Elizabeth I's Secret Lover

by Robert Stedall

  Robert could not understand Elizabeth’s refusal to marry him, while showing ‘an eager, enthralled, enchanted pleasure in talking about marrying him’.3 He had ‘great virility, strength, handsomeness, all those qualities to which Elizabeth was highly susceptible’.4 He assumed that she held back out of a phobia about marriage, rather than any falling out with him, and she always loved male attention. Her upbringing had been fraught with anxiety. Her parents’ marriage had shown her that there was safety in being courted, but risk, if the marriage fell out of love. Her mother had ridden on the crest of a wave until she produced only a daughter. Elizabeth had seen Jane Seymour dying in childbirth and her cousin Catherine Howard being executed after misalliances during her unhappy marriage. Catherine Parr, to whom she was devoted, also died in childbirth, and Elizabeth’s relationship with the charming but highly unsatisfactory Thomas Seymour nearly caused her downfall. For Elizabeth, marriage was not an attractive proposition, and by espousing Robert, she would lose the goodwill of her people, which she held more important than anything. It has been suggested that she was frigid, but this seems most unlikely given the undoubted sensuality of her feelings for Robert. There were also rumours on several occasions that she had had a child by him, but it seems nonsensical that she would not make any child legitimate when England needed an heir to the throne.

  With both Elizabeth and Robert being aware of the strength of the Council’s opposition to their marriage, she continued to sound out foreign powers to establish their approval. Robert approached the French Huguenots, although they were in no position to help him. De Quadra also reported that Robert sought Spanish backing for the marriage in return for Elizabeth’s support for an English Counter-Reformation. This extraordinary proposal seems to have had her blessing. In February 1561, Robert asked his brother-in-law, Sir Henry Sidney, to approach de Quadra on their behalf. It has been seen that Sir Henry was well known to the Spanish, having joined the diplomatic mission to Spain in 1554 proposing Mary’s marriage to Philip. He seems to have concluded that, if Elizabeth failed to marry and have children, England would inevitably fall prey to Catholic powers.5 Hume (whose history of Cecil shows that he was no fan of Robert) claims that Robert’s instruction to his brother-in-law demonstrates that he ‘was without shame, scruple, or conscience … his sole objective was to force or cajole the Queen into marrying him, and he grasped at any aids towards it’.6 Robert told Sidney that if Spain would support his suit, with armed force if necessary, Elizabeth would restore Catholicism, would extirpate heresy and would regard Philip as the arbiter of English policy at home and abroad.7 When Sidney made this proposal to de Quadra, he confirmed that once Robert was granted the Crown Matrimonial, ‘he would thereafter obey your Majesty [Philip II] as one of your own vassals’.

  De Quadra was incredulous at the request, not least because he found it extraordinary that Elizabeth would consider marrying Robert after the scandal of his wife’s death. Yet Sidney confirmed that he had made searching enquiries himself and could find nothing to contradict the jury’s verdict.8 He also claimed (quite electrifyingly) that ‘the Queen and Robert were lovers, but since their object was marriage, what did this matter?’9 As de Quadra was well known for his loquacious tongue, Sidney was unlikely to have provided such a juicy piece of scandal unless it were true. Although de Quadra remained sceptical of the veracity of the proposal, he wrote to Philip, that he thought the marriage would be in the Spanish interest. He also said:

  The general opinion, confirmed by certain physicians, is that this woman is unhealthy, and it is believed she will not have children, although there is no lack of people who say she has already had some, but of this I have seen no trace and do not believe it. This being so perhaps some step may be taken in your Majesty’s interests towards declaring, as the Queen’s successor after her death, whoever may be most desirable to your Majesty.10

  Rumours of Elizabeth’s infertility abounded, apparently because of reports circulating that she had very few monthly periods. These symptoms, which were repeated independently by Sir James Melville, the Scottish ambassador, would have been well-known in the circle of laundry maids paid to provide such tittle-tattle to interested parties. Elizabeth’s doctors did not agree, and on two occasions gave their view that she could expect to conceive, and the menstrual problems appear to have righted themselves at a later stage.11

  When de Quadra met Elizabeth, he told her that Philip had always held Robert in great affection. As de Quadra was a bishop, she asked to speak to him as her confessor, confirming ‘that she was no angel’ and could not deny ‘having some affection for Lord Robert, for the many good qualities he possessed, but she certainly had not decided to marry him or anyone else’.12 De Quadra confirmed that Philip would support the marriage, and this seemed to please her. Afterwards, Robert thanked de Quadra profusely, asking him to continue to promote his suit, which would leave Philip in control of British Government policy.

  Without de Quadra being the impeccable source for this story, it would be very difficult to believe it. It seems inconceivable that Elizabeth would have been prepared to forgo the Religious Settlement of 1559 that she had worked so hard with Cecil to achieve, or to allow Spanish troops to massacre her subjects. With Robert being so strongly Protestant, it seems unthinkable that he would have deserted all his long-held beliefs to satisfy his hopes of becoming King. It appears much more likely that Elizabeth, with Cecil’s connivance, was testing Robert’s moral integrity. Was his soaring ambition to marry Elizabeth more important to him than his Puritan rectitude? When he ran with the plan, he probably ended any hopes of Elizabeth marrying him, but this did not end her addiction for him. This was not the only occasion that Elizabeth put Robert’s integrity to the test, as will be seen.

  Sidney and Pembroke advised Robert to give the Queen an ultimatum. She should marry him before Easter, or else let him go to war in the service of the King of Spain. Robert paid no heed to them, and Cecil ensured that the marriage plan foundered. On hearing of Robert’s negotiation, he announced that he had evidence of a Catholic plot to achieve a Counter-Reformation. This brought talks with Spain to an abrupt end. He also asked de Quadra to provide a letter from Philip II recommending Robert’s suit, which could be laid before Parliament. De Quadra thought better of it, despite mistrusting Robert. Although he realised that Robert would be doomed, he was not prepared to risk his own standing with Elizabeth.

  Despite all this, Robert remained in Elizabeth’s company and, for several years, continued his negotiations to gain Spanish backing for the marriage in return for supporting a Counter-Reformation. On 30 June 1561, he gave a water-party for the Queen, to which de Quadra was invited. While the three of them sat in the poop of a barge, watching the festivities, Robert asked de Quadra to marry them then and there. The Queen immediately suggested that de Quadra would not know enough English. De Quadra told them that, if they resurrected the plan to be rid of heretics, he would be pleased to oblige. Although this offer was ignored, the pressure on Elizabeth to marry continued, not least because the widowed Mary Queen of Scots had returned to Scotland.

  Despite being fervently Catholic, Mary Queen of Scots was seeking nomination as Elizabeth’s heir. Cecil was determined to prevent this, but it did not help his cause that, in the previous year, her rival and the preferred claimant under the will of Henry VIII, the 20-year-old Catherine Grey, had made a complete fool of herself. De Quadra had already described Catherine as:

  a vain, touchy, silly girl, eagerly responsive to attention and very ready to feel herself slighted. Elizabeth was temperamentally averse from this young woman, nor could she forget the fatal fact that Jane Grey, however unwillingly, had been proclaimed Queen in defiance of the rights of the Tudors. As Lady Catherine had a great awareness of her position as one of the heiresses presumptive to the throne, but not a grain of common sense to accompany it, she was bound to fall victim to whatever party, hostile to the Queen, wanted to exploit her.13

  He also reported
that Elizabeth retained her as a Lady of the Presence Chamber and was ‘making much of Lady Catherine to keep her quiet’.14

  Catherine’s childhood marriage to Lord Herbert had been annulled immediately after the failure of the plot to place her sister Jane on the throne, and the 13-year-old had returned to live with her mother. Her Protestantism seemed pragmatic, and de Quadra considered her sufficiently flexible to contemplate her return to the Catholic faith, even hinting at her kidnap for marriage to Philip II’s son, Don Carlos.15 During mid-1560, she had clandestinely escaped from court for long enough to marry Somerset’s wayward son, Edward, Earl of Hertford. She had not sought Elizabeth’s consent, which was a requirement for heirs to the English crown under the Act of Succession of 1536. The only known witness was Edward’s sister Jane, who died of consumption shortly after.

  By December, Catherine realised that she was pregnant, and the marriage would soon be discovered. Elizabeth, who may have been aware of the elopement, sent Hertford on a grand tour of Europe where he met up with Cecil’s son, Thomas, in Paris. To Cecil’s chagrin, Thomas seems to have been led badly astray by Hertford, overspending his allowance, gambling, becoming an inordinate lover of unmeet plays and causing his father a concern that he might not ‘return with a chaste body’.16

  Before leaving England, Hertford had handed Catherine a deed of jointure, providing the only known evidence of their nuptials, but she had managed to lose it. In early 1561, she was required by Elizabeth to rejoin the court when at Ipswich but managed to hide her pregnancy until her eighth month. She then approached Bess of Hardwick, who had spent a part of her upbringing with Catherine in the household at Bradgate Park. When Bess berated her and refused to intercede, Catherine sought help from Robert, after arousing him from his sleep in his chamber at dead of night. With Elizabeth in the next room, Robert was terrified of being caught with a pregnant lady in his bedroom. The following morning, he told Elizabeth all he knew. Catherine was thrown into the Tower, where Hertford joined her in separate quarters on his return from the Continent. It was not just her secret marriage, but her pregnancy that angered the Queen, perhaps because Elizabeth had not achieved this with Robert. When cross-examined, neither Catherine nor Hertford would name the priest who had married them, claiming that he had been hauled in off the street. If there were other witnesses, they wisely failed to appear, and there was no documentation to confirm a marriage having taken place. Hertford was fined 15,000 marks by the Court of Star Chamber for seducing a virgin of the royal blood and the marriage was annulled, making them guilty of fornication. On 24 April 1561, Catherine gave birth to a son, and during a seven-year period in the Tower achieved a second son by Hertford, although he too was declared illegitimate to debar him from the throne. Their jailer, Sir Edward Warner, was removed from his post and imprisoned for his leniency. Catherine was so filled with remorse at her predicament that she became unable to eat and died in the Tower on 26 January 1568 at the age of 27.17

  Elizabeth’s affection for Robert remained undiminished; he continued to receive her gifts and his political activities were widened. He was granted a licence to export white cloth, which proved enormously lucrative, and received a pension of £1,000 chargeable on the London customs.18 In December 1561, the attainder against his father’s estates was lifted. Ambrose was restored to Warwick Castle with its surrounding lands and Robert arranged for him to be reinstated to his earldom. Grants of other former Dudley lands in the Midlands came to Robert. He approached Edward, Lord Dudley, with an offer to repurchase Dudley Castle which had been restored to Edward’s family by Robert’s father. Although Edward politely turned him down, Robert retained his lands nearby, so it was natural, when offered an earldom, that he would choose that of Leicester.

  Despite so much royal favour, Robert made no progress with his marriage suit, but continued to parry the efforts of other suitors. His attempts to progress his personal ambitions were mistrusted by other Council members. He was known to be holding secret discussions with foreign powers after developing his own network of agents and contacts on the Continent. His meddling and his close association with Elizabeth had made him extremely unpopular with Norfolk and members of the Council. De Quadra reported:

  The Duke of Norfolk is the chief of Lord Robert’s enemies, who are all the principal people in the kingdom … he said that if Lord Robert did not abandon his present pretentions and presumptions, he would not die in his bed … I think his hatred of Lord Robert will continue, as the Duke and the rest of them cannot put up with his being king.19

  When Norfolk complained, he found himself posted to the Borders as Lieutenant of the North. De Quadra again reported that ‘there is a plot to kill [Robert], which I quite believe’.20

  In July 1562 Robert Keyle, the attaché at the Swedish Embassy, had arrived in London to renew the hopes of King Eric. When Keyle attempted to circumvent Robert, Robert tried to have him imprisoned, and Keyle was warned that his life was under threat. Elizabeth gave every impression of being furious with Robert for interfering with her diplomacy and very publicly made clear that she would never marry him. Following this humiliation, Robert contemplated pastures new. Eric had five very attractive sisters. Following the wedding celebrations of the Princess Catalina in 1560, the bridegroom’s brother, George Johan Vedentz, had been found undressed in the bedroom of the Princess Cecilia at the castle of Vadstana, resulting in their arrest by Eric. His father, the elderly King Gustav Vasa was furious with his nubile daughter and called for her collection of jewels. He observed: ‘We have spent enough money on her magnificence which does not seem to have produced much return in honour.’21 He ordered that a diamond cross should be removed and given to one of her sisters. King Gustav was also furious with Eric for his indiscreet handling of the affair. Eric magnanimously took his sister’s part and, after establishing that there had been no sexual impropriety, arranged for a medal to be struck. This depicted Susannah, the chaste heroine of the Book of Daniel, on one side, and the apparently less chaste, but clearly desirable, Cecilia on the other. Eric gave her a copy of the medal cast in gold, and rimmed with rubies, diamonds and pearls.22 George Johan was not so lucky and was castrated. When King Gustav died in 1561, Eric became King of Sweden, and was approached by Dymock, the jeweller. Dymock told him that Robert would support Eric’s suit to marry Elizabeth, if Robert were rewarded with the hand of Cecilia and a suitable fortune. Nothing came of the proposed bargain, but it seems to have been genuine, as it was raised again in 1577.23

  De Quadra was also in trouble. Cecil’s spy network had recruited Borghese, de Quadra’s confidential secretary, as an agent. Borghese revealed de Quadra’s secret dealings with disaffected English Catholics. There were plans for the murders of Elizabeth, Cecil and Robert to place either Catherine Grey or Darnley on the English throne.24 Borghese reported a discussion de Quadra had undertaken on behalf of Margaret Lennox to establish support from English exiles in the Netherlands to install Darnley as King of England. Elizabeth and the Council were indignant to discover what de Quadra had written to Philip concerning her relationship with Robert, particularly a claim that they were secretly married. De Quadra denied this, but at the same time regretted being unable to confirm it. He claimed that Elizabeth had told him of the rumours circulating of her marriage, and Robert had told him she had promised to marry him, ‘only not this year’.25 It is apparent that Elizabeth was giving the impression of being secretly married, lest she had to explain an embarrassing pregnancy.

  De Quadra spent his last year in London under virtual house arrest at Durham Place. Cecil accused him of making it a hotbed of conspiracy and of disobeying the law of the land. He changed the keys of his entrance gates to prevent the ambassador from going out. Elizabeth asked him to leave and would not see him. When Philip II refused to settle his debts, he was left bankrupt and heartbroken. Although his futile plotting had provided the pretext for his disgrace, Cecil’s real purpose was to show to Robert and discontented Catholics that ‘they were
leaning on a broken reed when they depended upon Spain to help them against [the Council]’.26

  In early 1562, Mary Queen of Scots tried to arrange a meeting with Elizabeth to confirm her claim to the English succession after Elizabeth’s own progeny. Much to Cecil’s concern, Elizabeth agreed to meet her in York. Mary was confident that she could use her personal magnetism to win Elizabeth’s backing. With the Treaty of Edinburgh remaining unratified, the Council strongly disapproved of the meeting. Robert was said to support the meeting as, if Mary were recognised as Elizabeth’s heir, English Protestants would seek Elizabeth’s marriage to him to get her with child. Cecil had two concerns. He did not want a Catholic heir nominated and wanted to avoid promoting Guise prestige in Europe, when England’s policy was to support the French Huguenots.

  Luck came Cecil’s way and the meeting was cancelled. On 1 March 1562, Mary’s uncle the Duke of Guise, while travelling with his men from Joinville to Paris, attacked a group of Huguenots holding an unauthorised service in a barn at Vassy in Champagne. This left twenty-three Huguenots dead and more than 100 wounded.27 Huguenots, led by Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, and Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, Seigneur de Châtillon, took up arms. Although Cecil advocated conciliation, Throckmorton, the English ambassador and Cecil’s staunch ally, urged Elizabeth to assist the Huguenots, who were in dire straits. With backing from English Protestant circles, Robert now persuaded Elizabeth to support the Huguenot cause, hoping that the Huguenots would back their marriage. With Robert having ‘widespread contacts throughout the Protestant world’,28 he gained an ally in Throckmorton, who made him a godfather to his youngest child. This diminished Throckmorton’s former close friendship with Cecil.29