Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (38 page)

Elizabeth’s complicated reaction was simultaneously to assert her authority and virtue as a just prince in her dealings with the subjects of the king of France and to confront him with his outstanding debts to her, which now totaled £401,734 16s 6d.
⁵⁰
This was personal debt, much of it incurred before Henri became king, and, as Elizabeth and her council well knew, apt to be denied by the French royal council as chargeable on the state but only on the king’s person. Elizabeth, therefore, tried to bargain the settlement of privateering cases in return for the money she was owed.

Here is another striking parallel with her father’s actions. During the 1540s, Henry had authorized privateering against French shipping and then used maritime cases and questions of jurisdiction over disputes to assert his honor as royal justiciar in an attempt to get François Ier to pay the arrears of the pension he owed to Henry by the 1527 Treaty of Amiens.
⁵¹
From late 1598 the French threatened an embargo on the English cloth trade if Elizabeth did not act. Whether she saw this as an obvious counter-ploy to her own demands or not, the threat only added new grist to Elizabeth’s mill and she complained bitterly of it to Henri throughout 1599. Given their history, however, an embargo was not something that Henri could finally sanction.52

Elizabeth was so insistent upon Henri paying his debts as, in effect, the quid pro quo for her taking action against English privateers because she was financially hard-pressed as never before. The army of 16,000 raised for Ireland in 1599 was the biggest yet assembled by the Elizabethan regime. The queen pleaded the urgency of the war in Ireland to Henri. Her need to mount an expensive campaign in order to secure the obedience of part of her kingdom was surely something Henri ought to have understood. Yet the same need allowed him to put her off, focused as she now was on what was essentially a “domestic” conflict, Spain’s support for rebels notwithstanding. This was, it should be recalled, exactly the same argument that Elizabeth had frequently used in response to Henri’s demands for greater assistance after his conversion in 1593.

An unsuccessful attempt to resolve the Anglo-French maritime disputes was made at a conference at Boulogne in 1600 but, by then, Elizabeth also had other, more pressing problems to deal with. As Paul Hammer has noted, Essex’s abandonment of the Irish campaign in 1600 as well as his return to court and subsequent rebellion and execution in 1601 brought a disappointing end to the spirit of warlike “derring-do” that the regime had mustered from the early 1580s and from which Henri IV had clearly profited.
⁵³
Of her various soldier-favorites, only Mountjoy was still active and was at least able to give the queen a last victory at Kinsale in December 1601. By the time the war in Ireland was finally concluded by treaty in March 1603, Elizabeth was dead. Henri IV’s debts to her were still unpaid.54

IV

The foregoing brief observations on the character of Anglo-French relations in Elizabeth I’s reign have suggested that they had something more in common with relations of an earlier age than might first appear. Elizabeth’s representatives abroad were undoubtedly more attuned to notions of themselves as orators and “diplomats” familiar to a later age and her councilors saw England’s international interests as clearly as, or perhaps even more clearly than, they did the queen’s personal interests, especially in her later years. Nevertheless, the issue of Elizabeth’s reputation, her honor as a prince in peace and war, and the condition of her personal relations with her French counterparts were still major elements of the conduct of England’s international relations during her reign. It was not for the first, or last, time in the history of English (and later British) diplomacy that relations with France in the 1580s and 1590s were multifaceted and at times highly personalized. They were used by the English monarch to assert a status and a potential beyond the comparatively meager resources at her command. One way of doing this was the adoption and adaptation of a “chivalric” mode of personal interaction between the ruler of England and her French counterparts first essayed during the reign of Henry VIII.

When Elizabeth was younger it was natural that this chivalric mode should focus on her marriageability, as it did in dealings with the Valois princes after 1565. Yet, significant though these were in casting Elizabeth as the love-object of great princes, she was never defined by her marriage potential alone. That is what her regime told itself, told her, and told the French at the Whitsun tournament in 1581—the first occasion, it should be remembered, on which Elizabeth was publicly presented as a “Virgin Queen.” As is well known, from at least the mid-1580s, Elizabeth became deeply conscious of her advancing age and its potential to undermine her international reputation as a vigorous sovereign. In assisting Henri IV, the queen acted not only in accordance with what she and her council determined was in the nation’s interests, but also in a way that kept her at the forefront of international affairs. Even remonstrating with Henri in the later 1590s over debts and maritime disputes was a way of trying to both meet actual material needs in her nation’s defense and assert her power and honorability as a female prince.

On hearing news of Elizabeth’s death Henri IV wrote to his minister Sully words that show a perhaps surprising regard for Elizabeth given their often cantankerous relationship. Sully was due to go to England and the words may have been intended primarily to promote Elizabeth’s reputation as a friend of France to her successor in the expectation of continuing amity. Nevertheless, they evoke the most positive of Henri’s wide range of feelings for Elizabeth. Henri’s tribute to her supports the notion that the “chivalric” mode of interaction adopted in Anglo-French relations in the face of the Habsburg enemy, familiar from the reign of Henry VIII, was still useful at times in maintaining those relations during Elizabeth’s reign. This chivalric and personal mode was adopted, not despite Elizabeth’s female monarchy, but because of it. Henri wrote,

My friend, I have been advised of the death of my good sister the Queen of England, who loved me so cordially; to whom I am truly obligated. For just as her virtues were great and admirable, so great, also, is the inestimable loss that I, and all the good French have by this; for she was the irreconcilable enemy of our irreconcilable enemies and so generous and judicious, so that in respect of reducing their excessive power, she was to me a second self.55

Notes

1. B[ibliothèque] N[ationale de] F[rance] MS français 17,830 fol. 86, Elizabeth I to Henri IV, July 1593. An English translation from a copy of the letter in the Cecil Papers has been published in 
   Elizabeth I: Collected Works
   , ed. L. Marcus, J. Meuller and M. B. Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 370–1.
   
2. For further discussion of Elizabeth as a warrior queen, see Anna Whitelock, “Woman, Warrior, Queen?” in this volume.
   
3. J. Richards, 
   Mary Tudor
    (London: Routledge, 2008), 203–22; R. Titler, 
   The
   Reign of Mary I
    (Harlow: Longman, 1991), 58–68; G. Redworth, “Matters Impertinent to Women: Male and Female Monarchy under Philip and Mary,” 
   EHR
    112 (1997): 597–613.
   
4. B. J. Harris, “Women and Politics in Early Tudor England,” 
   HJ
    33 (1990): 259–81; J. Richards, “‘To Promote a Woman to Beare Rule’: Talking of Queens in Mid-Tudor England,” 
   SCJ
    28 (1997): 101–21; A. McLaren,
   Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth, 1558–
   1585
    (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); N. Mears, 
   Queenship
   and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms
    (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) on the language and means of women’s formal and informal power in the period.
   
5. G. Richardson, “Eternal Peace, Occasional War: Anglo-French Relations under Henry VIII” in 
   Tudor England and its Neighbours
   , ed. S. Doran and G. Richardson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 44–73.
   
6. M. Leimon and G. Parker, “Treason and Plot in Elizabethan Diplomacy: The ‘fame of Sir Edward Stafford’ Reconsidered,” 
   EHR
    111 (1996): 1134–58.
   
7. P. Hammer, 
   Elizabeth’s Wars: War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544–1604
    (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 62–70.
   
8. S. Doran, “Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici” in 
   “The Contending Kingdoms,” France and England 1420–1700
   , ed. G. Richardson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 117–32.
   
9. On the wider debate about relations with France and the Huguenots, see D. J. B. Trim, “Seeking a Protestant Alliance and Liberty of Conscience on the Continent, 1558–85” in 
   Tudor England and its Neighbours
   , ed. Doran and Richardson, 139–77.
   
10. S. Doran, 
    Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I
     (London: Routledge, 1996), 99–129.
    
11. Doran, 
    Monarchy and Matrimony
    , 181.
    
12. Leimon and Parker, 1139. See also G. M. Bell, “Elizabethan Diplomatic Compensation: Its Nature and Variety,” 
    The Journal of British Studies
     20 (1981): 1–25.
    
13. Foreign Intelligence and Information in Elizabethan England: Two English
    Treatises on the State of France, 1580–1584
    , ed. D. Potter, Camden Fifth Series, 25 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1–21.
    
14. L. F. Parmelee, 
    Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England
     (Rochester and Woodbridge: Rochester University Press, 1996), 27–51; C. Giry-Deloison, “France and Elizabethan England,” 
    TRHS
    , 14 (2004): 223–42.
    
15. D. Potter and P. Roberts, “An Englishman’s View of the Court of Henri III, 1584–1585: Richard Cook’s ‘Description of the Court of France,’”
    French History
     2 (1988): 312–44.
    
16. The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter
    , ed. John Anstis, 2 vols. (London, 1724), I: 383.
    
17. R. B. Waddington, “Elizabeth I and the Order of the Garter,” 
    SCJ
     24 (1993): 97–113.
    
18. R. Strong, “Festivals for the Garter Embassy at the Court of Henry III,”
    Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
     22 (1959): 60–70. See also P. Begent and H. Chessyre, 
    The Most Noble Order of the Garter, 650 Years
    (London: SPINK, 1999), 234. Henri was first nominated to the Order on April 23, 1575.
    
19. List and Analysis
     
    of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I
    , I: 320–1
    .
    Commission for Willoughby. Dated Oatlands, September 20, 1589.
    
20. List and Analysis
     
    of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I
    , I: 13, 322. Willoughby to Walsingham and Burghley, Tours, November 14, 1589.
    
21. See note 1 above.
    
22. List and Analysis
     
    of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I
    , V: 359.
    
23. List and Analysis
     
    of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I
    , V: 362.
    
24. The Edmondes Papers, A Selection from the Correspondence of Sir Thomas
    Edmondes
    , ed. G. Butler (London: Roxburghe Club, 1913), 185–7: Sir John Norris to Edmondes at the French court, November 12, 1594; J. B. Black,
    Elizabeth and Henry IV
     (Blackwell: Oxford, 1914), 50–80.
    
25. The Edmondes Papers
    , 207–11: Burghley to Edmondes, January 23, 1595; Hammer, 
    Elizabeth’s Wars
    , 175–83; D. Buisseret, 
    Henry IV King of France
    (London: Routledge, 1992). See also D. Womersley, “France in Shakespeare’s Henry V,” 
    Renaissance Studies
     9 (1995): 442–59 for an interesting account of the play’s implicit critique of Henri IV of France.
    
26. List and Analysis
     
    of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I
    , VI: 174: Elizabeth to Henri IV, October 1595.
    
27. List and Analysis of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I
    , VI: 179: Sir Henry Unton’s instructions, December 1595.
    
28. List and Analysis
     
    of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I,
     VII: 157.
    
29. “Unton, Sir Henry,” 
    ODNB
    .
    
30. List and Analysis
     
    of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I
    , VII: 170.
    
31. List and Analysis
     
    of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I
    , VII: 171.
    
32. L. Montrose, 
    The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender and Representation
    (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 237–8.
    
33. P. Hammer, “The Crucible of War: English Foreign Policy, 1589–1603” in
    Tudor England and its Neighbours
    , ed. Doran and Richardson, 252.
    
34. Black, 
    Elizabeth and Henry IV
    , 92–102.
    
35. List and Analysis of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I
    , VII: 188–9.
    
36. BNF MS français 4740 fol. 40v: “L’Ordre tenu et observé a Rouen le XXe Octobre 1596 lors que la roine d’Angleterre Elizabet envoia l’ordre de la Jartiere au Roy Henry iiiie.” See also 
    List and Analysis of State Papers, Foreign
    Series, Elizabeth I
    , VII: 197–205.
    
37. E. Ashmole, 
    The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter
     (London, 1672; repr. 1971), 395. Ashmole contrasts favourably the documents sent to Henri IV with those sent to his predecessor.
    
38. A Journal of all that was accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse, ambassador in
    England from King Henri IV to Queen Elizabeth, Anno Domini 1597
    , trans. and ed. G. B. Harrison and R. A. Jones (London: Nonesuch Press, 1931), xii– xiii, quoting a letter in the Baschet transcripts from Henri IV to Elizabeth I, Monceaux, November 15, 1597.
    
39. A Journal
    , ed. Harrison and Jones, 36–7. See also 25–6.
    
40. A Journal
    , ed. Harrison and Jones, 37.
    
41. Four Years at the court of Henry VIII. Selection of despatches written by the Venetian ambassador, Sebastian Giustinian and addressed to the Signory of Venice, 1515 to 1519
    , trans. Rawdon Brown, 2 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1854), I: 81.
    
42. Montrose, 
    The Subject of Elizabeth
    , 232–3.
    
43. The Journals of Two Travellers in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England, Thomas Platter and Horatio Busino
    , ed. P. Razzell (London: Caliban, 1995), 58–9. Hereafter cited as Platter.
    
44. Black, 
    Elizabeth I and Henry IV
    , 120–37.
    
45. L’Ambassade de France en Angleterre sous Henri IV: Mission de Jean de Thumery,
    sieur de Boissise 1598–1602
    , ed. P. Laffleur de Kermaingant, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886), II: 4–5: Henri IV to Elizabeth I, from Ansennis, April 22, 1598; and 8–9: unspecified location but from context Monceaux, September 30, 1598.
    
46. J-P. Babelon, 
    Henri IV
     (Paris: Fayard, 1982), 929.
    
47. Elizabeth I: Collected Works
    , ed. Marcus et al., 384–6: Elizabeth to Henry, c. September 4 and September 13, 1596. On Elizabeth’s correspondence with James, see S. Doran, “Loving and Affectionate Cousins? The Relationship between Elizabeth I and James VI of Scotland, 1586–1603” in 
    Tudor England
    and its Neighbours
    , ed. Doran and Richardson, 203–34.
    
48. Platter, 104–5.
    
49. Boissise
    , ed. Laffleur de Kermaingant, II: 11: Henri IV to Elizabeth I, Monceau, October 6, 1598: “chose contraire à la bonne amityé et intelligence d’entre nous, noz royames et subjectz.”
    
50. Black, 
    Elizabeth and Henry IV
    , 140ff.
    
51. Richardson, “Eternal Peace,” 60–9.
    
52. The Edmondes Papers
    , 400–403: Elizabeth I to Edmondes, Westminter, January 20, 1599.
    
53. “Devereux, Robert, second earl of Essex,” 
    ODNB
    .
    
54. Elizabeth I: Collected Works
    , ed. Marcus et al., 404–8 for Elizabeth’s last letters to Mountjoy in February 1603.
    
55. Babelon, 
    Henri IV
    , 929: “Mon ami, j’ai eu avis de la mort de ma bonne soeur la reine d’Angleterre, qui m’aimait si cordialement, à laquelle j’avais tant d’obligation. Or comme ses vertus étaient grandes et admirables, aussi est inestimable la perte que mois et tous les bons Français y avons faite, car elle était ennemie irréconciliable de nos irréconciliables ennemis, et tant généreuse et judicieuse qu’elle m’etait un second moi-même en ce qui regardait la diminution de leur excessive puissance....”