The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court (16 page)

During a six-month period in 1564 for which records survive, John Hemingway provided the Ladies of the Bedchamber with two pounds of orris powder (made from the root of iris flowers) to use in a perfuming pan to scent the room.
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Elizabeth and her ladies would also hold aromatic pomanders to their noses and burn juniper wood or sweet-smelling herbs in their chambers. Benjamin, rosewater and storax was used to scent the Queen’s elaborately embroidered gowns. The Queen was considered to be fastidious about cleanliness and unpleasant smells were a constant problem, particularly given that a number of animals, among them a pet toy spaniel, a monkey, a cat (used for catching the mice that were endemic in the palaces) and a parrot
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were also kept in the Queen’s rooms.
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The monkey required a ‘chain with a collar’ which apparently became worn or broken as a new one was then ordered with a collar specifically ‘of iron with joints made full of holes with a hasp’ and a longer chain with three swivels.
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It seems the monkey remained a lively presence as over the next two years a further three steel chains were supplied by the court’s locksmith, William Hood.
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Whilst Blanche Parry took care of what one warrant describes as ‘our musk cat’, most likely to have been a ferret or a civet cat known for its musk-like odour, the Queen’s parrot, kept in a specially designed cage, was the responsibility of Dorothy Bradbelt. In 1563, John Grene, the Queen’s coffer-maker, ‘delivered to Dorothy Bradbelt to our use one great Cage of Tynker wire, and plate made strong for a parrot’,
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and with it ‘two pots of pewter to put water in the one for our monkey the other for our parrot’. Locksmith William Hood made hinges for the cage
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and ‘six yards of double green sarceonet’ were delivered ‘to make curtains for a birdcage of needlework’.
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With no flushing lavatories in the palaces, the Queen used a ‘close stool’, a portable wooden toilet which had to be emptied by hand. Even in the Queen’s Bedchamber, where the close stools were disguised in ‘cases of satin and velvet’, the air was often ‘sour and noisome’.
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Chamber pots used only for urination were available in the Bedchamber and made of porcelain or silver or tin glazed stoneware. The Queen’s lidded chamber pot, engraved with the royal initials, was set in a padded box. She would have a number of such close stools and all would be suitably luxurious: four of them, ‘covered with black velvet embroidered upon and garnished with ribbon and gilt nails, the seat and laythes covered with scarlet fringed with silk and gold’, were delivered to the Bedchamber in 1565, with their ‘three pans of pewter with cases of leather-lined with canvas to put them in’. Kat Ashley was the keeper of the close stools, and after her death in 1565 these duties – including helping their mistress in her large, complex gowns – probably fell to whichever Lady of the Bedchamber was on duty at the time.
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The padded adorned boxes in which the chamber pots were kept allowed for their discreet removal away from the privy lodgings to be emptied. When travelling and on royal progresses, Elizabeth had a dedicated close-stool carriage.

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Elizabeth spent much of Christmas ill in bed and it was not until 2 January that she emerged from the Bedchamber into the Presence Chamber, where she could be seen by her courtiers. The Queen was ‘very thin’ and her physicians described her constitution as ‘a weak and unhealthy one’. De Silva added gleefully to his dispatch, ‘it is true young people can get over anything, but your Majesty should note, that she is not considered likely to have a long life’.
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By the New Year the weather had warmed up and the ice on the Thames had melted. The sudden thaw throughout England caused ‘great floods and high waters’, and the ‘deaths of many and the destruction of many houses’. In early February, Elizabeth gave Lord Darnley permission to travel to Scotland, and soon he began his ride north.
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It proved to be a reckless decision. The Queen had hoped that Darnley would stir up trouble for Mary, and she was also beginning to believe that he might be a better match for the Queen of Scots than Dudley, whom she was so loath to lose. She hoped that Darnley, ‘being a handsome lusty youth, should rather prevail, being present, than Leicester who was absent’.
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Mary first met Darnley on Saturday 17 February in Edinburgh and was instantly attracted to him, describing him as the ‘lustiest and best-proportioned lang [tall] man that she had ever seen’.
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Before long, ambassadorial dispatches described how Darnley ‘had wonderfully awakened’ the Scottish court and how many believed that ‘the Scottish Queen shall marry him’.
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In a letter to his friend Sir Henry Sidney, husband of Mary Sidney and Dudley’s brother-in-law, Thomas Randolph criticised Dudley for not taking more of an interest in Mary. ‘How many countries, realms, cities and towns have been destroyed’ to satisfy the lusts of men for such women; and yet Dudley who had been offered a kingdom and the opportunity to lie with Mary ‘naked in his arms’ had spurned both, resulting in the arrival of Darnley.
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One of the first letters Darnley wrote after arriving in Scotland was to Robert Dudley himself, thanking him ‘assuredly as your own brother’. ‘Though I am far from you … I shall not be forgetful of your great goodness and good nature showed sundry ways to me.’ It was clear who was behind his journey.
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Almost as soon as Darnley left for Scotland, Elizabeth began to worry about the dangers of his union with Mary; their joint claim to the English crown could unite Catholic Europe behind them. As Philip made clear in his letter to his ambassador, de Silva, the marriage would be a favourable one to Spanish interests and ‘should be forward and supported to the full extent of our power. You will make Lady Margaret [Lennox] understand that not only shall I be glad for her son to be King of Scotland and will help him thereto, but also to be King of England if this marriage is carried through.’
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Elizabeth did ‘simply mislike’ the proposed marriage and was reluctant for negotiations to proceed any further, now believing that it was ‘a matter danger to the common amity that is presently betwixt these our two kingdoms’. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, having been replaced as ambassador to France, was sent to Scotland with instructions to do all he could to ‘break or suspend’ the match and to tell Mary that ‘excepting the Lord Darnley’, Elizabeth ‘shall be well content with the choice of any’.
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Throckmorton had little success and a month later wrote from Edinburgh that the matter was now ‘indissoluble’.
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Untouched and Unimpaired

On 5 March 1565, Dudley hosted a supper for the Queen and her ladies. There was a joust and tourney on horseback and later a comedy in English based on the question of matrimony as discussed between Juno (advocating marriage) and Diana (advocating chastity). After both sides had presented their respective arguments, Jupiter gave a verdict in favour of matrimony, at which the Queen turned to Guzman de Silva and exclaimed, ‘This is all against me.’
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Mary’s imminent marriage plans had put Elizabeth under tremendous pressure to wed and settle the succession. In a very revealing conversation with de Silva she explained how marriage

is a thing for which I have never had any inclination. My subjects, however, press me so that I cannot help myself, but must marry or take the other course, which is a very difficult one. There is a strong idea in the world that a woman cannot live unless she is married, or at all events that if she refrains from marriage she does so for some bad reason, as they said of me that I did not marry because I was fond of the Earl of Leicester, and that I would not marry him because he had a wife already. Although he has no wife alive now, I still do not marry him … We cannot cover everybody’s mouth, but must content ourselves with doing our duty and trust in God, for the truth will at last be made manifest. He knows my heart, which is very different from what people think, as you will see some day.
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It seems it was the prospect of marriage itself to which the Queen was so averse. Nevertheless her enduring affection for Dudley was clear and she continued to court his attention both for her own pleasure and to keep the more unwelcome suits of foreign princes at arm’s length. As Dudley himself acknowledged, ‘She is so nimble in her dealings and threads in and out of this business in such a way that her most intimate favourites fail to understand her, and her intentions are variously interpreted.’
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During the spring and summer of 1565, Cecil made moves to revive the long-running negotiations for the Queen’s marriage with the Archduke Charles of Austria. He had come to believe that the archduke’s Catholicism, which it was hoped he would forsake, was much less of a threat to the realm than Elizabeth’s unmarried state.
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However, the Emperor Ferdinand, mindful of how Elizabeth had already once rebuffed his son’s suit, met Cecil’s overtures with suspicion. In June, when Ferdinand died and was succeeded by his eldest son Maximilian, fresh hopes were raised. The new emperor appointed Adam von Zwetkowich, Baron von Mitterburg, his councillor and gentleman of the chamber, to go to London with specific instructions to discuss terms for the match.
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First Zwetkowich was to find out whether or not Elizabeth was disposed to marry and then, most importantly, he was to ‘with all means endeavour to discover what people say about the morals, virtues, sentiments and reputation of Her Highness’. As his orders continued, ‘should he from sure and certain signs and utterances learn that the virtue of Her Highness is untouched and unimpaired’, then if asked he might indicate that the emperor would be willing to instigate negotiations if there was a belief that would not be ‘vain and futile’. The archduke would not, as on the last occasion, ‘suffer himself to be led by the nose’. However, if he ‘should learn, not from conjectures, but from sure judgements and from the general opinion, that the integrity of the morals and life of Her Highness is not such as becomes a Princess, he shall be careful not to say one single word about this matter’.
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Fearful of the threat to France of an Anglo-Habsburg alliance, Catherine de Medici proffered her son Charles IX, the King of France, as a rival candidate for Elizabeth’s hand.
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The marriage of the Protestant Queen of England, then thirty, to the fourteen-year-old Catholic King of France, was an unexpected and ambitious proposal. Charles declared himself keen on Elizabeth and Sir Thomas Smith, the English ambassador in France
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believed the French King would make a good husband. He assured the Queen that although the young King was ‘pale and not greatly timbered’, he seemed ‘tractable and wise for his years’ and gave ‘wittier answers than a man would think’. Smith added in his letter to Elizabeth, ‘I dare put myself in pledge to your Highness that your Majesty shall like him.’
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Elizabeth was not convinced and told Paul de Foix, the French ambassador, that his King was ‘both too big and too small’; in other words, France was too powerful a match for England, and Charles, some sixteen years Elizabeth’s junior, was too young. Such a marriage would imperil the independence of her realm, put her in the power of a Catholic and make her an elderly wife to a child of fourteen. ‘She would not,’ she then explained to de Silva, ‘make the world laugh by seeing at the church door an old woman and a child.’
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Zwetkowich, the emperor’s envoy now arrived in England, described how

the Queen’s jester spoke the truth when he said in English … she should not take the King of France, for he was but a boy and babe; but she should take the Archduke Charles and then he was sure that she would have a baby boy. I told the Queen that babes and fools speak the truth and so I hoped that she had now heard the truth, but she only laughed.
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Many of Elizabeth’s councillors shared her reservations. The Earl of Sussex feared that the King was bound to neglect his older wife by going home, ‘and in accordance with the French usage live with pretty girls there, and thus all hope of an heir would be rendered nugatory’.
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But de Foix argued that all the world ‘stood amazed at the wrong she did to the grand endowments that God had given her of beauty, wisdom, virtue and exalted station, by refusing to leave fair posterity to succeed her,’ and adding that, ‘if such marriage could happen, then would commence the most illustrious lineage that had been known for the last thousand years.’
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For a time Elizabeth pretended to be considering the proposal, partly to secure a rapprochement with France, and partly to conciliate her own Parliament who never wearied in their petitions for her to marry. By the spring, however, negotiations were effectively over: Charles IX’s suit had won very little backing in the Privy Council; the way was clear for the suit of the Archduke Charles.

When Zwetkowich arrived in May, the court was reeling from the news that Mary Queen of Scots was to marry Lord Henry Darnley. The council agreed that ‘the only thing of most moment and efficacy to remedy all these perils and many others … was to obtain that the Queen Majesty would marry and use therein no long delay’.
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When Zwetkowich had an audience with the Queen on 20 May she indicated her desire for marriage negotiations to begin:
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whilst she had ‘formerly purposed by all means to remain single … in consequence of the insistent pressure that was brought to bear upon her by the Estates of the realm, she was now resolved to marry’.
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However she would not agree to marry anyone that she had not first seen. Might the archduke now visit, incognito, to see if they took a liking to one another?