Although de Silva did all he could to kindle animosity between Robert and his enemies, Robert was restored to the Queen’s favour, and the Appleyard affair forced the Norfolk faction to make their peace with him. Although Norfolk remained at Kenninghall, by 24 May 1567 Robert had reported to de Silva that they were completely reconciled. De Silva did not expect this to last for long. It did not help Robert that Elizabeth was still using him as a shield to withstand Cecil’s continuing pressure on her to make a Continental marriage. Cecil’s negotiations with the Archduke Charles had become an obsession, and Robert realised that he could not resist the weight of English opinion in the Archduke’s favour. Nevertheless, he knew that Elizabeth would never agree, however strongly he might urge her. This would leave him to shoulder the blame.9
As a forerunner to events of the next century, Parliament clashed with the Crown ‘amid scenes of unprecedented uproar’,10 in a determination to force the Queen to settle the marriage question. Its members ‘charged that they would not vote any money without a promise from the Queen to marry at the first possible moment’.11 Elizabeth was equally determined that her marriage was not a matter for Parliament and replied: ‘Do whatever you wish. As for me I shall do no other than pleases me. Your bills can have no force without my assent and authority.’12 It also demanded to know who the Queen would nominate as her heir. With Robert caught in the middle, Elizabeth lashed out, calling Norfolk a traitor, while Pembroke had ‘all the empty braggadocio of a swaggering soldier’. She accused Northampton of a domestic life that was a disgrace and wondered at his gall in lecturing her on marriage. Yet she also blamed Robert for abandoning her when the whole world was against her. When he responded that he would die at her feet if that would serve her cause, she retorted: ‘What has that to do with the matter?’ She banned everyone, including Robert, from her presence until further notice.13
Elizabeth had to answer Parliament. On 5 November 1566, she made a celebrated speech to placate its members, reducing her monetary demands for her military needs, but without answering their questions:
I will marry as soon as I can conveniently … and I hope to have children, otherwise I would never marry … Your petition is to deal in the limitation of the succession. At this present it is not convenient; nor never shall be without some peril unto you and certain danger unto me.14
This did not silence them. She knew that none of her choice of husbands would please everyone and nominating a successor would lead to conflict. Her marriage to a Habsburg suitor would leave the French with little choice but to support Mary Queen of Scots’ succession as the rightful English Queen. Tarnished though Mary was, this would endanger the Protestant settlement in Scotland. Hoping to shatter the fragile negotiations with the Archduke Charles, de Foix reported that Elizabeth and Robert were sleeping together.15 In this, he was probably out of date. Yet Robert was back in some semblance of favour.
Elizabeth countered the French threat by showing Mary every possible sympathy for her predicament at being imprisoned without trial at the island fortress of Lochleven. On 6 August, Robert wrote to Throckmorton of the Queen’s anxiety at her sister Queen’s position. Throckmorton was ‘to use all means to let the Queen of Scots know the Queen’s great grief for her … The Queen takes the doings of the Lords to heart as a precedent most perilous to any Prince.’16 Throckmorton was probably well aware that it was in the English Government’s interest to keep her incarcerated.
By now Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénélon had replaced de Foix as the French Ambassador in London. He told Catherine de Medici that Norfolk and Arundel had spoken severely to Robert about his relationship with Elizabeth. They may have been aware by then that Elizabeth had ended her liaison with him. He reported:
If [Robert] could tell them that she wished to marry him, then they would support his suit. If he could not make that claim, then they must tell him that his conduct towards her was very improper. They charged him with being in her bedchamber before she was out of bed and was handing her the shift that she meant to put on. They further instanced his kissing her without being invited thereto. If he were not troth-plight to her, then such conduct was injurious to her honour.17
If he could not ‘claim the privileges of a betrothed lover, these doings must cease’.18 Robert was no longer in a position to persuade Elizabeth to defend him.
In the spring of 1567, Sussex arrived in Vienna to continue negotiations with the Archduke and to confer the Garter on him. In the autumn, Elizabeth came clean and rejected him on the grounds of religion, bringing the pretence of a marriage to an end. Sussex was convinced that Robert had scuppered the negotiations, but he remained unfailingly loyal to Elizabeth. The ending of the suit heralded ‘a distinct turn for the worse in Anglo-Spanish relations’.19 Dr John Man, the provocative Dean of Gloucester was sent as the English Ambassador to Madrid. He proved ‘an outspoken, intemperate Protestant’, referring to the Pope as ‘a canting little monk’.20 In April 1568, his expulsion from Philip’s court resulted in his recall. He was not replaced. At the same time, de Silva left England and, in retaliation, Philip II replaced him with Antonio Guerau de Espés del Valle, ‘a fanatic whose desire for prompt action against the heretics was equalled only by his short-sightedness’.21 On arrival in December 1568, he believed that if everyone exerted themselves, Elizabeth could be replaced by Mary Queen of Scots and Catholicism restored in short order.22 Although he curried favour with Robert, Robert quickly realised that he was dangerous.
England was lucky that both France and Spain had their hands full elsewhere. France was distracted by its wars of religion with the Huguenots. Spain faced nationalist fervour leading to Protestant outrages in the Netherlands against its officials. Philip II sent Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, to Brussels with 10,000 men, but rapidly increased them to 50,000, the largest standing army in Europe. Despite heroic resistance, the Dutch revolt was quickly stamped out, but the presence of this massive hardened force threatened the ‘political and financial independence of the Netherland states’.23 Their leader, Prince William of Orange, fled to Germany.24 Alva’s ‘Council of Blood’ arranged 1,800 executions. Europe was aghast at the savage and cruel reduction of all the major cities of the Netherlands, during which torture was inflicted on their citizens. England had to rethink its foreign policy, linking up with those opposing Spain. The immense Spanish presence across the Channel threatened an invasion to place Mary Queen of Scots, who was being held at Bolton, on the English throne and to restore her in Scotland. A sound merchant navy was needed to act as the foundation for England’s defence.25 Robert was fully occupied in preparing the country ‘for a more aggressive role in world trade’.26
After the Le Havre debacle, there was no strong call for English intervention on behalf of the Netherlanders, and the Spanish presence was too daunting. Robert was critical of William of Orange for deserting the Netherlanders’ cause and remained the most hawkish of Elizabeth’s advisers. De Silva reported that he was leaning Pembroke, the acknowledged soldier on the Council, to his way of thinking. Robert’s political judgement was beginning to mature and even Cecil sometimes found himself on the wrong side of his arguments in Council meetings. He ‘wrote letters to and received news from all the principal capitals of Europe’, obtaining ‘regular bulletins from Ireland and Wales’. ‘Even [his] political opponents, who rejected his views and questioned his motives, never dismissed him as an ill-informed dilettante.’27 It was just that he immersed himself too deeply in affairs of state.
The most immediate issue was to deal with Mary Queen of Scots. Little had been done to oppose the Scottish Lords, who had forced her abdication. Moray had been able to shut out the French by becoming Regent for an anti-Catholic Government on behalf of the infant James VI. Although Mary managed to escape from Lochleven, she was quickly defeated by Moray’s forces and, in May 1568, threw herself on Elizabeth’s mercy after escaping with eighteen companions to England. While she was in the north with its Catholic affili
ations, there was considerable local sympathy for her. Elizabeth had to rely on her personal charisma to maintain authority. She was now extremely popular, even with Catholics. She had:
avoided ruinous wars on the Continent; adopted a tolerant religious policy; avoided marriage to a potentially hostile foreign husband; maintained a firm administration that, so long as she lived, banish the spectre of civil war; and become ‘a dazzling symbol of her government’s success’.28
She regularly travelled through the country, where her people fêted her wherever she went. There was really no appetite, even in the Catholic north, to replace her with Mary.
Nevertheless, Mary’s arrival in England was a political embarrassment. Elizabeth very quickly saw the advantage for her own security of her being maintained under tight supervision. She had no appetite for restoring her to her throne, even under conditions that would make her dependent on English Government support. Meanwhile Mary, who was still being held at Bolton Castle in north Yorkshire, was writing to de Espés: ‘Tell your Master if he will help me, I shall be Queen of England in three months, and Mass shall be said all over the Kingdom!’29 With the power and recognised cruelty of the Spanish forces a few hours away across the North Sea, the threat was very real. An unknown writer sent a letter to Robert:
begging and imploring him to use his influence with Queen Elizabeth, whom he reproached bitterly for exposing England to the nightmare horrors of invasion and civil war, for the sake of sparing ‘one horrible woman, who carries God’s curse with her wherever she goes.30
Despite Elizabeth’s genuine sympathy for Mary, she needed to keep her incarcerated. To appease Continental sensibilities, there had to be an investigation into the events surrounding Darnley’s murder. Cecil warned Moray that he would need to provide evidence to justify Mary’s detention. Elizabeth’s concern was to avoid the precedent of having to find Mary, as a Tudor Queen, guilty of murdering her husband.
A conference was arranged in York with Norfolk, Sussex and the experienced Sir Ralph Sadler as commissioners. When Moray and his colleagues produced letters in Mary’s hand as evidence of her involvement in her husband’s murder, the commissioners quickly realised that they were obviously fabricated and sought advice from London on how to act. Either they had to declare that the evidence was false, and Mary would be returned to her throne, or that it was true, and Mary would be implicated in murder. Neither of these were solutions that Elizabeth wanted. Cecil, who was in his element, moved the proceedings to London. His plan was to obfuscate. The Scottish evidence was ‘huddled up’, and Elizabeth pronounced that there was nothing to imply any wrongdoing by her sister queen. Nevertheless, while Moray and his colleagues were free to return to Scotland to resume control of Government, Elizabeth agreed to maintain Mary under house arrest with all the trappings of royalty at remote locations in England. She was moved further south under the charge of the eminently trustworthy and wealthy Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury to live at their various homes. Initially she was moved to the semi-derelict Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire. It was fortified, but cold and draughty and had to be hurriedly furnished to make it even reasonably habitable. Mary became ill there, but was now the object of every Catholic plot to replace Elizabeth.
Chapter 17 The Northern Rising
In the aftermath of the Conference at York, with the proceedings having ended, Maitland, Mary’s former Secretary of State, made an approach to Norfolk. Maitland was a ‘chameleon-like’ character, almost certainly responsible for providing the falsified evidence on behalf of the Scottish lords to incriminate Mary in the murder of her husband. Yet he had married her confidante and senior Marie (lady-in-waiting), Mary Fleming, and wanted to ameliorate the Scottish Queen’s plight. He now suggested to Norfolk that he should consider marrying Mary and that Norfolk’s daughter Margaret Howard should marry James, the infant King of Scotland. The convoluted plan involved: obtaining Mary’s divorce from Bothwell, who was imprisoned in Denmark; restoring her to the Scottish throne, where she would be neutralised politically by vesting her authority in her husband; ending further recrimination about Darnley’s murder; her approval of the Treaty of Edinburgh to accept that Elizabeth was the rightful English Queen; a general acceptance of religious toleration in both Scotland and England; an embargo on her making foreign alliances; and Elizabeth accepting her as her successor, in the absence of legitimate progeny of her own.
The plan contained a lot of common sense, and both Norfolk and Mary were receptive, but agreed to shelve it while the Conference in London ran its course. From now on, Mary considered herself betrothed to Norfolk. He was always likely to attract Catholic support despite maintaining a half-hearted Protestant affiliation, and powerful Catholic interests in the north were ready to take up arms on his behalf. Their marriage would resolve the English succession, and it gained fairly general support among Council members. Cecil gave the impression of being supportive but was always careful not to divulge his feelings too openly. At heart, he strongly opposed the marriage in his determination to prevent a Catholic becoming the English Monarch. Robert concluded that if Mary married Norfolk and the succession was resolved, it could reopen the door for him to marry Elizabeth. Moray was approached to seek Scottish support and, having assumed that it had Elizabeth’s blessing, sounded out his Scottish colleagues. There were also snags: the Government had to trust Mary not to call in foreign troops to promote a Counter-Reformation; Norfolk’s political abilities were doubted; Moray and his fellow Scottish Lords would need to accept that Norfolk would become the senior Government figure in Scotland; and someone would have to sound out Elizabeth, who would be unimpressed to find negotiations taking place behind her back while she was at Greenwich. The concerns were justified. Mary made clear to de Espés that she would have preferred a Spanish husband and would hold her religious policy at the disposal of the Spanish King.
Norfolk persuaded Robert, Pembroke and Throckmorton to widen the circle of those in the know, allowing de Espés to hear about it. It became a plan, not just to support Norfolk in marrying Mary Queen of Scots, but to bring down Cecil, whose anti-Spanish foreign policy was facing concerted criticism. There was now fairly general objection to him sending financial support to Protestant rebels in both France and the Netherlands. In November 1568, storms in the Channel and an attack by French pirates had forced a convoy of Spanish ships onto the English coast, some of which put into Plymouth and some to Southampton. They were carrying about £85,000 in gold to pay Alva’s troops in the Netherlands. Cecil seized the treasure, seeing it as a heaven-sent opportunity to replenish England’s depleted exchequer. De Espés was furious and Alva retaliated by impounding the goods and ships of English merchants on the Continent and by closing the markets in the Netherlands to the London mercantile community. ‘The diplomatic row came at a bad time for the capital’,1 which was in the grip of an exceptionally hard winter. The Government had never been so unpopular and several Council members tried to distance themselves from Cecil’s policies, which had seriously damaged trade and seemed to be carrying England to the brink of war with Spain. They objected to his lack of consultation and to his opposition to the marriage of Norfolk to Mary Queen of Scots.
With encouragement from his ageing Catholic father-in-law, Arundel, and from de Espés, Norfolk started to recruit support for Cecil’s overthrow and to promote the marriage. Although the conspirators tried to recruit Robert, who was certainly supportive of some check being placed on Cecil, he stopped short of his removal and imprisonment in the Tower. Robert was not initially aware of the full extent of the plans. They wanted: to purge the Council of ‘heretics’; to launch a Counter-Reformation with Spanish (and perhaps French) assistance; and to achieve Mary’s speedy restoration to the Scottish throne without conditions. They were supported by several northern Catholic magnates led by Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland, and Charles Neville, 12th Earl of Westmoreland.
The plan for Cecil’s overthrow was abruptly ended by the Queen. On heari
ng about it, she summoned a Council meeting to confront the conspirators, but many of them (including Robert) excused themselves. On 22 February 1569 at a meeting in her Privy Chamber, she took Robert to task for his non-attendance. Acting as the conspirators’ spokesman, he now outlined to her the low popular esteem of her Government, which was adopting policies likely to have the direst consequences. When he blamed Cecil, Elizabeth reacted with ‘theatrical’ rage. Although Norfolk might have been expected to support him, Robert was left to shoulder the royal invective on his own. From now on, he refused to support attacks on Cecil, realising that the conspirators were taking advantage of his intimacy with the Queen to use him as their front man. Without his support, the attacks on Cecil died a natural death.
By the spring of 1569, it seems likely that Robert, through his network of spies, had become aware of the full extent of Norfolk’s and Arundel’s scheming. Certainly, he became lukewarm about Mary Queen of Scots’ marriage. Elizabeth, who had heard rumours of the plan, did not want to broach the matter herself, preferring the conspirators to have the courage to tell her, or to drop it completely. This would enable her to assess their level of support. Although Sussex supported the marriage, he was unaware of the conspirators’ treasonable intent to replace Elizabeth on the English throne. He strongly advocated telling her what he knew, and both Robert and Cecil – who knew how she would react – wanted it done without delay. Although Norfolk suggested sending a ‘posse of peers’ to Greenwich to present her with a fait accompli, Robert strongly advised against it, knowing that she would hate to be cornered. Although Norfolk had plenty of opportunities to advise her, he lost his nerve. Meanwhile, the court moved to Titchfield, the home of the Earl of Southampton in Hampshire. After discussing his predicament with Pembroke, Robert decided to reveal to the Queen the full extent of the plot, in so far as he knew it, before his earlier involvement came to light. Claiming to be sick (real or imagined), he asked her to visit his chamber. On her arrival, he poured out the details, telling her that ‘his loyalty and devotion forbade him to keep them secret any longer’.2 The Queen could only see the marriage as threatening. It would force her to nominate Mary as her heir, which would be dangerous and act as a catalyst for a Catholic rebellion against her rule (as proved to be the case). She spoke to Norfolk ‘with great sharpness’3 for acting behind her back, but he denied any wish to marry the Queen of Scots and crept away from court to Kenninghall without Elizabeth’s consent. She thought she had done enough to end any further contemplation of the marriage.
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