The Penguin History of Britain: New Worlds, Lost Worlds:The Rule of the Tudors 1485-1630 (58 page)

Early in November 1595 the Queen showed a copy of the treasonable
Conference about the Next Succession
to Essex, who believed its dedication to be a design by his enemies to harm him. He left court, looking pale. That night the court gates were locked; the Lord Chamberlain kept the keys and the Comptroller of the Household patrolled with torches. Essex burnt private letters. Such precautions had not been taken since the days of the Queen’s father and brother. The mood of intense disquiet had been occasioned by fears of Spanish invasion, by alarm about the succession, and by the ‘deadly unkindness’ between Essex and Burghley. Ralegh, recently returned from his quest for El Dorado in Guiana, had also left court, but was expected to return, because his friends there were ‘many and great’. Within days, as the Queen visited Essex and restored him to greater favour than ever, calm returned to the court. The intense alarm, the ‘deadly unkindness’, the reconciliations, were the pattern of politics for the later 1590s, and Essex, the turbulent favourite, was at the heart of all the discord.

Essex’s ambitions lay as yet within the limits of duty and service. He had promised Elizabeth in 1592 that the ‘two poles of your Privy Chamber shall be the poles of my sphere’. As acknowledged favourite, he was privileged and protected, the complacent recipient of almost half of the grants which an increasingly penurious and parsimonious queen had to give. Essex would admit no rival, but neither could he easily play the favourite. His confidant Francis Bacon urged him to ‘win the Queen’, counselling ‘obsequiousness and observance’. But Essex insisted upon ‘authority’ and ‘necessity’, upon asserting his will against hers. For him, male dominance must overcome female indecision: ‘She doth not contradict confidently,’ he noticed during one battle of wills in 1594, ‘which they that know the minds of women say is a sign of yielding.’ When ‘by violent courses’ Essex got his own way, he would ask Bacon: ‘Now Sir, whose principles be true?’ But there were dangers that Essex, in his repeated tests of the Queen’s devotion, would go too far; that his presumption would lead to a fatal alienation.

For Essex, friendship, like everything else, was a matter of honour.
He pursued a quest for offices for his friends and clients with no less recklessness than any of his other campaigns. From 1593 he made violent efforts to win first the Attorney-Generalship, and then the Solicitor-Generalship for Francis Bacon, even though his siege was bound to fail because in that year Bacon had opposed the royal interest in Parliament. His campaign to secure, in turn, the offices of Lord Chamberlain, Warden of the Cinque Ports and Vice Chamberlain for Sir Robert Sidney, marooned in Flushing, were also unsuccessful. Like his brother, the late, lamented Sir Philip, Robert was distrusted by the Queen, and his enemies had reported to Elizabeth his amorous pursuit of her maids of honour. But refusal of the Earl’s friends was refusal of the Earl himself.

Essex had been, from February 1593, Privy Councillor as well as favourite. Here, too, he was in a party of one: the youngest and noblest on the Council board, almost the only military commander among administrators and politicians, and the possessor of unrivalled foreign intelligence. He held overwhelming advantages, especially in time of war, but his presence caused tensions. In the Council, the inner circle of power, the private sway of a favourite over the Queen was resented, though not easily resisted. The Cecils, particularly, accepted the Earl as a colleague with outward cordiality, even though his public and private ambitions were so antipathetic to their own. They confronted him over patronage, grants and offices, but also over policy. While the war in France lasted, the sense of national danger muted their competition; not so thereafter.

There were deep divisions: not over whether there should be war, but over how and where it should be fought. For Burghley, as Lord Treasurer, the war was a lamentable necessity and should be merely defensive. For him, the great danger lay close to home, in Ireland. For Essex, once the Spanish forces had withdrawn from France and the English had followed, early in 1595, there could be only one strategy: war must be taken to Spain and pursued to the bitter end. The war would be won by assaulting the Spanish mainland and establishing a permanent base there in order to sever Spain from her overseas empire and the streams of American silver which sustained Spanish power. Essex’s public and private ambitions were one: in war he would command. He did not count the cost: Burghley, knowing how wide the gulf between income and expenditure was, counted every penny. Here was the cause of the ‘deadly unkindness’ between them.

The Queen knew well the antagonisms within her Council. There were
those who said that she promoted them. An anonymous contemporary wrote that ‘her course hath been to feed the factious affections of persons of high quality’, so that ‘all depending on her favour’ for advancement ‘might thereby make her own direction more absolute’. He thought that her policy of having Leicester watch over Walsingham, and Walsingham watch over Leicester, and Hatton watch over both, had given her control earlier in her reign. She still tried, so Sir Robert Sidney’s agent reported to him in 1596, to ‘use her wisdom in balancing the weights’, but her favourite upset the old patterns and was not to be counterbalanced. She was wary of granting any office to an enemy of Essex, lest she drive him to outbursts which she could not control, but nor would she be held to ransom by her favourite’s fury. In 1594 she offered a warning with her promise: ‘Look to thyself, good Essex, and be wise to help thyself, without giving thy enemies advantage; and my hand shall be readier to help thee than any other.’

In 1595 the Queen was persuaded to renew her attack on Spanish power: a measure of the weight of Essex’s advocacy, but also of the alarm occasioned by a Spanish raid on Cornwall in July and by rumours of a new Armada. Drake and Norris sailed that summer on what would be their last voyage. Their original purpose was to capture and hold the isthmus of Panama, the route for Peruvian silver, but the proposal of the ‘active sort’ (‘You may guess whom,’ wrote one court observer) to send the fleet instead to attack the coast of Spain subverted the venture. Burghley and Elizabeth were slow to believe the intelligence of a new Armada, but when they did, and after despairing delays, a fleet sailed in June 1596 to Cadiz. Essex was Lord General of the Army; Lord Howard of Effingham was Lord Admiral: a shared command. Yet the commanders pursued their rivalries even in the midst of a naval engagement which prefigured ‘Hell itself’, as sailors leapt from burning ships to drown. Ralegh thrust his
Warspite
into the leading position, so that ‘none should outstart me again’; Essex brought his
Due Repulse
alongside. In the
Rainbow
, Francis Vere, Marshal of the Army, fastened a rope to the
Warspite
in order to draw up equal, and Ralegh cut it. Cadiz was captured and sacked. A spectacular victory, but one which brought more glory than gold, and the commanders, in their jealousy, would share neither. As in 1589, the Queen’s aim had been to destroy the Spanish fleet in its harbours, and Essex’s had been different. Contravening instructions and beyond recall, he demanded to hold Cadiz as an English base. He was overruled by the other commanders during their
council of war, but his new disobedience increased suspicions of him.

The Cadiz voyage, and the jealousies and witch-hunts which followed it, brought open divisions into high politics. Once again Essex returned to find, as he saw it, conspiracy at court. The Queen, in her anger, had broken her promise to Essex and made Robert Cecil Principal Secretary, and the navy commanders now impugned Essex’s honour as commander of the army by accusing his followers of concealing booty. First among these critics was his old rival Ralegh, who was now returning to royal favour and allied with the Cecils. The disputes between the sea and land officers over the division of the spoils were epitomized in the renewed feud between Ralegh and Essex. Each vied to present himself as the victor of Cadiz, a publicity war so incendiary that their accounts were suppressed. But in this competition, Essex won. Devereux, according to the contemporary anagram, was
Vere dux
(true leader), and he was now accompanied around London by a horde of military officers, the hero of the London crowds. Here was the Pompey of the portrait miniature.

In the aftermath of Cadiz, Bacon wrote a remarkably blunt letter of advice to Essex. The image Essex presented, especially to the Queen, whose favour was all, was dangerous: ‘A man of nature not to be ruled… of an estate not grounded to his greatness; of a popular reputation; of a military dependance.’ Bacon explained how a favourite should behave and of what he should beware. Instead of avoiding emulating Leicester and Hatton, he must take them as patterns and pay court to the Queen. It would be politic to abandon some people, projects and manners in order to please her. He must, above all, let his military honour ‘be a sleeping honour a while’. So, instead of seeking great military office, he should aspire to be Lord Privy Seal: it ‘fits a favourite to carry her Majesty’s image in seal’. To allay the suspicions that his popular following had aroused, he should always speak against ‘popular causes’. Above all, he should give way to some other favourite. Essex was, that autumn, in a mood to listen, if not to act upon this advice. Now devout, newly faithful to his wife and magnanimous, his attentions were all turned towards that ‘great work’ which God intended for him, and he was devising grand strategy for the war with Spain.

Philip II acted to avenge the disaster of Cadiz. But the Armada which sailed in October 1596 was caught on a lee shore in the Bay of Biscay’s storms, and wrecked off Finisterre: another Armada scattered by a Protestant wind rather than by prescient English defences. It would not be the last to sail, but it might be the last to be blown off course. At
court that threat raised all the old disputes and hesitations: whether there should be an army as well as a navy sent, and who should command. The semblance of accord in the tiltyard and Presence Chamber masked a growing polarization in politics. Essex withdrew to melancholy retreat. Elizabeth threatened to ‘break him of his will and pull down his great heart’; but her intervention to subdue her court and impose her will was followed in March 1597 by an unexpected suspension of hostilities, a truce between Essex and Cecil, mediated by Ralegh. Together, they believed that they could master the Queen, share out royal offices among themselves and lay plans for the next venture against Spain. Faced with such a united front, Elizabeth lost the political initiative. Ralegh became Captain of the Guard; Essex, Master of the Ordnance (Bacon’s advice quite forgotten). On 18 April they dined together to mark an alliance which could only be temporary.

Against Spain, the only defence was now offence. After furious hesitation, the Queen was brought to agree. In May she gave Essex sole command, by land and by sea; his chance for his great work. The daring, original strategy which Essex had devised the previous autumn – to station an army of disciplined troops in key Spanish ports to create a double blockade – was not to be attempted. His first order was to destroy the Armada now moored at El Ferrol near La Coruña; the second, to intercept the treasure fleet from the Indies. But cast back by storms, forced by the expense caused by long delay to dismiss most of his land forces, Essex never engaged the Spanish fleet. Setting sail for the Azores – the Islands – Essex cruised aimlessly, and the treasure fleet slipped past. By 11 August, Cecil reported wryly that ‘the fleet at Ferrol will not be burnt… the Islands cannot be taken… their weak watery hopes do but faintly nourish that noble earl’s comfort’. The only success – the capture of the island of Faial in the Azores – was Ralegh’s: a mutinous triumph, according to the Earl, undertaken without his orders. Poems of John Donne, who went on the Islands Voyage, testified to the disastrous weather which broke the expedition: the terror of the storm – ‘like shot, not feared till felt’ – and the despair of the calm – ‘Heaven laughs to see us languish thus’. Bad judgement had compounded bad luck. While Essex was engaged upon those ‘idle wanderings upon the sea’ which he had condemned in others, England lay open to invasion. Since he had been given a free hand, the greater the disaster of the Islands Voyage, the greater his dishonour.

Essex returned to find, as usual, that his rivals had prospered in his
absence. Melancholy and retreat again followed upon dishonour, and Essex refused to attend the new Parliament. At the end of 1597 the Queen placated her favourite and quieted the court by creating him Earl Marshal, head of the community of honour. Essex began searching for precedents for the Earl Marshalship and for the Constableship, a dormant medieval office. According to medieval precedent and contemporary political thought, the Constable could arrest the monarch. The drift of Essex’s thinking was ominous. Essex had seen, in France, the powers of the great nobility when political life descended into violence and chaos. If the Queen died, and his favour and protection died with her, he would need support. Who but he should be the power behind the throne in the next reign? In 1598 George Chapman dedicated the first part of his translation of Homer’s
Iliad
to Essex, ‘most true Achilles’, and urged him not to allow the ‘peasant-common polities of the world’ to distract him from ‘godlike pursuit of Eternity’.

News from court was often of ‘tribes’, ‘parties’, ‘factions’, ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’. Essex, in his singularity, had divided the court, but not into equal groups. On the one side was his own party, composed of disaffected young nobles and military men; on the other, the Cecils, Ralegh, and the political establishment. Essex spoke the language of friendship, learnt from the worlds of chivalry and of ancient Rome. Friendship meant private devotion, the camaraderie of honour and arms, but also the public connection of clientage. At court, everyone intermittently pretended friendship to everyone else; that was the ‘ordinary infection of court’, wrote Fulke Greville. Essex and Cecil and Ralegh still avowed amity and still cooperated. When Cecil went in embassy to France in the spring of 1598, Essex promised to guard his interests. But Essex came to understand friendship to himself in exclusive terms; ‘either his only, or friend to Mr Cecil, and his enemy’. Those who were not with him were against him. Bacon remembered that a ‘great officer at court’, hearing one of Essex’s partisans talk about his ‘friends and enemies’, said ‘I know but one friend and enemy that my Lord hath, and that one friend is the Queen and that one enemy is himself’. In the end Bacon and the Earl’s other friends would have to choose between friendship to Essex and loyalty to the Queen.