Tudor Queens of England (39 page)

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extreme sensitivity on Elizabeth’s part to any loss of her own sovereignty. If, at the end of the day, it was impossible to be both a wife and a Queen – then Elizabeth would always choose to be a Queen.

There was, however, the possibility that she might marry one of her own subjects. That would eliminate one problem and ease the other. In the fi rst weeks of her reign the Earl of Arundel was thought to fancy his chances, although Feria dismissed him as joke and he turned out to be right. Lord Robert Dudley, however, was not a joke at all. Unlike his foreign competitors he was a known quantity. He was around the Court – Elizabeth knew him well – and so did many others who were less favourably inclined. Unlike her sister, Elizabeth had not reached adulthood without any kind of sexual experience. At the age of 14 she had tangled with Lord Thomas Seymour, the brother of the then Lord Protector. Seymour was a married man at the time, and his wife was pregnant. Both were highly sexed and Seymour was a notorious womanizer, but how far their entanglement went is not known. Soon after there were rumours that ‘she was with child by the Lord Admiral’ but Elizabeth herself always denied intercourse. Of course she would have said that anyway, once it was clear that she was not pregnant, but the chances are that it was tr

ue.8 R
ecently it has been argued that intercourse did indeed take place, and it was the fact that she did not fall pregnant that convinced Elizabeth that she was ‘a barren stock’. However, that is pure speculation, based on a remark that the Queen made in 1566 on being informed of Mary Queen of Scots safe delivery. What does seem clear is that the young Elizabeth was thoroughly ‘awakened’ by the experience and knew thereafter that she was sexually attractive to men – a quality that Mary never possessed. Her reaction to Lord Robert built on that experience. That she was in love with him in the conventional sense seems certain. In the summer of 1560 she showed every sign of being infatuated and William Cecil, whose great success in Scotland she had virtually ignored, talked seriously of resigning his offi ce. There was, however, one serious snag. Robert was already married and hostile rumours were circulating that he intended to do away with his wife in order to marry the Queen. In September 1560 Amy was found at the bottom of a staircase at Cumnor Park with her neck broken and the obvious conclusion was drawn. So obvious, indeed, that we can be reasonably certain that Lord Robert had no hand in his wife’s death. Elizabeth was devastated. For a few months it had looked as though the woman in her was going to overcome the Queen but this tragedy acted like a bucket of cold water. Her Council, and particularly William Cecil, had been unanimously opposed to Lord Robert’s pretensions, pointing out his lack of experience in government and the fact that, although he was the son of a Duke, his father had been a parvenue who had been executed for high

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treason. If she had found a way to marry him, she would have been inviting kindred rivalries and feuds and an endless battle to defi ne (or limit) the powers of the Crown Matrimonial. All this negative advice now impinged upon her. She managed to get her lover formally acquitted by an inquest but the prospect of matrimony rapidly receded, to the relief of everyone except Lord Robert, who was to maintain his suit, with diminishing prospects, for another three or four years. Elizabeth had wanted Robert, as she was never to want any other man, and the brutal way in which political sense was forced to triumph over emotion, probably scarred her forever. It was not only that he was sexually attractive – she also probably calculated that she could manage him in a way which could not be guaranteed of any of his international competitors. His inexperience in that context was an asset. Perhaps he was so in love with her that he would hardly notice if the Crown Matrimonial meant virtually nothing. Perhaps …

That Robert wanted Elizabeth in the same way that she had wanted him is quite probable but unprovable. He also wanted the dignity and power of being the Queen’s husband, and might very well have found some way to dispose of Amy that would have been short of murder. There would still have been a scandal, of course, but it might have been more manageable. As it was, he had to settle for the long running status of ‘best friend’. His chemistry continued to have an unsettling effect upon her, even when she was so angry with his mismanagement of the Low Countries business in 1585, but politically he gradually became less of a loose cannon. His admission to the Privy Council and elevation to the earldom of Leicester in 1564 made him a conventional magnate and courtier, rather than the Queen’s lover, whose access to the royal ear could never be predicted or controlled. Whether she ever slept with him during those infatuated months in 1560 will never be known but when Elizabeth believed herself to be at death’s door in 1562, in addition to naming him ‘protector’ of the heirless kingdom, she denied that anything of that nature had ever occurred between them. Given the seriousness with which she took her relationship with God, her words on that occasion can probably be trusted.

Elizabeth always swore that she could never marry a man whom she did not know and that adds an air of unreality to the suits of Eric of Sweden, the Earl of Arran, the Archduke Charles and Duke Henri d’Anjou, none of whom she ever met. The only one of her later suitors with whom she had a personal encounter was Duke Francois, whom she met twice, and it was on the second of those encounters in 1581 that she gave one of her most problematic performances. She was 48 by this time and heavily dependent upon cosmetics to repel the advancing years; he was 25, erratic and ambitious. He came to England in a lastditch attempt to save a marriage negotiation that he urgently needed to succeed 214

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for his own reasons but which was already apparently on the rocks. Without the slightest warning, Elizabeth ‘entered into amorous discourse’ with her guest, kissed him passionately and gave him a ring, declaring that she would marry him forthw

ith.9
The Court was scandalized, especially the Queen’s ladies, who were rather a staid bunch by this time, and after a sleepless night of self-examination, she changed her mind and withdrew her pledge – to his infi nite chagrin. The incident is well attested, and of no ultimate signifi cance, but it does reveal that Elizabeth was as vulnerable to ‘hot fl ushes’ as any other woman. It also gives a brief and rather sad insight into what it cost the Queen to keep her political priorities constantly in view when her emotional needs might have pointed in quite a different direction. Elizabeth reigned long and successfully but ultimately at the price of never marrying, and remaining unfulfi lled in that dimension. She never (unlike Mary) considered marriage to be part of her duty to the realm. It could be that, but fundamentally it was a matter of personal inclination against political responsibility, and political responsibility always won. As we have already seen, this was largely a question of control. Elizabeth knew perfectly well, and if she had forgotten John Knox’s
First Blast
would have reminded her, that it was considered unnatural (and even unscriptural) for women to exercise control over men.
10
The Queen never accepted that, nor its accompanying notion that women were intellectually inferior. She had, and knew that she had, the intellectual edge on all the men about her, which was one reason why she felt confi dent about appointing the ablest servants she could fi nd – even if she knew that she would disagree with them. At the same time, she could not overawe them as her father had done but rather had to invent her own methods for keeping them in their place. Women were supposed to be indecisive so she took advantage of that by delaying important decisions far longer than any of her advisers thought wise. Sometimes this was done in the hope that some last minute change in the circumstances would either need to be taken into account, or might make any decision unnecessary. Thus she procrastinated over intervening in Scotland in 1560, in the hope that the Scots would be able to manage without her, and even instructed the navy, which she eventually sent north to act as though independently of her instructions – a subterfuge with which the Admiral, William Winter, would have nothing to do.
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She dithered and procrastinated about sending offi cial assistance to the rebels in the Low Countries after William of Orange’s assassination in 1584, both in the hope that it would not be necessary and because she disliked rebels, but moved eventually when the whole rebellion appeared to be on the point of collapse. Despite the reams of advice that she was given, Elizabeth always reserved the decisions in such matters to herself, and ultimately played her cards close, because it was not

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in her interest to reveal the workings of her mind to anyone. That was one of the main reasons for her success – no man was really able to follow her thought processes, and that gave her the degree of control that she needed. It is diffi cult to say how consciously this strategy was adopted and at this distance simulated indecisiveness and real uncertainty are very hard to tell apart. Her councillors had to accept what they could see. Her behaviour over the signature of the death warrant for Mary Queen of Scots sums up nearly two decades of ambiguity and hesitancy, most of which seems to have been genuine.

12

At fi rst, when the Scottish Queen had arrived in England in 1568, Elizabeth had wanted her restored on certain conditions. For example, she had to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh of 1560, upon which the whole state of Anglo-Scottish relations depended. However the Earl of Moray, the Scottish Regent, had gone too far to retreat. Mary had been deposed in favour of her young son and no English interference could be allowed to overturn that situation. Without ceasing to press her case, Elizabeth accepted this situation, and took refuge in a verdict of

‘non-proven’ over the charges against Mary in respect of her husband’s death, in order to keep her options open. The Scottish Queen’s involvement in the Ridolfi plot in 1571, however, cooled Elizabeth’s enthusiasm for her restoration, and in 1573 she intervened on behalf of the then Regent, the Earl of Morton against the ‘Castillians’ as Mary’s party in Scotland were called. From then on a battle of wills developed between the Queen, who did not cease to regard her guest as the lawful Queen of Scotland, and her council led by William Cecil, and later by Francis Walsingham, who wanted her put on trial and preferably executed. She was, as Cecil repeatedly pointed out, the focus and fi gurehead of every Catholic plot, a danger to Elizabeth’s life and to the stability of her realm. At fi rst Mary had campaigned hard to be recognized as Elizabeth’s heir and that the Queen never specifi cally rejected, but as the years passed, and she came to rely more on Philip of Spain and less upon her Guise kinsfolk in France, the focus of her ambitions changed. Mary never specifi cally claimed to be the lawful Queen of England – she was in no position to do so – but in countenancing plots such as those of Francis Throgmorton and Anthony Babington, she made the real nature of her target clear enough. At length, and following the Babington plot of 1586, Elizabeth was no longer prepared to fi ght against the logic of the evidence, and agreed to put her on tr

ial.13 She also pr
oclaimed Mary’s guilt when the verdict went against her but never ceased to regard her as a kinswoman and an anointed Queen. What then happened is reasonably clear. Elizabeth became reconciled to the fact that Mary must die but was desperately anxious not to have to answer for her death before the forum of European opinion. She tried every expedient to evade the responsibility, even (apparently) suggesting privy assassination. 216

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When that did not work, she signed the death warrant, allowed it to be issued and then used every trick in her histrionic repertoire to pretend that she hadn’t. She sulked and stormed, committing the faithful William Davidson to the Tower and rusticating her oldest and most trusted adviser, Lord Burghley, from the court and council. She may have been genuinely distressed at the course that she had been compelled to take, but it was a distress caused by a feeling that she was no longer in control of events, rather than by any particular sympathy with Mary. She also, of course, had an eye on the young King James of Scotland, who might well be distressed by his mother’s fate and whom the Queen had already identifi ed as her likely successor.

When it came to myth making, Mary won that particular contest hands down. Her exit from the world was as dignifi ed and as emotive as her most ardent admirer could have wished and, despite her uncertain relations with the Church, she was soon enrolled as a Catholic martyr. Elizabeth was completely upstaged. However, it would be an exaggeration to say that Mary was more dangerous dead than alive. Because her son was of the reformed faith, her particular brand of Catholic legitimacy died with her and James’s claim was, quite specifi cally, not affected by the manner of his mother’s death. Although Mary may have won the romantic battle, Elizabeth won the political one because the residual Catholic claim then devolved upon the Infanta Clara Eugenia, Philip II’s daughter, who had much less appeal to the recusant constituency, especially in view of the fact that England and Spain were at war.

Elizabeth hated war. Whatever she might think of her gender limitations in other contexts, war was not a woman’s world. It was not that she did not understand the issues but rather that she had to concede strategic command to the men who were actually leading the fl eets and armies that operated in her name, and she disliked that intensely. It made sense to do as much of the fi ghting as possible at sea, because Scotland was (roughly) friendly and in every other direction the sea was a moat, but there was also another reason. Men like Hawkins, Drake and Frobisher, who commanded at sea, were not magnates and they did not pretend to military resources of their own. They showed an infuriating tendency to ignore instructions but they always did so at a safe distance and they had the measure of their Spanish enemies in a way which none of her soldiers could pretend. Although it was necessary to hold musters from time to time, and to organize the counties for their own defence – fi eld armies were best kept small, best sent overseas, and best commanded by professional soldiers of the second rank. In spite of her tendency to keep these commanders short of resources, there was sense in this strategy. Both Sir John Norris in Brittany and Lord Mountjoy in Ireland were reasonably successful, whereas when the Queen yielded to the