Elizabeth I's Secret Lover

by Robert Stedall

  In September, de Espés, who was proving inept in his assessment of what was going on, claimed that the Queen’s views on the marriage varied from day to day, but Alva was reporting to Philip II that Robert and Cecil were now entirely governing the Queen. Elizabeth then received a warning from Moray in Scotland that Norfolk was still planning a full-scale rebellion. His revelation was in part prompted by an attempt on his life by two of Norfolk’s supporters. Northumberland and Westmoreland were now readying themselves to march south to join with Norfolk’s own troops from East Anglia and a contingent to be sent by Alva from the Netherlands.

  Elizabeth convinced herself that she was at great risk and took every step to counter the perceived threat, but there was no widespread support from English Catholics. When she recalled Norfolk to London, he feigned illness. Although he tried to send a message to Alva, he found the ports closed. On 11 October 1569, he was arrested and sent to the Tower. By this time, Mary was comfortably settled at Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire under the guardianship of the Shrewsburys. Elizabeth told Huntingdon that, if he wanted employment to support a Protestant cause, he should move Mary from the unfortified Wingfield back to the much more spartan Tutbury Castle. Huntingdon acted with dispatch and, despite a violent outcry from Mary, he had, within a week, separated her from half her retinue and returned her to Tutbury, which he garrisoned with 500 men. ‘Shrewsbury was castigated [by Elizabeth] for treating Mary with “too much affection” and for having failed her “in my hour of need”.’4 Mary disliked Huntingdon intensely, not least because, as a rival claimant to the English Crown, he seemed to be a threat.

  Although the rebels’ objective was to take Tutbury, Norfolk, who was in the Tower, lost his nerve. He sent a message to Northumberland and Westmoreland not to set out, but they had gone too far and the Northern Rising was on the move with 6,000 men and 1,000 horse. On 14 November, they entered Durham Cathedral, where they restored the Mass and trampled the English translation of the Bible underfoot. Although Alva sent money with Philip’s blessing, he would not risk landing Spanish troops on English soil until he was assured of Mary’s release. By 23 November, the rebels had reached Tadcaster, fifty miles from Tutbury. Huntingdon feared that he could not hold out for more than a few days. On hearing of the rescue attempt, Elizabeth quickly arranged Mary’s removal south to Coventry.

  The rebels failed to gather the Catholic backing that they were expecting, and the Yorkshire gentry were demanding to be paid and refused to move south from York. Acting on Elizabeth’s behalf, Sir George Bowes, Lieutenant of the North, made a stand at Barnard Castle. With help from his brother, Sir Robert, he held the castle for eleven days, buying ‘time for levies to be raised from further south and for Sussex to arrive with reinforcements’.5 Everywhere further south held firmly for Elizabeth regardless of religious persuasion. When Sussex arrived and was reinforced by troops under Ambrose and Hunsdon, the rebels were pushed back north, forcing Northumberland and Westmoreland across the Scottish border.

  As soon as Ambrose was discharged from his military assignment, he joined Robert at Kenilworth. According to de Espés, Robert had worried that the Northern Rising would lead to civil war and was planning to fortify the place. Robert had arrived there with Julio Spinelli, an Italian who had gained engineering experience in the Netherlands. When Robert’s fears proved unfounded, he arranged a reunion of his siblings, including Mary Sidney and Catherine Huntingdon, but reported to Elizabeth that her ‘Ursa Major and Minor’ (Robert and Ambrose) would soon be restored to her service.

  This was the only rebellion of Elizabeth’s reign, but she was unnerved. She was determined to make an example of the prisoners, insisting on 600 being hanged, with their leaders being tried for treason so that their lands could be forfeited.

  In ‘a pathetic revelation of papal impotence’, Pope Pius V used this as an excuse to excommunicate Elizabeth, despite opposition from Philip II, Alva, and Catherine de Medici, who all feared further reprisals against the English Catholics. The French refused to publish the Papal Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, which, in Catholic eyes, deprived Elizabeth of the throne and released her subjects from allegiance to her.6

  As he had disapproved of Mary’s marriage to Bothwell, ‘the Pope was careful to point out that the purpose of the bull was to protect the spiritual welfare of the English, not to back her claim to the English throne’.7 Nevertheless, his action was unwise. Elizabeth’s religious settlement of 1559 had been extremely tolerant and the provisions of the Act of Uniformity, which required adherence to the 1559 Prayer Book, had been ‘irregularly and slackly enforced’.8 The Papal Bull rudely shattered this laissez faire attitude. With Catholicism now being associated with foreign aggression, severe anti-Catholic legislation became inevitable.

  It was Robert who emerged as the recognised leader of the English religious radicals. In 1572, the Swiss theologian, Heinrich Bullinger, published A Confutation of the Pope’s Bull … against Elizabeth. This was dedicated to Robert. Bullinger showed that Elizabeth’s struggle against papacy was not just an English problem: ‘The matter doth implyingly concern the whole state of Christ’s Church, which the Romish Antichrist laboureth to draw away from the obedience and love of her true husband, Christ, to the adulterous embracing of Satan.’9 This was a view shared by Robert, Walsingham, Sidney, William of Orange and all Protestant champions.

  Devout English Catholics were placed in ‘an agonising position’.10 It now appeared that their role was to overturn the Government of ‘the pretended Queen of England’.11 The French ignored the bull. In January 1572, they developed a plan for Elizabeth to marry Charles IX’s youngest brother, Francis de Valois, Duke of Alençon, notwithstanding that he was twenty-two years her junior. Elizabeth seemed receptive, even though he was by repute ‘short, puny and pitted with smallpox’,12 marvellously ugly and with a curvature of the spine. Elizabeth named him her ‘frog’, or more politely as ‘Monsieur’. Robert claimed that Cecil opposed the plan, but this was not the case and it was Robert who inevitably saw Monsieur as a threat, despite his support for the French alliance. He sent a message to Edward, Lord Clinton, newly created Earl of Lincoln, who was the English ambassador in Paris, to establish Alençon’s credentials. Walsingham supported Alençon’s suit in the hope of achieving a French alliance and Elizabeth enjoyed the romance of it all. He concluded that it did not need to be taken too seriously but was to find himself mistaken. The marriage proposal, whether realistic or not, had the effect of paralyzing French backing for Mary Queen of Scots.13 Nevertheless, she had supporters in Scotland, and in January 1570, Moray was assassinated by her Marian allies. With the Protestant Government in Scotland remaining in the ascendancy, Elizabeth arranged reprisals on their behalf. Nevertheless, with Norfolk having remained in the Tower throughout the unrest, there was no evidence that he had instigated the plot against Moray. In August 1570, he was released under surveillance in the hope that he was ‘being given enough rope to hang himself’.

  This still left the problem of how to deal with Mary. Elizabeth was in a dilemma but still saw her as a catalyst for rebellion. Her famous description of Mary as:

  The daughter of Debate that eke discord doth sow,

  Shall reap no gain where former rule hath taught still peace to grow.

  Robert wrote to Sussex, with whom he was temporarily back on cordial terms, that the issue was whether to restore her to her Scottish throne with limited authority, or to back the Scottish Government and retain her in England. He feared that the latter course would lead to war with her Continental allies. Cecil, who had done much to colour adverse opinion against her, always wanted her dead. Robert later changed his tune and supported Cecil in seeking her execution.

  Norfolk was like a dog with a bone. He continued to make plans to free Mary, selling silver and jewellery to muster a force and to support her Marian allies in Scotland. He asked Philip II to provide a force of 20,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and 6,000 hackbutters with equipment to land at Harwich or Portsmo
uth ready to march on London to assassinate Elizabeth. (Such invasion plans became known by the Spanish as ‘the Enterprise of England’.) He used the services of an Italian banker, Roberto Ridolfi, who had transferred funds to support the Northern Rising and provided a mechanism to communicate with both Mary and the Spanish. Alva had no faith in Norfolk’s plan, recognising that an invasion would meet strong English resistance. He would only send troops once Elizabeth were dead. He had little respect Ridolfi, whom he considered a chatterbox, although Ridolfi was little more than a go-between. Unfortunately for Norfolk, Walsingham – who was positioned in Paris as Cecil’s master spy – blackmailed Ridolfi into becoming a double agent, allowing all the correspondence passing through his hands to be intercepted. Norfolk was now implicated in a treasonable plot against the English Crown and, on 4 August 1571, was placed under house arrest. When Robert’s wayward brother-in-law, Appleyard, and two other East Anglian Catholics, made a hair-brained attempt to rescue him, Norfolk, on 7 September, was restored to the Tower. Robert wrote to Arundel to advise him of Norfolk’s second arrest, and even Arundel professed himself to be profoundly shocked. Although he asked Robert to help, Norfolk was too far gone in crime. His fellow peers, including Robert, found him guilty on 16 January 1572. Ridolfi, who by this time was in Paris, was permitted to disappear quietly back to Florence where he became a senator and eventually died of natural causes in 1612.

  Having to deal with both Norfolk and Mary placed Elizabeth under great stress. Acute pains caused a shortness of breath and she thought she was dying, perhaps of poison. Robert and Cecil spent three nights sitting up with her until she felt better, but she still looked unwell. Her illness caused great anxiety among her senior advisers. If Elizabeth were to die, Mary Queen of Scots was likely to become Queen, however horrific the prospect of a Catholic monarch might be. With Elizabeth being 40, there were widespread rumours that she did not have long to live. She had become heavily reliant on Dee, who continued to provide her with horoscopes. He used globes to foretell the future, a large ‘chrystalline’ one and a smaller ‘magic’ one of a dark and livid colour. In March 1575, Elizabeth visited him unexpectedly at Richmond with the Privy Council and other lords and ladies. On arrival they learned that he had just attended his wife’s burial. Elizabeth refused to come in, but Dee brought out his magic globe, and ‘to her great contentment and delight’,14 was able to see some of its properties, which indicated the love in which she was held by the English people.

  With the prospects for Mary Queen of Scots brightening, she did not need to involve herself in plots for Elizabeth’s assassination. She could sit back and wait. Robert was concerned at reports that she considered him an enemy. He wrote to Shrewsbury to establish the cause for this, as he believed that he had a reputation for kindness. With his instincts for self-preservation, he retained ‘a show of courteous and even kindly communication with the Queen of Scots’.15 He certainly did not want to be considered her enemy if Elizabeth should die. He was not alone. Shrewsbury told Mary that he was obliged to act as her keeper as long as Elizabeth was his master, but if she died, he would place the crown on Mary’s head. Hatton advised that if Elizabeth died, he would bring Mary the news. Darnley’s mother, Margaret Lennox, had roundly criticised Mary for the death of her son, but with the prospect of her becoming the English Queen, she too effected a reconciliation and entered into a rapprochement with her daughter-in-law. Needless to say, when Elizabeth heard rumours of this, she tackled Margaret, who thought it wiser to deny it. Cecil and Walsingham realised that they would irretrievably be doomed.

  In February 1572, following the death of the aged Winchester, Cecil was appointed Lord Treasurer and was created Lord Burghley. This role was initially offered to Robert, but he recognised that it required more learning than he could muster, and Cecil was far more suitable. He stood at Cecil’s right hand as he received his peerage. In April 1572, Robert deputised for the Queen when Cecil was also created a Knight of the Garter. Robert had rather hoped to be made Great Master of the Household, a role previously held by Pembroke, but for this he would have to wait.

  By this time, Throckmorton had died, and Robert was looking for a new ally. This came in the form of Cecil’s spymaster, Walsingham, who was brought back from Paris. As strong advocates of a French alliance to counter the Spanish threat, they worked hard together to achieve the Treaty of Blois signed in April 1572. The chief French negotiator, Francis, Duke of Montmorency, arrived in England with a train of forty diplomats and was sumptuously entertained by Robert. Both countries agreed not to interfere in Scotland, and Mary was not even mentioned. At last, the threat of French intervention there was laid to rest.

  Elizabeth remained most reluctant to sign Norfolk’s death warrant; twice she had been persuaded by the Council, and twice she recalled it. She could not withstand the clamour for long; Norfolk was executed on 2 June. It was the first execution of her reign. Mary had been more circumspect, and there was nothing in her carefully worded correspondence to implicate her in treasonable action. To Burghley’s great disappointment, Elizabeth refused to condemn her. Despite strident calls for her execution from both houses of Parliament, she remained under the charge of the Shrewburys in Derbyshire.

  Matters were again thrown into turmoil in August, when news arrived of the Massacre of St Bartholomew in Paris, in which numerous senior Huguenots were killed. On hearing the news, Elizabeth appeared in black before the French Ambassador, and Burghley once more championed a policy of rapprochement with Spain.16 The prospect of a Counter-Reformation in France jeopardised the Anglo/French accord. Elizabeth was again pressurised to approve Mary’s execution. Hoping to avoid having Mary’s blood on her hands, she sent Killigrew to Edinburgh on a mission known only to Burghley and Robert. The purpose was to persuade the new regent, John Erskine, 1st Earl of Mar, and the much more astute James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton to agree Mary’s return to Scotland. She was to be held there securely, but with security of her life. Morton immediately saw through Elizabeth’s objective and insisted that on arrival, she should be executed in front of 2,000 English troops. Killigrew had no authority to agree, and Mar, who was unwell, was so horrified that he died shortly after. Any further thought of repatriating Mary was forgotten, but Elizabeth remained under stress with another sharp attack of pain accompanied by a rash. There were fears of another outbreak of smallpox, and Robert again sat up with her until she recovered. He proved a good nurse! Burghley now needed to find another means to justify Mary’s execution.

  In December 1573, Walsingham replaced Burghley – who was suffering from bouts of gout and had had a seizure – as Secretary of State. With Walsingham being an ally of Robert, Robert’s position on the Council was strengthened. Christopher Hatton was another friend, who had much in common with him. He was a successful courtier, who excelled in the tiltyard and at court entertainments. He was a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Captain of the Guard, who had been considerably enriched by the Queen. He had ‘height, gracefulness, ready speech and sound intelligence’.17 He was also captivated by Elizabeth, claiming: ‘She fished for men’s souls with so sweet a bait, no man could escape her net-work.’18 Yet he never achieved the special status in which Robert had been held, and there was no rivalry between them.

  Despite these changes among Elizabeth’s senior advisers, the two most influential, Robert and Burghley, remained in place. Although in the past both had come under attack, they were now firmly established with Elizabeth’s support. They had often clashed, but there was an ‘unconscious realization that they needed each other’.19 They found themselves working in a close harmonious partnership, in which Robert wrote the letters to keep Walsingham in touch with the court.20

  Chapter 18 Romance with Douglas Sheffield

  There was considerable court gossip that Robert, as a red-blooded male, enjoyed liaisons with ladies of the court. That much of it was ‘slanderous was of little consequence. [He] was the sort of charming, handsome extrovert of whom any sc
andal is readily believed.’1 He had to be extremely circumspect. He had already incurred Elizabeth’s wrath by flirting with Lettice Knollys in 1565, and as long as he hoped to marry Elizabeth, he had to maintain his courtship with her. He was not prepared to embark on any relationships which might threaten his position or lead him into marriage. His liaisons no doubt took place at times when he was not enjoying the Queen’s favour, but he needed to maintain the utmost secrecy, not only to keep matters from the Queen, but to maintain his aura of Puritan respectability.

  Robert had always owed his political authority to his close relationship with Elizabeth. If he could not marry her, he still aspired to be among her closest advisers. It was the fear of losing his status on the Council rather than the loss of their amorous relationship that concerned him most, and he needed to retain her ear. She had never been wholly under his influence, but always yearned for his company. As his eye started to stray, Elizabeth looked to the likes of Christopher Hatton for romantic amusement, but no one ever displaced Robert. Although she relied on Burghley in political matters, Robert developed into a political force in his own right, able to offer advice independent of her Treasurer. He remained the person she looked to for moral support, well after any romance between them had become a formality.