Elizabeth I's Secret Lover

by Robert Stedall

  if she did marry, she was determined not to give up any power, property or revenue to her husband; the mere marriage would make him but too powerful. But, she exclaimed, ‘If I think of marrying, it is as if someone were tearing the heart out of my body … nothing but the welfare of my people would compel me to it!’19

  When Robert gave her an ultimatum to make up her mind by Christmas, she promised to let him know by Candlemas (2 February 1566). De Foix understood that she had already promised to marry him before witnesses, but he reported: ‘If she thinks fit to disengage herself, no one will call her to account or give testimony against her.’20 The ambassadors were certain that ‘Cecil … would resist to the last the marriage of the Queen with [Robert], under the patronage of France or Spain.’21 Candlemas came and went without any word of marriage. When de Foix was replaced as French ambassador by M. de la Forêt, the French continued to support Robert’s suit in an attempt to thwart the Austrian match.

  Despite Robert’s personal influence with the Queen, he was careful not to encroach on the political life that she shared with Cecil. Robert was famous for his gently spoken easiness and knowing when to ‘put his passion in his pocket’. He very rarely overstepped the mark. The entrance to the Queen’s Privy Chamber, which led to the Presence Chamber, was guarded by Black Rod, a man named Bowyer. When Robert’s protégé was forbidden entry, Robert appeared to tell Bowyer he was a knave. Although he stormed into the Queen, Bowyer got there first and, on his knees, asked simply whether Robert were King or Elizabeth Queen? The Queen was furious at Robert’s presumption and told him: ‘I will have here but one mistress and no master. And look that no ill happen to him, lest it be severely required at your hands.’ Robert was suitably chastened and ‘his feigned humility was long after one of his best virtues!’22

  In March 1566, Robert’s sister Catherine Huntingdon had become unwell and he left court to visit her at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. She does not appear to have been dangerously ill, and it has been suggested that he departed from Elizabeth in pique caused by the attention she was showing to Thomas (‘Black Tom’) Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde, of an Anglo-Norman family living in Ireland, who had been brought up in the court of Henry VIII. Ormonde had returned to Ireland during the reign of Mary to challenge the authority of the FitzGerald Earls of Desmond, who were opposing English rule. In 1565, in an effort to curb intermittent warfare between the Butler and FitzGerald clans, Sir Henry Sidney, then Lord Deputy, sent the principals to London to explain their differences. Elizabeth favoured Black Tom. ‘His good looks, his Irish charm and his responsive gallantry, as well as his strong English sympathies, made him an attractive companion.’23 De Silva could see that Robert resented the favour being shown to Ormonde by Elizabeth. Although it was a passing fancy, Elizabeth’s flirtation had not gone unnoticed. Two months later, Dr Thomas Young, the Archbishop of York, admonished her for showing favour to Ormonde. He seems to have been out of date and she considered it preposterous, until Robert magnanimously intervened to calm her down. Robert’s absence to see his sister had done the trick. Elizabeth wrote to recall him. When he asked for a fifteen-day extension, she demanded his immediate return, and he duly obeyed.

  On 12 April, there was an extraordinary occurrence. Robert was escorted by 700 footmen of his own and of the Queen’s to the City home of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford next to St Swithin’s Church. As Oxford was only 16, he was quite probably not there. The Queen also set out accompanied by two ladies from Greenwich but was rowed against the tide by a single pair of oars and could only land where there were stairs. On arrival much later than expected at Three Cranes Wharf, a blue-painted coach carried her to Oxford’s house. By this time, Robert had left. Nevertheless, he remained at a place she would need to pass on returning to the wharf. ‘When she saw him, she came out of her coach into the high-way and she embraced the Earl and kissed him three times.’24 They then climbed into the coach, crossed London Bridge and went on to Greenwich by road. The escort of 700 footmen gives the appearance of a secret marriage assignation, but Elizabeth dragged her feet and the moment was lost.

  By 29 April, Cecilia had outstayed her welcome. Her household had caused considerable damage at Bedford’s house, ‘breaking and spoiling windows and everything’.25 Bedford asked them to leave. The Queen, who had entertained them generously, felt obliged to settle their household expenses. Cecilia and the Margrave considered it an impertinence that shopkeepers should ask for their purchases to be paid for. Although the Margrave tried to creep back to the Continent, he was apprehended at Rochester and imprisoned for debt. When he threatened to shoot his way out, the Mayor asked the Queen either to insist that he obeyed English laws, or that the town should be relieved of such an awkward prisoner. Again the Queen paid his debts, but it did not stop the Margrave sending a servant to London to ask Robert, ‘as an addition to your previous kindness’,26 to provide an English horse for his journey in exchange for a German one. Although this seems to indicate the success of Robert’s breeding programme, he does not appear to have obliged.

  Before Cecilia’s departure, her ship was boarded by her creditors, who threatened to impound twelve chests belonging to her ladies-of-honour. One of her ladies, Helena von Snakenborg, remained behind. She was ‘fair haired and exquisitely pretty, and at her arrival fourteen years old’. She was soon ‘a favourite with everyone from the Queen downwards’.27 With Northampton’s wife having died in 1565, he wanted to marry Helena, who wrote to her mother elated at the prospect. Although Cecilia initially gave her consent, she withdrew it in exasperation at her treatment by her English creditors. Helena had no intention of having her prospects blighted. She was made a gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber by Elizabeth and enjoyed life at the English court until old enough to marry the 58-year-old Northampton in 1571, when she was 19. His ‘bliss’ lasted only six months as it ‘sweetly ended his life’,28 but she remained one of Elizabeth’s intimate friends until the Queen’s death. In 1576, she remarried Sir Thomas Gorges, by whom she had seven children. Gorges later became noteworthy for arresting Mary Queen of Scots prior to her trial at Fotheringhay.

  Nothing came of Eric’s suit, except that it again delayed Robert’s marriage hopes. De Foix reported to Catherine de Medici: ‘The friendship and favour of the Queen towards the Earl of Leicester increases daily.’29 Cecil had told de Foix of Robert’s belief that his hopes of marrying Elizabeth were better than those of anyone else, and he should ‘relinquish any plan he might be considering of marrying the Queen to a foreigner’,30 Robert even undertook to see that Cecil was promoted, if he would support him. With Cecil sharing Elizabeth’s intellectual industry and consuming interest in politics and retaining her deepest respect, this might have seemed demeaning. In typically modest fashion, he simply thanked Robert for his good opinion and friendship.31

  At Norfolk’s instigation, the Council reopened negotiations with the Archduke Charles, and Norfolk warned Robert that he would be held responsible if there were any delay. Robert responded that he would support the Austrian match, ‘if it could be so arranged that the Queen would not think he had relinquished his pursuit of her for lack of inclination. This “would cause her woman-like to undo him”.’32 This implies that they were still sleeping together. It was at about this time that one of Cecil’s many private notes about Robert’s suit included as a disadvantage: ‘It will be thought that the slanderous speeches of the Queen and the Earl [being in bed together] have been true.’33 Cecil gave no hint of his personal assessment of this possibility. Elizabeth Jenkins suggests: ‘She clung [to Robert] as a man clings to a spar to save himself from the horrors of drowning; when her mother no longer charmed her father, the King had cut her head off.’34 Elizabeth later told de Silva that Robert had unselfishly urged her to marry for her own sake, for the benefit of the realm, and to deliver him from the blame of impeding her marriage negotiations.35 She confessed that if he were ‘a King’s son, she would marry him tomorrow’.36 In June, de Silva went to see the Quee
n at Whitehall; on the grand staircase he met Robert, who told him that, if the Queen would not marry one of her own subjects, he hoped she would marry the Archduke. When they reached the Presence Chamber, they went in together to find Ormonde already there. De Silva noted: ‘Certainly he and [Robert] did not look very amiably at each other.’37

  On 6 August 1566, Robert confessed to de la Forêt, ‘smiling and sighing at the same time, that he does not know what to hope and fear’. He confided: ‘I have known her since she was 8 years old, better than any man in the world. From that time, she has invariably declared she would remain unmarried.’ He explained that if she were to marry an Englishman, it would be him, and Ormonde’s position was not to be taken seriously. ‘At least the Queen has done me the honour to tell me so, several times, when we were alone, and I am as high in her favour as ever.’38 It was probably about now that Robert had realised that his suit would never succeed. Cecil recorded: ‘The Queen had shown him such affection that he had been led to hope she would marry him, but he would try to bring the matter to a head; if he could not gain her promise, he would cease his habits of intimacy with her.’39

  Chapter 16 Robert survives political attempts to undermine his standing

  Despite conflict abroad, Elizabeth’s control of Government had heralded a new stability at home. Although her court was divided into competing factions, she tried to ensure that its members maintained a veil of civility. Membership of her Council remained remarkably static, and Elizabeth’s strong personal friendships with councillors and members of her court were repaid with great loyalty. Some of them had come to accept the reality that she would never marry. Although this diminished Robert’s prospects, Cecil realised that their deep friendship was unshaken and he continued to have ‘favour sufficient’.1

  While Cecil remained circumspect in dealing with Robert, this was not true of Norfolk and Sussex, heading a list of detractors who regularly clashed with him. Robert’s enemies also included William, 1st Lord Howard of Effingham, (whose daughter, Douglas, was soon to become Robert’s mistress) and Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon. (Effingham’s second son, Charles, later 1st Earl of Nottingham, had recently married Hunsdon’s daughter, Catherine Carey.) Cecil was not above giving them encouragement in the background. The rival groups became distinguished by the wearing of coloured favours, yellow for the Howard/Radcliffe group and purple for Robert’s supporters, resulting in occasional brawls. Even Elizabeth could see Robert’s arrogance and publicly warned him not to assume that she had no affection for others.

  Robert and Norfolk realised that they needed to cool their differences and in early 1567 both left court. Norfolk was absent until September, and Throckmorton advised Robert to stay away to avoid the accusation of interference in the Austrian marriage negotiations. It seems likely that before he went, Elizabeth took the difficult decision to make clear to him that she would never marry him, and they probably ceased to sleep together. In January 1567, de Silva wrote:

  The Earl of Leicester has not been in very high favour with the Queen just now, I was walking out of her chamber when she called me back and said she would be glad if I would show some love and friendship to Lord Robert as I was wont to do.2

  De Silva was astonished at this ‘wistful’ plea and assured the Queen that he had no lack of goodwill for Lord Robert (which may not have been true). Nevertheless, the Queen seems to have been trying to provide Robert with a shoulder to lean on at a devastating time for him. He stayed away until late March but admitted to Cecil that he would have preferred to absent himself for longer. His cousin, John Dudley, did not agree, warning him: ‘If you come not hastily, no good will grow, as I find Her Majesty so mislikes your absence, she is not disposed to hear of anything that may do you good.’3 When Robert returned, he was deeply upset to find himself branded as a scapegoat for the failure of her marriage negotiations. He had also lost much of his influence. Although Elizabeth consulted him and valued his opinions, decisions now were always her own. A month later, he again sought leave of absence to visit his Norfolk estates. While in Norwich, he received a letter from the Queen very critical of his perceived faults. He now only wanted to find ‘a cave in a corner of oblivion or a sepulchre for perpetual rest’.4

  It was during Robert’s absence that the horrific news was received, on 11 February, of the murder of Darnley at Kirk o’ Field, in what seemed to be a conspiracy by many of the Scottish lords to be rid of him. It is very likely that Cecil knew of the plan beforehand and most deviously fanned rumours that Mary Queen of Scots was implicated, when nothing was further from the truth. To give this story some credibility, he encouraged the Scottish lords to entice Mary to marry the Earl of Bothwell, who had organised the murder, thus portraying it as a crime of passion. This achieved Cecil’s objective of tarnishing her name and making her unacceptable for nomination as Elizabeth’s heir. Robert was not involved in the deception but realised that the hopes of Catherine Grey were significantly enhanced. He quickly sent Ambrose to meet Hertford ‘to offer his services in the matter of the succession’, while he, as the more able tactician, visited Hertford’s mother, the formidable Duchess of Somerset. By this time, Catherine was under the guardianship of Sir Owen Hopton at Cockfield Hall in Suffolk and could not immediately be contacted. Within a year she had died of starvation, when her grief at her predicament apparently made her unable to eat. With her two sons being deemed illegitimate and her sister, Mary, mentally sub-normal, the English succession was in the lap of the Gods.

  With Robert away from court and his ally Throckmorton being sent as ambassador to Scotland, his enemies jumped on any means to discredit him. They unearthed Amy Robsart’s disreputable half-brother, John Appleyard, who had already benefited from considerable rewards out of his kinship to Robert, including roles under Sidney in Ireland, as a privateer on the Norfolk coast and as the Gentleman Porter at Berwick. Robert had even entered into a bond of £400 to cover his debts, but Appleyard could not be satisfied and claimed to hold unpublished details of Amy’s death which reflected against Robert. As he had come to Abingdon at Robert’s request shortly after Amy’s death, it was reasonable to assume that he knew what had happened. Understandably, Norfolk decided to sound him out. A go-between offered Appleyard £1,000 with more to follow if he would provide information implicating Robert in his wife’s death. William Hogan, Appleyard’s brother-in-law and one of Robert’s servants, became suspicious of him. He warned Robert, who sent Thomas Blount to examine him. Under interrogation, Appleyard admitted the fabrication, claiming that it had been instigated by Norfolk, Suffolk and Heneage. Robert took no further action but dismissed Appleyard after giving him a dressing down.5

  A year later, on 8 May 1567, the Council was examining a man named Trendle, who averred that Appleyard was again claiming to have ‘covered [up] the murder of his sister’ to protect Robert. Appleyard was summoned, together with both Blount and Hogan, resulting in the whole of the previous investigation being revealed. Appleyard was thrown in the Fleet prison with instructions to produce any relevant evidence that he might hold of Amy’s death. He was also given a copy of the coroner’s original verdict. Having seen the evidence that Amy’s death had arisen from ‘misfortune’, he withdrew his allegations. When he was examined in the Star Chamber, he admitted having accused Robert out of ‘malice’. He was probably sent to the pillory and was very soon trying to sell his post at Berwick. In 1570, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at Norwich Castle after taking part in the Northern Rising on Norfolk’s behalf. Robert again came to his rescue. After four years, he was released on compassionate grounds, spending his remaining days in the care of Robert’s friend, George Gardiner, Dean of Norwich.6

  Sussex also caused problems. At the end of 1565, he had returned from Ireland where he had faced a seemingly impossible situation as Lord Lieutenant. Elizabeth had left him lamentably short of resources to put down rebellions in Ulster. In January 1566, he was replaced by Sir Henry Sidney, who criticised his ineptitude, and succee
ded where Sussex had failed to push the Ulster rebels back into the hills. Robert missed no opportunity to accuse Sussex at a Council meeting of having caused the rebellions, bringing them nearly to blows. The Chancellor, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and other Councillors had to separate them. Sussex retaliated by seeking Sidney’s post as Lord President of the Marches of Wales. Sidney, who was heavily dependent on the income from this sinecure, was anxious to retain it, having installed a deputy to perform such duties as were required. With Sussex continuing to petition the Queen, she had to intervene. In April 1567, she agreed to grant the presidency to him if he would be reconciled to Robert, and ‘on condition that he gives his word not to complain further on this matter, nor of Lord Robert; and so it was agreed’.7 Although she forced them to ride back to London and dine together, Sussex was moved out of the way on a further embassy to Vienna.8 He was never appointed to the Welsh role, which Sidney retained for the rest of his life.