Elizabeth I's Secret Lover

by Robert Stedall

  Mary died on 17 November. Several members of the Council immediately travelled to Hertfordshire to offer their allegiance to Elizabeth, but Cecil was there ahead of them. Elizabeth told them:

  The law of nature moves me to sorrow for my sister; the burthen that is fallen upon me maketh me amazed; and yet, considering that I am God’s creature ordained to obey His appointment, I will yield thereto, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me.24

  Her first reaction was to give thanks to God. She then made a list of people who needed to be told immediately.

  From the outset, Elizabeth showed extraordinary political acumen. Never for a moment did she appear to be overawed by the enormity of her new role. She knew that she was born to be England’s monarch. She modelled her authority on that of her father and was to share his vanity and a love of beautiful possessions and surroundings. She wished to be adored. Nevertheless, she ate and drank little, seldom dined in public and when she did, often left the table with the meal only half finished. For ordinary drinking she preferred the lightest sort of ale (which was less prone to contamination than water). She maintained an exacting standard of personal cleanliness and expected those around her to do the same. She lived simply and was prepared to work hard.25 She warned her advisers that she did not want an unwieldy Council nor one ‘whose complexion was old fashioned’. She had no intention of alienating those who would now find themselves in retirement and begged those whose services were foregone not to think that this arose from their disabilities, but ‘from her conviction that a multitude made for discord and confusion, instead of good counsel’.26 Maintaining their support was fundamental. Not only was she illegitimate in Catholic eyes, but until Parliament met, also in accordance with English law. If the Pope declared against her, Mary, the Queen Dauphine of France, was poised to claim the English throne.

  Most propitiously, Cecil was appointed as her Secretary of State and as a member of her Privy Council. From the outset she told him:

  This judgement I have of you, that you will not be corrupted with any manner of gift, and that you will be faithful to the State, and that without respect of my private will you will give me that counsel that you think best. And if you know anything necessary to be declared to me of secrecy, you shall show it to myself only, and assure yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity therein, and therefore herewith I charge you.27

  He repaid her by working assiduously on her government’s behalf for the rest of his life. He:

  might sometimes lament that she would not do what he wanted her to do; he had never to complain that she would not give her mind to the matter. The closest bond between Elizabeth and the man who worked hardest for her was that they shared the same consuming interest.28

  Parry, who joined the Council, was knighted and named Comptroller of the Household, but he did not prove influential and died in 1562. Kat Ashley was made First Lady of the Bedchamber with her husband becoming Keeper of the Queen’s jewels. Ambrose was appointed ‘chief pantler’ to provide food for the coronation, and Master of the Ordnance. Yet it was Robert whom Elizabeth favoured. He arrived, reputedly on a ‘milk-white steed’, and was appointed Master of the Horse. With Sir Peter Carew, he was sent to advise Philip II on the Continent.

  PART 2 ELIZABETH’S FAVOURITE

  Chapter 8 Master of the Horse

  Robert returned to England to take up his role as Master of the Horse, a position of considerable importance, which he held for almost the rest of his life.

  It entailed the buying, stabling, physicking, training, breeding and making available at all times of the large body of horses required by the Queen and her household – the Queen’s riding horses and those of her attendants as well as the pack-horses and mules for her baggage trains when she moved from place to place.1

  He was also responsible for ‘purveyance’, which involved demanding a certain number of horses from each district to meet royal requirements.

  Robert’s role involved arranging hunting parties, all the pageantry involved on state occasions and organising royal progresses. These were a logistical nightmare, with hundreds of men and women of all ranks needing to be housed, fed and watered wherever they went. He also provided ‘great horses’ for jousts and military needs. He was ideally suited to the task, which had been fulfilled by his brother John for Edward VI, and he lavished great care and attention to it. It was no sinecure; he headed one of the busiest departments of the household, which involved a significant financial outlay.2 He was a good judge of horse flesh and purchased animals on the Continent to build a breeding program designed to improve the native strain. This became the precursor to the development of the thoroughbred. In May 1581, he received a gift of six Hungarian greys for Her Majesty’s coach. Although they were light grey, their manes and tails were dyed ‘orange-tawney, according to the manner of their country’. They were used to draw her coach for the opening of Parliament in 1584, with ‘bridles studded with pearls’ and ‘diamond pendants on their foreheads’.3 There were regulations covering the export of horses from Spain, but Robert concluded that the Spanish authorities might be more receptive if he offered English dogs in exchange. He was soon spending £400 per year on purchasing new horses and harness alone. He hired Neapolitan riding masters, particularly Prospero d’Osma, who for many years ran a successful école de manège at Mile End and provided ‘excellent advice on improving pasture, covering mares, rearing foals, breaking colts and counteracting diseases’.4 In 1564, the new French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de Mauvissière, brought over the Italian, Hercules Trincetta, who Robert wanted to employ. Trincetta ‘gave place to no other in the breaking of young horses’.5 Following the Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572, Robert was looking for a riding master to teach the art of manège, which ‘involved the horses stopping suddenly and wheeling in a small space’.6 With so many French lords being casualties of the massacre, Robert hoped that he might find a suitable riding master unemployed. In September, he wrote to Francis Walsingham, then ambassador in Paris, authorising him to offer £30 per annum and his keep. Walsingham wrote back that they were demanding £75, so Robert found one in Italy. Elizabeth was always frugal and expected the best results with minimum expenditure. She enforced existing statutes requiring landowners to maintain a specified number of mounts commensurate with their station.

  Robert had a good understanding of court ceremonial, being both an exceptional horseman and showman, ‘tall, powerful, active and handsome’.7 With his natural panache, he dressed expensively, often spending £400 at a time on costly materials ordered in European markets.8 He was a convivial friend, loving good food and enjoying a wager on his sporting contests. His healthy appetite became a standing joke in court circles.9 Inevitably, he needed to delegate, but he was a ‘hands-on’ manager, particularly when he felt that his personal touch was called for.10

  Robert’s new role kept him near to court and close to the Queen. It positioned him to restore the Dudleys from the brink of extinction. Elizabeth was captivated by this 25-year-old, with his outrageous sense of fun, his slim athletic physique, dark hair and long slender fingers that matched her own. She referred to him as ‘Two Eyes’, and he would sign his letters to her as ‘ō ō’.11 They had shared difficult times together in the Tower, but he had not put her life in danger with some hot-headed fanatical scheme to place her on the throne. She would never forget how he had sold property to help her finances when she returned to Hatfield. He was totally devoted to the Crown, just as his father and grandfather had been. With most of her advisers calling on her to make political decisions, he provided a welcome diversion from affairs of state. He encouraged her to enjoy the fresh air, and she rode out with him in the royal parks or to go hunting. She liked ‘good gallopers’ and frightened even Robert when ‘she spareth not to try as fast as they can go’.12 This ‘passion for riding and hunting never abated’. At a hunt a
t Windsor, the Spanish ambassador recorded: ‘The Queen went so hard that she tired everybody out, and as her ladies and courtiers were with her they were all put to shame. There was more work than pleasure in it for them.’13 Robert greatly enjoyed riding with her and was an invaluable trustworthy companion. ‘Every letter [he] wrote to his sovereign bore extravagant protestations of loyalty.’14 He spent lavishly on costly gifts for her, frequently being left out of pocket.15 Yet he was married and Elizabeth, initially at least, had no time for dalliance. She was far too occupied with political issues.16

  Robert was not offered a political role and was not made a member of the Privy Council. This may seem surprising, as Cecil, who was responsible for its make-up, had been a close ally of the Dudleys and remained close to Robert in the final days of Mary’s reign. Cecil’s objective was to fill the Council with those who would be supportive of a Protestant religious policy, but they needed to be people of standing and political influence. Many of its members had served under Edward VI and even under Henry VIII. They viewed politics very differently from Robert, who was only waiting for the day that he could emulate his father’s military achievements. He was a hawkish nationalist and would have loved nothing more than to make his name by returning to the Continent to recover Calais. To face the combined might of Catholic Europe, he needed support from German Protestant princes. He could rely on a few Protestant extremists and allies at home, such as Francis, 2nd Earl of Bedford, who was a member of the Council and had spent part of Mary’s reign in exile. Others included his brother-in-law’s father Huntingdon, his brother Ambrose, and Pembroke.

  Cecil knew that taking an aggressive approach on the Continent would be disastrous. Robert’s dogmatic Protestantism made him confrontational; he was not a man to grasp the subtleties of Cecil’s objectives. The Royal Exchequer was empty, there was uncertainty whether Elizabeth commanded universal support at home, and she faced the prospect of diplomatic isolation if Spain, France, and the papacy combined to extirpate heresy. It was not just in England that religious beliefs were polarised. Committed Protestants all over Europe had gathered in Geneva, Zurich, Frankfurt and other Protestant centres to develop their extremist views. Those from England returned, fired up with a reforming zeal to challenge the Jesuit doctrines of Mary’s Spanish advisers. Cecil sought inclusive government to attract the Howards and other cliques marginalised during the development of the Reformation of Edward’s reign. He wanted to cultivate Catholic powers on the Continent, particularly the Spanish, to believe that England was well positioned to maintain the balance of power between French and Spanish rivalry and was not their legitimate prey. With Elizabeth only doubtfully legitimate, he had to prevent the French from seeking to place Mary Queen of Scots, their Queen-Dauphine, on the English throne. At least the English had established the Scottish lords as allies across their northern border. These had turned to Calvinism to combat the threat of being subsumed under French control.

  The European superpowers were exhausted by war and needed a period of peace. After the Constable’s release in October 1558, the Guise family’s hawkish policies were reversed, and Cecil elbowed his way into the negotiations between France and Spain to ensure that they did not combine to launch a Counter-Reformation against England and other parts of Protestant Europe. He realised that England was in no position to recover Calais. He wanted peace at almost any price. Elizabeth, who was no Protestant fanatic, supported Cecil. She was careful to cultivate Philip II as a possible marriage suitor, and to blur the edges of her religious affiliation until firmly secured on her throne.

  In the meantime, Elizabeth kept Robert fully occupied in his role and in her company to provide spontaneous light relief from her political workload. Inevitably, this led to rumours and insults at the favour being shown to him. Robert brushed them off, and jealously guarded his standing with her. The Spanish ambassador advised Philip II to revise his list of pensioners to include Cecil, Robert and Bedford.

  Chapter 9 Elizabeth establishes herself as Queen

  On 23 November 1558, Elizabeth set out from Hatfield with her retinue to claim the English throne. She made a triumphant journey through cheering crowds, for whom ‘no music is so sweet as the affability of their prince’.1 On reaching London ‘accompanied by a thousand or more lords, gentry and ladies’,2 she stayed for five days at the Charterhouse in the City. This was the home of Sir Edward, Lord North of Kirtling, a staunch Protestant who had been a member of the Council in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII and under Edward VI. From here, she processed in state to take possession of the Tower. With her well-known equestrian skills, she appeared to full advantage on her great charger in a dress of violet velvet with a scarf about her neck. Robert rode behind her mounted on a black stallion. His new role assured that he would soon become well-established in the public eye.

  For the next few weeks, Elizabeth was closeted with Cecil and her Council establishing the machinery of government. At Christmas, Robert adopted plans for court revels with an anti-Catholic slant. With her love of fine clothes, Elizabeth brought a new splendour and gaiety to the festivities.3 Gone were the puritanical garments she had donned to visit Edward VI. By out-dancing everyone, she immediately showed ‘her genius for creating a rapport with her people’.4 Sir Nicholas Bacon, Cecil’s brother-in-law, was able to speak of the nation’s good fortune at having ‘a princess to whom nothing – what, nothing? No, no worldly thing – was so dear as the hearty love and good will of her subjects’.5 Christmas was followed three weeks later by her coronation, after Dee had cast her horoscope to establish a propitious date. Robert supervised the arrangements for a spectacular procession and pageants, providing troops to keep the routes clear for the ‘smooth transit of thousands of dignitaries’ past cheering crowds.6 The whole event cost £20,000 and was designed by the Council to cement Elizabeth’s position on the throne. She was carried in a litter trimmed to the ground with gold brocade. Robert rode immediately behind, ‘leading the fully caparisoned palfrey of honour’.7 The citizens of London presented a Bible, ‘urging her to uphold Protestant truth and tread down superstitious error’.8 The ceremony took place at Westminster Abbey followed at three o’clock by a feast for 800 guests at Westminster Hall. Arundel, in cloth of silver, and Norfolk, in cloth of gold, rode their horses into the hall to herald the arrival of each course. The Queen was served by Sussex but sat speechless and exhausted after developing a severe cold. She lasted until one o’clock in the morning but might be forgiven for missing the jousting arranged for the next day.

  Elizabeth’s illness delayed the opening of Parliament from 23 to 25 January. It faced three important issues: England’s religious settlement; the restoration of financial stability in the wake of Mary’s disastrous foreign policy; and Elizabeth’s marriage, which was likely to dictate foreign policy for the future. With religious sentiment being polarised, Cecil adopted a conciliatory approach, while bravely steering England back towards the reforms achieved during the reign of Edward VI.

  The Religious Settlement of 1559 was a determined attempt at religious toleration. It declared that supreme power over the national church was vested in the Crown, but the oath of supremacy was administered only to those in office; refusal to take it meant loss of office, but it was not to be put to old and venerable men. People, who wrote or spoke against the supremacy were liable to the death penalty, but only on the third conviction.9

  Cecil’s approach was unlikely to please extremists, but his objective was to embrace as many as possible by fostering the middle ground and tolerating both Catholic and Puritan services. Nevertheless, it ‘stood four-square against the errors of the Church of Rome’,10 placing it in conflict with Continental Catholic powers. Catholics objected to the Crown’s claim to supremacy over the church, but it followed Henry VIII’s position that his authority ‘on earth was next under God’.11 While Puritans accepted this, they repudiated the Catholic church and objected to the use of church vestments, bellringing and even wedding ring
s. They considered that ministers should be chosen by their congregations and that bishops should not sit in the House of Lords, thus being reduced to the standing of the rest of the clergy. ‘The Puritans were not numerically formidable, but they had an influence out of all proportion to their strength, and their sympathizers were found among the bishops themselves and in the Privy Council.’12

  Elizabeth was not dogmatically Protestant and did not initially sign herself as Supreme Head of the Church as her father and brother had done. Nevertheless, she ‘had not only assented to [the Religious Settlement]; she had been a member of the committee that drew [it] up’.13 She preferred the ‘rather more traditional and ambiguous’ Lutheran doctrine embodied in the 1549 prayer book, to the more ‘strident and evangelical’ views of that of 1552,14 which Cecil and other members of the Council advocated. While she tolerated Catholicism and, for a period, maintained Mass in her private chapel, as soon as she felt more secure, she publicly adopted Protestant liturgy. At Christmas, she instructed the Bishop celebrating Mass in her chapel not to elevate the host. When he refused, she walked out after the Gospel. ‘Two days later she issued a proclamation which permitted certain parts of the service to be said in English.’15