servant Elizabeth to the dignity of Queen that she might put an end to the Catholic practices restored by Queen Mary, and he urged her to cast down all images of the saints, to purify her churches of idolatry, and dissolve all religious houses re-established by Mary. Cox ranted on for an hour and a half, while the Queen, who hated sermons, fidgeted and became increasingly irritated, and the peers stood sweating in their robes.

Once enthroned in Parliament in a chair padded with gold cushions, Elizabeth made it clear that she would not brook any presumptuous behaviour from members of the Commons, many of whom expected a female sovereign to be tractable and easily manipulated.

One of the first Acts passed by Queen Mary had been one declaring herself legitimate, Henry VIII having decreed that his marriage to her mother had never been lawful. Elizabeth was in a similar situation: bastardised in 1536, she had been 'excluded and barred' by statute from the succession. This had never been repealed, although in his 1544 Act of Succession Henry named her as his heir after Edward and Mary. Hence Elizabeth's title to the throne was open to question, and she consulted Sir Nicholas Bacon as to whether she should take steps to legitimise herself. His advice was to let sleeping dogs lie, and she took it, but the taint of her bastardy, and its implications for the security of her throne, was to remain a sensitive subject with her to the end of her days.

The succession was another sensitive issue. The Tudors were not a fertile family and there was a dearth of suitable heirs to replace the Queen should she die childless. The 1544 Act and Henry VIII's will provided that, after Elizabeth, the crown should pass to the heirs of his younger sister Mary, Duchess of Suffolk. Mary had left two daughters, Frances and Eleanor Brandon. The elder, Frances, had produced three daughters, one of whom had been the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey. The two other daughters were Lady Katherine and Lady Mary Grey, aged nineteen and fourteen respectively in 1559.

Both were Protestants but Elizabeth heartily disliked them, especially Katherine - 'the Queen could not abide the sight of her'. She was particularly suspicious of their dynastic pretensions, and perhaps with cause, for 'in 1559 there were rumours that King Philip, aware that Lady Katherine Grey had the strongest claim to the English succession, was plotting to abduct her and make her the wife of his heir, the degenerate 
Don Carlos. Katherine was aware of Elizabeth's dislike, and in March 1559 revealed to the Spanish ambassador that she knew her cousin did not wish her to succeed her. Nor was the Queen much more enamoured of Lady Mary Grey, a hunchbacked dwarf. Many people shared Elizabeth's antipathy towards the Grey sisters, and some argued that their father's treason in supporting Northumberland had rendered their claim to a place in the succession forfeit.

Next in the Suffolk line after the Grey sisters came Margaret, the only child of Eleanor Brandon, who was married to Henry, Lord Strange, later Earl of Derby. In Queen Mary's time, some people had viewed Margaret as a likely successor to the throne in view of the fact that, unlike the Grey family, she had not taken part in Northumberland's treacherous coup of 1553. Despite the fact that Margaret had no desire for a crown, Elizabeth insisted upon her coming often to court 'as one very near in blood to us', so as to keep an eye on her. Poor Margaret hated the court as much as she hated her home life with her quarrelsome husband, and never knew true happiness or peace of mind.

All the Suffolk claimants were tainted with a suspected stain of bastardy, for there had always been doubts as to the validity of Mary Tudor's union with the Duke of Suffolk, who had put away two previous wives by questionable processes.

Another possible Protestant claimant was Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, a descendant of Edward III. Like Margaret Strange, he had no wish to be England's king, although Queen Elizabeth would sometimes give his wife (as he told his brother-in-law Robert Dudley) 'a privy nip concerning myself as a warning not to become too ambitious. He never did, avoiding 'conceiving any greatness of myself, and served her loyally.

Henry VIII had been at war with Scotland when the Act of Succession was passed, and at that time his ambition was to marry his son Edward to his young great-niece the Scots Queen, Mary Stuart, and so unite England and Scotland under English rule. The Scots resisted this violently, and therefore, when determining who was to succeed him, Henry passed over the heirs of his elder sister Margaret, who had married James IV of Scotland and was the grandmother of Mary Stuart. Hence, although many Catholics regarded Mary as the rightful Queen of England, or at the least the claimant with the greatest right to succeed Elizabeth, she had no right to a place in the succession according to English law. Some took the view that a foreigner born out of the realm was automatically barred from succeeding to the throne, because such people were legally prohibited from inheriting property in England. Others argued that the Crown was exempt from such constraints.

Similarly passed over by Henry VIII was Lady Margaret Douglas, 
Margaret Tudor's daughter by her second marriage to the Earl of Angus, and now the wife of Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, by whom she had two sons, a strong point in her favour. However, doubts as to the validity of her parents' marriage meant that few regarded her as a strong contender for a place in the succession. Lady Margaret, however, was a very ambitious woman, not for herself, but for her elder son, Henry, Lord Darnley, who had been born in England. This alone, some felt, gave him a better title than Mary Stuart, a foreigner.

In 1561, the Scots ambassador observed to the Queen that, apart from Mary Stuart, 'none of all the others who had any interest were meet for the Crown, or yet worthy of it'. The Queen's response was noncommittal. In fact, the subject of the succession was taboo with Elizabeth. From the first she made it clear that she had an abhorrence of naming an heir to succeed her. She had known what it was like to be the heir and to be the focus of conspiracy and rebellion, and there were threats enough to her security without that. If she acknowledged the right of any of these claimants to succeed, she once declared, she would be back in the Tower 'within a month'.

The answer, of course, was for her to marry and bear children, and de Feria was at hand to assist in this matter. Elizabeth had been so busy that he had seen her only once that January, coming out of her Privy Chamber. She had talked 'very gaily' to him, despite her cold, and, in response to his guarded query, informed him that the issue of her marriage would be raised in Parliament. He therefore decided to wait and see what transpired before laying Philip's proposal before her.

On Saturday, 4 February, the Commons drafted a formal petition to the Queen, asking her to marry as soon as possible in order to safeguard the succession. This petition was delivered to her two days later at Whitehall by a deputation from the House.

The petition reminded Elizabeth that it would be better for her 'and her kingdom if she would take a consort who might relieve her of those labours which are only fit for men', and the Speaker, Sir Thomas Gargrave, kneeling, candidly reminded her that, while princes are mortal, commonwealths are immortal. If she remained 'unmarried and, as it were, a vestal virgin', such a thing would be 'contrary to the public respects'.

When she heard his words, the Queen was plainly astonished at his boldness in broaching such a delicate issue, but she recovered herself and responded graciously, saying, 'In a matter most unpleasing, pleasing to me is the apparent goodwill of you and my people.' She stated that she had chosen to stay single despite being offered marriage by 'most potent princes', and that she considered she already had a husband and children. Showing them her coronation ring, she declared, as she was to do on 
many subsequent occasions: 'I am already bound unto a husband, which is the kingdom of England.' As for children, 'Every one of you, and as many as are Englishmen, are children and kinsmen to me.' She was gratified that the deputation had not named any potential husband, 'For that were most unbeseeming the majesty of an absolute princess, and unbeseeming your wisdom, who are subjects born.'

Elizabeth went on to assure her Commons that she would do as God directed her. She had never been inclined towards matrimony, but would not rule it out completely. If she did marry, she would not do anything to prejudice the commonwealth, but would choose a husband who 'would be as careful for the preservation of the realm as she was herself. However, it was possible that it would 'please Almighty God to continue me still in the mind to live out of the state of marriage'.

As for the succession, the Queen promised that 'the realm shall not remain destitute of an heir', yet who that heir was to be she did not specify. If she remained single, she continued, she was certain 'that God would so direct mine and your counsels that ye shall not need to doubt of a successor, who may be more beneficial to the commonwealth than he who may be born of me, considering that the issue of the best princes many times degenerateth'. Her children might 'grow out of kind, and become perhaps ungracious'. She was implying that any son of her body might conspire to overthrow her, a mere woman, a thing which few among her patriarchal advisers would try to prevent. At best, pressure might be put upon her to abdicate in favour of that son. In 1561, she confided to the Scots ambassador her belief that 'Princes cannot like their children, those that should succeed unto them,' quoting many notable examples where there had been discord and strife between monarchs and their heirs. There is little evidence anyway that the young Elizabeth was particularly fond of children, although she was to become godmother to over one hundred of them. All things considered, she continued, she would prefer, for her part, to leave the matter of her successor to Providence, trusting that, with divine help 'an heir that may be a fit governor' would somehow materialise.

Concluding, she declared: 'In the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.' Thus was born the legend of the Virgin Queen, upon which Elizabeth would capitalise to full advantage, and which would achieve cult status in the years to come.

A transcript of the Queen's speech was read out to the Commons on 10 February. Naturally, Parliament was startled and alarmed by Elizabeth's response: if she did not marry, there would be no heirs of her body to counteract the ever-present threats to her safety and security, and no satisfactory resolution to the succession question. The hoped-for 
religious settlement would be at risk, not to mention the lives of all her Protestant subjects. For a woman to reject marriage was seen as against the laws of nature, and most men concluded that their mistress was merely displaying an innate maidenly modesty, and would soon come to her senses when she realised the necessity for marriage. William Cecil's continual prayer would from henceforth be that 'God would send our mistress a husband, and by and by a son, that we may hope our posterity shall have a masculine succession'. He would repeatedly remind Elizabeth of his hope that God 'would direct Your Highness to procure a father for your children'. To Cecil, this petticoat government was an unnatural aberration; he longed to see a man in control of the government, and that could only be achieved once Elizabeth was married and preoccupied with her proper business of bearing children. Then her husband could rule in her name.

But the fact remained that, although Elizabeth was undoubtedly, as one councillor put it, 'the best marriage in her parish', she had no wish to marry. Politically, there were advantages to her remaining single. Her sister's unhappy example had exposed the dangers of espousing a foreign prince. Such a husband might offer protection against England's enemies, but he might also drain her resources in wars of his own. He might regard England as a mere satellite state of his own country, and -if he were a sovereign in his own right - he would certainly have to spend long periods out of the country. Moreover, the English were an insular, even xenophobic, nation, who had reacted adversely, indeed violently in some cases, to Queen Mary's Spanish match; they were unlikely to accept another foreign consort.