The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court (50 page)

The Sunday and holy day procession to and from the chapel royal were major ceremonial events, but the Queen’s appearances in public were becoming rarer making the processions more significant. As the Queen emerged in the late morning, Hentzner described how her guard formed an aisle in the midst of the crowd through which she could pass. The procession through the privy apartments followed a strict order of precedence: ‘First went the Gentlemen, Barons, Earls, Knights of the Garter all … bareheaded.’ Immediately before the Queen walked the Lord Chancellor or Keeper of the Great Seal, who was flanked by two earls, one bearing the sceptre, the other the sword of state. Elizabeth moved slowly through the Presence Chamber, followed by her ladies mostly dressed in white, guarded on each side by the fifty Gentleman Pensioners carrying gilt battleaxes.

Hentzner describes the Queen, now aged sixty-four, as being of striking appearance, a ‘very majestic’ and ‘stately’ figure. Her face is ‘fair but wrinkled, her eyes small, yet black and pleasant, her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow and her teeth black’. She wore two pearls with ‘very rich drops’ in her ears; on her head red false hair and a small crown; around her neck a string of ‘exceeding fine jewels’. Once again Elizabeth’s dress was low-cut, to show her bare cleavage which, as Hentzner explained, ‘all the English ladies have it till they marry’. She was dressed in a white silk gown, bordered with large pearls ‘of the size of beans’ and a mantle of black silk, shot through with silver threads. A marchioness bore the end of the Queen’s very long train. As she went along in all this ‘state and magnificence, she spoke very graciously, first to one, then to another, whether foreign minister or those who attended for different reasons, in English, French and Italian … whenever she turned her face as she was going along, everybody fell on their knees’.
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But beneath the pomp and reverence, there was a feeling of langour at court. After the recent loss of William Cecil, and the deaths of Robert Dudley, Walsingham and Hatton (in 1591) it was as though an era was coming to an end. John Harington later described how, at the beginning of 1598, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge did ‘light on one question that bewailed a kind of weariness of this time,
mundus senescit
, that the world waxed old’. And added, ‘Which question I know not how well it was meant, but I know how ill it was taken.’ Alongside the mood of the court, Elizabeth was very aware of the passage of time and of her own mortality.

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Lèse Majesté

During the Twelfth Night festivities at Whitehall in 1599 all eyes were fixed on the Queen. Elizabeth stepped down from her chair, took the Earl of Essex’s hand and danced with him, ‘very richly and freshly attired’. It was a sign that Robert Devereux had returned to the Queen’s favour, but not that he was to remain at her side. Elizabeth was to give him one more opportunity to prove his worth as a military commander.

The massacre of English forces at Yellow Ford, County Armagh, in August meant Elizabeth faced a total defeat in the Irish provinces. She needed Essex to lead the English army, to put down the rebellion led by Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone. Essex knew that this would be his final chance to distinguish himself and secure the rewards of favour that he sought. On 27 March 1599, Elizabeth bade him a tender farewell as he and his army set out from London, along streets thronged with well-wishers crying out, ‘God preserve your Honour’, and ‘God bless your Lordship’.
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On his arrival in Dublin a month later, Essex faced an alarming situation. His army, despite being the largest yet sent to Ireland, was significantly outnumbered. A Spanish invasion to support the 20,000 Irishmen up in arms under Tyrone was also expected any day. Essex grew increasingly suspicious of Robert Cecil’s activities back in London and believed that he was encouraging Elizabeth to refuse his request for more money, men and horses. ‘Is it now known,’ he wrote to Elizabeth, ‘that from England I receive nothing but discomforts and soul wounds.’
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He believed that his position at court was being undermined in his absence: it was said he aspired to make himself King of Ireland, even to have the crown of England, and of plotting to bring over an Irish army to dethrone the Queen. In the face of such accusations, Essex resolved to return to London and plead his case. In September, having long ignored direct orders to engage the main body of the rebel army, he negotiated a truce with Tyrone, against Elizabeth’s orders, before setting sail for England.

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During the summer of 1599 there were growing fears that another Spanish fleet was being prepared and that King James VI of Scotland was ready to invade and support a Catholic uprising. England was put on a state of high alert, and letters were sent to bishops and noblemen ordering them to ‘prepare horses and all other furniture as if an enemy was expected within fifteen days’. By royal command on Sunday 5 August in London, ‘chains were drawn across the streets and lanes of the city, and lanterns with lights, of candles (eight in the pound) hanged out at every man’s door, there to burn all the night, and so from night to night, upon pain of death, and great watches kept in the streets.’
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There was speculation that the Queen ‘was dangerously sick’ and at the beginning of September, Elizabeth moved quietly from Whitehall to Hampton Court, where she was seen at the windows of the palace, ‘none being with her but my Lady of Warwick’.
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Given the fears for her safety and rumour of a Spanish invasion, Elizabeth did not go on a long progress but travelled between her royal residences outside London. From Hampton Court she moved to Nonsuch in Surrey. It was something of a fairy tale palace, famed for its novel octagonal towers and its extensive deer park. It was built in the 1530s by Henry VIII in emulation of the great French palaces of the Loire. The walls were of white stucco with a deep relief pattern picked out in gold and there was a vast array of classical statuary in the picturesque grounds. There were two quadrangles surrounded by beautiful gardens. When the court was in residence the meadow outside the palace would be full of tents, where many of those attending on the court had to stay, as Nonsuch stood outside any village or township where extra accommodation would otherwise be provided.

On Sunday 26 September, Thomas Platter, a Swiss-born traveller arrived at Nonsuch for an official tour of the palace. In the Presence Chamber around midday, he watched as men with white staffs entered, after them some lords and then the Queen. Elizabeth sat on a red damask-covered chair with cushions embroidered in gold thread. The chair was so low that the cushions almost lay on the ground, and there was a canopy above, fixed ornately to the ceiling. Having sat down, Platter describes how a lady-in-waiting, ‘splendidly arrayed’, entered the room and while Elizabeth’s secretary stood on her right and her others officers with their white staffs stood on the left Elizabeth ‘was handed some books’. Anyone who approached her did so on their knees; ‘I am told they even play cards with the Queen in kneeling posture’, Platter noted. Elizabeth read the books for a while and then a preacher delivered a sermon standing before her. After a time, since it was very ‘warm and late’, the Queen called one of her gentlemen to her and commanded him to sign to the preacher to draw to a close. When the prayer ended she withdrew to the Privy Chamber.

Platter remained in the Presence Chamber to observe the Queen’s luncheon being served. Her guardsmen, wearing red tabards with the royal arms embroidered in gold, carried two tables into the room and set them down where the Queen had been sitting. Then another two guardsmen entered each bearing a mace, ‘and bowed three times, first at their entrance, then in the centre of the room and lastly in front of her table’. Two more guards then appeared with plates and goblets and two more carrying carving knives, bread and salt, all bowing before the table. A ‘gentleman bearing a mace’ entered, together with one of the Queen’s ladies who, having bowed before the empty table, stood before it as guardsmen brought in covered dishes of food. Platter describes how, when the guardsman had removed the cover and handed over the food, the Queen’s lady carved a large piece off which she gave to a guard to taste. Wine and beer were also poured out and tasted. Once the table had been fully laid out and served ‘with the same obeisance and honours performed as if the Queen herself had sat there’, Platter watched as each of the dishes, including large joints of beef and all kinds of game, pasties and tarts were taken to the Queen in her chamber for her ‘to eat of what she fancied privily’, as, ‘she very seldom partakes before strangers’. Finally, once the food had been served, ‘the Queen’s musicians appeared in the Privy Chamber with trumpets and shawms, and after they had performed their music, everyone withdrew bowing before the table and the tables were cleared away’.

Elizabeth was, as Platter adds, ‘most gorgeously apparelled, and although she was already seventy [sixty-] four, was very youthful still in appearance, seeming no more than twenty years of age. She had a dignified and regal bearing.’ Referring to the Lopez and Squires plots, Platter added, ‘although her life has often been threatened by poison and many ill designs, God has preserved her wonderfully at all times’.
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Yet, as Nottingham, the Lord Admiral, told Platter, her Majesty was now taking greater care of her safety, as ‘a short time before, an attempt had been made to poison the Queen by smearing powder on the chair she was accustomed to sit and hold her hands on’. Now she ‘refused to allow anyone in her apartments without my Lord Admiral’s command’.
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Two days after Platter’s visit, one unannounced visitor would not only fail to seek permission to enter the Queen’s apartments, but would do what no man had done before; he would cross the threshold into the Queen’s Bedchamber and glimpse Elizabeth far from ‘gorgeously apparelled’ and with a ‘dignified bearing’, but newly up, half-undressed, wigless and without her make-up.

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Essex arrived at Nonsuch on Friday 28 September, little more than three days after his departure from Dublin. The manner of his arrival at the palace was unexpected and unorthodox and left Essex’s plans to consolidate his position at court and in the Queen’s favour in tatters. Without stopping at Essex House to change his spoiled, mud-splattered clothes, the earl hastily crossed the Thames at Westminster by the horse-ferry, and rode on to Nonsuch Palace. Rowland Whyte was at court that day and described what happened.

On arriving, Essex ‘made all haste up to the Presence [Chamber] and so to the Privy Chamber and stayed not till he came to the Queen’s Bedchamber, where he found the Queen newly up, the hair about her face’. Elizabeth had just a simple robe over her nightdress, her wrinkled skin was free of cosmetics and without her wig Essex saw her bald head with just wisps of thinning grey hair ‘hanging about her ears’. This was the unadorned reality of the Queen’s natural body that no one, except her trusted ladies, should ever have seen. ‘Tis much wondered at,’ Whyte wrote with considerable understatement, ‘that he went so boldly into her Majesty’s presence, she but being unready, and he so full of dirt and mire, that his very face was full of it.’
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As the Queen stood speechless at the sight of the unheralded intruder, Essex flung himself, repentant and subdued, at her feet. Kneeling before her, he ‘kissed her hands and her fair neck, and had some private speech with her, which seemed to give him great contentment’. Although no man had ever entered her Bedchamber uninvited, the Queen remained calm, not knowing whether or not she was in danger, and, as Whyte reported, ‘her usage very gracious towards him’.

Later that evening, however, the Queen’s mood had changed and she ‘began to call him to question for his return, and was not satisfied in the manner of his coming away’. She now ordered that Essex should keep to his chamber.
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This was the last time that she would ever see him.

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The following day Essex was summoned before the Privy Council and Robert Cecil read out a list of the six charges. Among them was, ‘His rash Manner of coming away from Ireland: His overbold going Yesterday to her Majesty’s Presence to her Bedchamber: His making of so many idle Knights.’
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He was placed under house arrest in the custody of Lord Keeper Egerton at his official residence, York House. His wife, Frances, Countess of Essex, was heavily pregnant and when the baby was born the next day, Essex was kept from them.

There was rising public discontent at the earl’s unexplained house arrest. He petitioned Elizabeth with letters explaining how he was ‘wonderfully grieved at her Majesty’s displeasure towards him’, and drew up a detailed explanation of what had happened in Ireland and the arrangements he had put in place when he left.
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By December, Essex’s health was deteriorating and his wife was finally given access to him. The Queen once more sent her physicians to report on his illness. The prognosis was poor: the earl was suffering from dysentery and was unlikely to live. When Elizabeth heard the news, she ‘was very pensive and grieved, and sent Doctor James unto him with some Broth. Her Message was, that he should Comfort himself and that she would, if she might with her Honour, go to visit him; and it was noted, that she had Water in her Eyes when she spoke it.’
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Essex did begin to recover and resumed his attempts to regain the Queen’s favour. He sent a New Year’s gift to her at Richmond, which was ‘neither received nor rejected’, but remained in the hands of Sir William Knollys, the Comptroller of the Royal Household.
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Lady Penelope Rich, the earl’s sister, who had formerly been one of the Queen’s maids of honour, presented Elizabeth with a strongly worded letter. In it she defended her brother, denounced his enemies and complained that Essex had not been allowed into the Queen’s presence to answer his critics. Elizabeth was outraged at Lady Penelope’s ‘stomach and presumption’, and never fully forgave her for it.
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