The Men Who Would Be King (18 page)

Astonishing as the Queen of England's proposal might have appeared, she was almost certainly in earnest. Beneath the fine cloak of diplomatic affection which covered Elizabeth's formal dealings with her cousin Mary Stuart lay hostility and fear. As Queen of France Mary had represented a grave threat to the security of England and Elizabeth; now, back in her northern kingdom as an eligible young widow of legendary charms and powerful connections, blatantly eager to enforce her claim to the English throne, she was potentially a still greater menace. As Feria had once said of Elizabeth, “It all depends on the husband that this woman may take,” and just as Philip of Spain had then been willing to sacrifice his private feelings and marry Elizabeth, so Elizabeth was now prepared to set aside personal emotion for the sake of her country. Married to a foreign prince, Mary would remain a constant danger, perhaps become the focus of a Catholic league against Elizabeth. But married to a minor English nobleman, a Protestant, in whom Elizabeth had absolute trust, she would be curbed, watched over, and reported on. The political wisdom of offering Mary such a husband was obvious, and so, in Elizabeth's eyes, was the choice of Lord Robert. Because of the intimate bond between herself and Dudley she believed that she could rely utterly on his devotion, she “was quite certain that he would sacrifice his life for her,” and she did not doubt that he would defend her interests with unswerving loyalty, so that as the husband of Queen Mary he would remain the servant of Queen Elizabeth. It was an honor and a responsibility of which few would be worthy, but Elizabeth's faith in her beloved Lord Robert was boundless. Mary Stuart need not scorn to be offered a man of such notable abilities and attractions, who although not himself of royal blood would bring Mary the assurance of Elizabeth's favor and the likelihood of the succession—and whom, as Elizabeth proudly declared to Maitland, she herself would prefer to any prince in the world if she had a mind to marry. That she was offering him to her rival instead was a tacit admission that she never would have “such a mind.”

Yet she had assured Parliament that she would try to “bend her liking” to her country's need in the matter of marriage, and as though to honor that pledge, in the autumn of 1563 Elizabeth reopened matrimonial negotiations with the archduke Charles of Austria. “Marriage can bring Your Majesty and your realm nothing but advantage, weal and blessing,” an enthusiastic envoy told her in the following January, during an audience at Windsor. Had he substituted the word
courtship
for
marriage,
Elizabeth's agreement would have been unfeigned.

The youngest of the emperor Ferdinand's three sons, twenty-three-year-old Charles had small power or wealth of his own to make him a match worthy of the Queen of England, but he was a Habsburg, and first cousin to Philip of Spain; a leisurely and protracted courtship with such a prince could be of great service to Elizabeth at this time. It would demonstrate an apparent willingness on her part to marry and produce heirs, so that she would be less harried by her anxious subjects, and to some extent it would deflect Catholic hopes, both at home and abroad, from Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was showing great interest in the idea of marrying Philip's own son and heir Don Carlos—evidently she did not know that the youth was as sick and savage in mind as he was illustrious in blood—and King Philip, approving the suggestion, had commented menacingly, “The bringing about of this marriage may perhaps be the beginning of a reformation in religious matters in England.” But while there seemed to be a strong possibility that his Catholic cousin the archduke might be peacefully established as king-consort in England, Philip would stay his arm from violent interference in Elizabeth's affairs. As usual, Elizabeth was using courtship as a means to almost any end except that of marriage.

The most devoted of her suitors, Lord Robert, was not at all willing to be used as a mere political pawn. However beautiful and fascinating the Queen of Scotland might be, he had no desire to be banished to the far north as her husband; however great the benefits to his own country would be, he had no wish to sacrifice his glorious hopes of marrying Elizabeth. It was plain that her feelings for him were still very strong, and in the autumn of that year, 1563, she presented him with the magnificent castle and parklands of Kenilworth in Warwickshire—yet, to his chagrin, she proceeded determinedly with the scheme of marrying him to Mary, Queen of Scots, while at the same time reopening her own marriage negotiations with the archduke. The need to hinder Mary from embracing “such alliance as may bring trouble to this realm” was greater than any personal consideration in Elizabeth's eyes, but Robert Dudley was not prepared to go so far in the service of his queen as to wed her rival while he still believed that he had some chance of winning Elizabeth herself.

The affair proceeded haltingly, but Elizabeth's resolution to subordinate passion to political necessity was further strengthened by the “troublesome chance” that occurred in the following spring. A pamphlet came to light, Hales's
Discourse on the Succession
, in which a member of Parliament named John Hales put forward the arguments in favor of the Suffolk line, thereby pronouncing Lady Catherine Grey to be the rightful heiress to the crown. Lady Catherine was a sly, silly young woman, with none of the qualities of her tragic sister, Lady Jane, but under the terms of Henry VIII's will she was indeed the heiress presumptive to the throne of England. Her clandestine marriage to the young Earl of Hertford, the late Protector Somerset's heir, had been officially declared invalid, and both she and her husband had been long imprisoned in the Tower, where two sons had been born to her. The existence of those two little boys of Tudor descent and Protestant parentage gave further weight to her claim, if, as Hales had sought to prove, the marriage was really legal. Hales's activities smacked of sedition and conspiracy, and the effects of his arguments upon public opinion could have been far reaching; Parliament, increasingly anxious to see the succession finally established, might, thus incited, have proved hard to restrain. Elizabeth was frighteningly angry over the affair. Hales was later sent to the Tower, Lady Catherine was kept in strict custody, and Elizabeth pressed ahead with the plan that would, if successful, make Mary Stuart a suitable heiress presumptive to the throne, “second person” in England as long as Elizabeth remained unmarried.

In the autumn of 1564 a special envoy from Scotland, James Melville, arrived in London, and was received with great charm and dissimulation by Elizabeth. “The old friendship being renewed,” Melville somewhat ingenuously wrote in his memoirs, many years later, “she enquired if the Queen had sent any answer to the proposition of marriage.” He gave the dampening reply that Mary “thought little or nothing thereof,” but added that she had referred the matter to the body of commissioners, both Scottish and English, who were soon to meet on the border. Elizabeth's tone became confiding. She told Melville that before he returned home he should see her create Lord Robert a very great earl: “for she esteemed him as her brother and best friend, whom she would herself have married, had she ever minded to have taken a husband. But being determined to end her life in virginity, she wished that the Queen her sister might marry him.” The two queens' formal references to each other as “sister” and their diplomatic assurances of affection could not veil the mistrust and jealousy that existed between them. With a genial air, Elizabeth proceeded to tell Melville bluntly that if Mary were matched with Lord Robert, “it would best remove out of her [Elizabeth's] mind all fears and suspicions, to be offended by any usurpation before her death—being assured that Lord Robert was so loving and trusty that he would never permit any such thing to be attempted during her time.” There lay a frank enough admission of how far she trusted her “good sister” Mary of Scotland, and there was more to come.

As she had gaily promised, during Melville's visit Lord Robert was at last given an earldom. It was ironic that this honor that Dudley had long desired, as constituting a notable step forward in his courtship of Elizabeth, should at last have been given to him to fit him for an unwanted marriage with another queen, so that Mary “might have the higher esteem of him.” Earl of Leicester and Baron Denbigh were his new titles; the ceremony was performed at Westminster, “with great solemnity,” and Elizabeth helped to put on his ceremonial garb as he knelt before her “with a great gravity.” But there was nothing solemn or grave in the way she suddenly slipped her fingers inside his ruff and teasingly tickled his neck, smiling, in full view of the French ambassador and Melville. It was an erotic little gesture, implying a singular degree of familiarity between her and the man whom she was proposing as the husband of another reigning queen; it was nothing short of offensive to Mary. Yet, though she could not resist that possessive caress, she abruptly abandoned her frivolity a moment later. Turning from the resplendent new Earl of Leicester, she asked Melville what he thought of him. The Scot, unsuspecting, replied with some conventional compliments, and then Elizabeth, as though she could read his thoughts, delivered the startling pronouncement: “Yet you like better of yonder long lad.” She was pointing to the tall, slender figure of young Lord Darnley.

It was a bad moment for Melville. As he afterwards recounted, “I had no will that she should think I liked him, or had any eye or dealing that way—albeit I had a secret charge to deal with my Lady Lennox, to endeavor to procure liberty for him to go to Scotland.” Eighteen-year-old Darnley was the son of Lady Lennox and thus the great-grandson of Henry VII; though it had been officially established that his mother was born out of wedlock, he had enough royal blood in his veins to entertain great hopes, and it was Lady Lennox's dearest wish that he should be married to his half cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. Undoubtedly Melville was disconcerted by Elizabeth's perception, but he returned a clever evasive reply, flavored to suit her taste in men; glancing from Robert Dudley's virile appearance to the delicate pointed features of young Darnley, he answered “that no woman of spirit would make choice of such a man, who more resembled a woman than a man. For he was handsome, beardless and lady-faced.” There was talk of the pretty youth Darnley becoming Mary's husband, as Elizabeth well knew; as a Catholic and a descendant both of the Tudor and Stuart lines, he was not, from her point of view, a very safe man to see set up as king-consort in unneighborly Scotland, though he would at least be preferable to “the children of France, Spain and Austria.” No one, however, would be so satisfactory for English interests as her own ardent suitor, the new-made Earl of Leicester. As she told Melville, her chief cause for displeasure with Mary was that she seemed “to disdain the marriage of my Lord of Leicester.”

During his visit Melville had some remarkably illuminating conversations with the Queen of England. He proved himself skillful in dealing with her, and she seemed to respond to him with unusual condescension and warmth. Fencing carefully with her over the subject of the succession, he remarked: “You are certainly convinced you will never have any children, seeing Your Majesty declares yourself resolved to die a virgin.” With dignity Elizabeth replied, “I am resolved never to marry, if I be not thereto necessitated by the Queen my sister's harsh behavior towards me.” Disregarding that thrust, Melville commented, with singular perception, “I know the truth of that, Madam, you need not tell it me. Your Majesty thinks, if you were married, you would be but Queen of England, and now you are both King and Queen. I know your spirit cannot endure a commander.” The woman of such rare spirit, who was resolved to keep her mastery and never to marry, and who was prepared to give up even her “loving and trusty” Leicester for the sake of the weal of her kingdom, had nevertheless no wish to be thought unfeminine, especially in comparison with the celebrated beauty Mary Stuart. And so she determinedly subjected Melville to displays of her charms and accomplishments throughout his visit. She changed the style of her dress every day, appearing in the fashions of one country after another, and asking him gaily which became her best. He cleverly told her that the Italian clothes did, which implied a compliment to her abundance of curling reddish-golden hair. There was something childlike, and even faintly pathetic, in the persistent questions that she put to Melville about her looks as compared to those of Mary, as though she was uncertain of her own attractions and personal lovableness. The contrast between her mental and emotional powers was very great.

“She desired to know of me,” Melville afterwards recalled, “what colour of hair was reputed best; and whether my Queen's hair or hers was best; and which of them two was fairest.” Perhaps a little embarrassed, Melville attempted a joke, saying: “The fairness of them both was not their worst faults,” and then, when she pressed him: “She was the fairest Queen in England, and mine the fairest Queen in Scotland,” but still Elizabeth was not satisfied. She inquired which of them was the taller, to which the Scot replied without hesitation: “My Queen.” “Then,” said Elizabeth firmly, “she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low.” In similar decided tones she was later to tell the imperial envoy, who had praised Mary Stuart, “that she was superior to the Queen of Scotland.” She continued to ask question after question about Mary, about her interests, her sports. She learned that “when her more serious affairs permitted, she was taken up with reading of histories.” When she heard that Mary played the virginals “reasonably well, for a queen,” Elizabeth promptly arranged a pretty scene whereby she might show off her own considerable talent for music, feigning to be unaware that Melville was in the room while she played. She pretended to slap him for his presumption in listening to her performance, but was plainly gratified when, in answer to her predictable question as to which of them played better, she was assured that she herself did. She showed off her languages too, and made Melville prolong his stay so that he might have the pleasure and privilege of seeing her dance. “Which being over,” he later recounted, “she enquired of me, whether she or my Queen danced best. I answered, The Queen of Scotland danced not so high or disposedly as she did.” It was unfortunate for Elizabeth's plans that her compulsive personal interest in Mary, Queen of Scots, was not shared by Leicester.