Elizabeth I's Secret Lover

by Robert Stedall

  The cares and fears, the burdens of her state, oppressed and ailing as she often was, and always preoccupied with some political and social problem of overwhelming importance, made the soothing, reassuring quality of [Robert’s] support invaluable to her comfort.2

  During 1568, Robert accompanied the Queen to stay at Belvoir Castle as the guest of Edward Manners, 3rd Earl of Rutland. Other guests included the wealthy John, 2nd Lord Sheffield, and his wife, Douglas Howard, daughter of Howard of Effingham. Douglas was now aged 22 with two young children. She was ‘feather-headed and dazzling, “a star of the court for beauty and richness of apparel”’,3 bearing a strong resemblance to her reckless cousin, Queen Catherine Howard. Robert was soon attracted to her, and according to a later history of the Sheffield family, ‘he found her an easy purchase’.4 After the death of Sheffield on 10 February 1569, she came to court as a Lady of the Bedchamber and began a passionate affair with Robert. It is a mark of Robert’s ability to keep it under wraps that the relationship only came to light in 1578 or 1579, when it was over.

  Evidence of a purported marriage between Robert and Douglas became the subject of a court case in 1604, when Robert’s son by Douglas, Robert Sheffield, tried to demonstrate that he was the legitimate heir to the Leicester and Warwick titles. Although the issue before the court was to establish whether Robert had married Douglas, the action failed on a technicality because Sheffield had ‘gone the wrong way about bringing the case’,5 and the evidence for the marriage was never tested. As Sheffield was refused permission to bring forward his action for a second time, it has been implied that there was a cover-up. The defendants were the Sidney family, who were at the time closely allied to the new English King, James I. Even though the evidence for the marriage never came to court, a considerable dossier was assembled both to confirm and refute the marriage. This remains with the court papers.

  A second source of evidence of the status of Robert’s relationship with Douglas is a letter written in Robert’s hand to an unnamed lady, although there is really no dispute that this was Douglas Howard. The letter is undated so it is difficult to assess when it was written, but it was certainly after her husband’s death and before she had conceived a child (so before December 1573). The letter makes it apparent that Douglas has been putting Robert under pressure to make an honest woman of her, but he is writing frankly to explain that he is not able to do so, as it would result in his ‘utter overthrow’ by the Queen. He explains that he has ‘long both loved and liked you and found always that faithful and earnest affection at your hands again that bound me greatly to you’. He reminds her that ‘after your widowhood on the first occasion of my coming to you’, he had explained that he could not marry her and had assumed she accepted the position. When she had continued to press him, they had fallen out, but subsequently made up ‘and had renewed their loving intercourse’.6 He now explained:

  You must think it is some marvelous cause, and toucheth my present state very near, that forceth me thus to be cause almost of the ruin of my own house … my brother you see long married and not like to have children, it resteth so now in myself; and yet … if I should marry I am sure never to have [the Queen’s] favour that I had rather never have wife than lose … yet is there nothing in the world next that favour that I would not give to be in hope of leaving some children behind me, being now the last of our house. But yet, the cause being as it is, I must content myself …7

  Robert is advising her that in the circumstances, for reasons of respectability, she should accept one of the other noble suitors for her hand. He would understand that she might feel an obligation to do so but admits that he still loves her as he has always done.

  There is no doubt that the affair continued. According to Shrewsbury’s son, the 20-year-old Gilbert Talbot, by May 1573 Douglas was still pursuing Robert, as was her ‘sister Frances Howard’ (possibly her sister-in-law Frances Gouldwell, the wife of her brother Sir Francis Howard of Lingfield). This caused ‘great wars’ between the two ladies, ‘and the Queen thinketh not well of them, and not the better of him’.8 Although there is no record of any outbreak of royal anger at the affair, the Queen probably turned a blind eye and did not see Douglas as a threat. She was far more concerned in 1577, when the affair with Douglas came to an end and she realised that Robert was contemplating marriage to her cousin and perceived rival, Lettice Knollys.

  In August 1574, Douglas gave birth to a son, who was named Robert Sheffield, but Robert acknowledged paternity of his ‘base son’.9 Ambrose and Sir Henry Lee stood as godfathers, and Robert was always very fond of him, ‘caring much for his well-being and education’.10 Under his will, published on his death in 1588, Robert treated Sheffield as his ‘virtual heir’. Nevertheless, he continued to refer to him as his ‘base son’,11 even after his child by Lettice Knollys died in 1584. He always ‘vehemently denied’12 having married Douglas, and she never protested at his later marriage to Lettice. It is noteworthy that at this time, bigamy was not a felony; ‘it was a misdemeanour dealt with in the ecclesiastical courts; though it was thought reprehensible, it did not carry the modern stigma of a crime punishable with a sentence in gaol.’13

  On 28 November 1579, after her affair with Robert had ended, Douglas married Sir Edward Stafford. This was a tacit admission that she had not previously been espoused to Robert. Nevertheless, Elizabeth arranged for Douglas to be interviewed to establish if she had entered into any contract with Robert, which might invalidate his subsequent marriage to Lettice. Sir Edward Stafford was asked to talk to Douglas but could find no evidence of an earlier contract. This was not enough for Elizabeth, who believed that Douglas might be concealing something. Sussex was asked to interview her in Elizabeth’s presence. As Douglas was his wife’s kinswoman, it was hoped that she might reveal something to him. She broke into hysterical weeping, exclaiming: ‘She had trusted the said Earl too much to have anything to show to constrain him to marry her.’14 Sussex had to admit to Elizabeth that he could establish no more. It was clear that Robert had been free to marry Lettice. Elizabeth accepted this and restored him to favour, but Lettice remained out in the cold.

  There is another, less plausible, story of Robert’s affair with Douglas, designed to blacken his name. This is recorded in Leicester’s Commonwealth written in 1584. It asserts that while her first husband, Sheffield, was still alive, Robert ‘fell in love with Lady Sheffield’, and arranged for her husband to ‘die quickly with an extreme rheum in his head (as it was given out), but as others say of an artificial catarrh that stopped his breath’.15 This conflicts with the letter in Robert’s hand, mentioned above, which makes clear that their affair only began ‘after your widowhood’. There is also a story that Douglas retained a letter from Robert (perhaps the letter mentioned above) about her person but mislaid it. She asked all her women if they had seen it, but it was found and read by one of Sheffield’s sisters, who brought its contents to light. The story goes on to suggest that it was shown to Sheffield, who immediately sought a separation from his wayward wife. As the letter in Robert’s hand confirms that Sheffield was dead before the affair began, this again seems a complete fabrication. It is even suggested that Douglas deliberately mislaid the letter so that her predicament should be known, but, if so, it seems extraordinary that the story did not come to light until much later.

  In 1604, Robert Sheffield, who was now calling himself Robert Dudley, began his case in the Court of Star Chamber to prove his legitimacy. By this time he had married Alice, daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh in Warwickshire. Leigh had encouraged him to establish his claim to enable his daughter to become Countess of Leicester and of Warwick.16 Robert Jr seems to have been assisted by a noted swindler, Robert Drury. According to Stafford, young Robert ‘terrified’ his mother into giving evidence to confirm that she had married his father. In her written deposition to the court, Douglas claimed to have established an understanding with Robert that he would marry her if she became pregnant. She then clai
med that she had signed a betrothal at a house in Canon Row in Westminster in 1571 and had married him at Esher in May 1573 which was, in fact, six months before she became pregnant. She swore that she was married by a clergyman who provided a licence but was unable to remember his name and could not provide the documentation.

  There is no reference to a marriage in any church records of the time, but she claimed to have been given away by Sir Edward Horsey, who had died in 1583. Horsey was ‘a close supporter of [Robert] and had served as a soldier, pirate and Captain of the Isle of Wight’.17 Although she claimed that she was married with a diamond ring, which Pembroke had provided, she was unable to produce the ring or to provide any of the numerous letters in which she claimed that Robert referred to her as his wife.18 Although she averred that ten witnesses were present, most of whom were servants, including Dr Giulio Borgherini (Dr Julio), Robert’s Italian physician, none of them were alive in 1604. She provided two witnesses who claimed to have been present at her child’s birth, which she said took place two days after the marriage, but Robert Sheffield was not born until August 1574, fifteen months after the marriage date she had given. One of these witnesses was a Mrs Erisa, who was with her during her lying in, and the other was a servant, Magdalen Frodsham. Drury, who was gathering the evidence, confirmed having instructed Mrs Erisa what she should say. He reported: ‘She is very forward to depose, for a further consideration.’19 Although Magdalen Frodsham claimed to have been present at the marriage ceremony, Mrs Erisa said that Magdalen had not entered Douglas’s service until after the child’s birth. To explain why Douglas had married Stafford, if she were already married to Robert, she claimed that Robert had threatened to poison her, and she sought Stafford’s protection. She claimed that when Robert ended their affair, he had offered her £700 per annum to persuade her to disavow it. Although initially she had passionately rejected his offer, after some reflection she had accepted it. (Evidence of this annuity seems the only matter that may be truthful.) Douglas’s deposition conflicts with her earlier evidence established by Stafford and Sussex when she was interviewed in front of the Queen. Although Stafford died during the proceedings at the Star Chamber, he provided written evidence of the earlier interviews to the court. In light of this, Douglas’s later deposition does not appear credible.

  Notwithstanding the accumulation of evidence for the Court of Star Chamber, it was later called into question. Early in the nineteenth century the lineal descendant of the Sidney family, Sir John Shelley-Sidney, inherited Penshurst and claimed the baronies of Lisle and Dudley. The only bar to this was Robert Sheffield’s possible legitimacy. The Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords held that Shelley-Sidney had failed to demonstrate that the evidence of the Esher wedding was invalid (which the original court case had not had to do). Even so, it is difficult to conclude that Robert married Douglas Howard, or that he would cause his only surviving son – of whom he was very fond – to be treated as illegitimate, if this were not the case.

  Young Robert proved extremely able. He was brought up by his father’s kinsman, John Dudley of Stoke Newington. Many of Robert’s able protégés acted as his tutors and he visited him when he could. The young man enjoyed long visits to Robert’s friends, ‘to acquire the etiquette and social graces which could only be learned in a noble household’. In 1587 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, under the supervision of the outstanding Thomas Challoner, becoming a brilliant ‘sailor, soldier, explorer, scholar, mathematician, engineer, shipbuilder and author’.20

  Chapter 19 Religious confrontation

  By the mid-1570s, numerous Catholic priests were being smuggled into England. These were trained under the auspices of the English Jesuit Cardinal William Allen at seminaries at Douai, Reims and Rome. It is estimated that, by 1580, more than 100 were established in manor houses to spread their faith and to stiffen the resistance of Catholic gentry. In 1580, Pope Gregory XIII had published an Explanation providing a concession to the papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth ten years earlier. This confirmed that the bull was still binding, ‘but Catholics might obey her so long as her Government remained in being, and while no directive had been received that they were to overthrow her’.1 To counter this, the Council issued a question: ‘If an invasion, sponsored by the Pope, were directed against Queen Elizabeth, would you fight on her side?’2 There was only one acceptable answer and that was: ‘Yes!’ Penalties for non-attendance at Protestant services were raised to £20 per month, and celebrating Mass was subject to a fine of 200 marks (£133) and a year’s imprisonment. It now became treasonable to attempt to convert subjects to Catholicism.

  In May 1581, seminary priests were joined by Jesuits led by Robert Parsons and Robert’s former protégé, Edmund Campion. At the same time, Catholic adventurers, led by the Papal emissary Nicholas Sanders, landed in Munster in Ireland, where, with the blessing of Pope Gregory XIII, they fomented trouble against their English landlords.3 Although this expedition was repelled, Elizabeth remained vulnerable. Campion was arrested in July and was taken to the Tower. He was lodged in a cell known as Little Ease, where he could neither stand nor lie down. After forty-eight hours he was released for interview at Leicester House by Bedford and two secretaries in the presence of Robert and the Queen. The objective was to make him acknowledge Elizabeth as his sovereign. Although he accepted her as his lawful Queen, he refused to answer whether he would fight for her against a papal invasion. He claimed that, as a Jesuit, his position was entirely spiritual. Elizabeth explained that her security required her to impose ‘observance on the religion of the state’,4 but could not persuade him to attend a Church of England service. He was returned to the Tower, where Robert did much to ensure his humane treatment, providing a bed and other necessaries, but could not protect him from the rack during an attempt to establish those who had sheltered him. Along with fourteen other seminary priests, he was found guilty of treason for his Catholicism. He was brought to the gallows, where Hunsdon and Sir Francis Knollys, who supervised the proceedings, let him hang until death so that quartering was performed on his lifeless body.

  The Elizabethan Church of England also faced pressure from non-conformists, who questioned its dogma and criticised the toleration being shown for Catholic worship. Among these, ‘Puritans were those Anglicans who objected to some aspects of official liturgical practice, such as the use of vestments and the 1559 Prayer Book, and who refused to conform in such matters.’5 In the 1570s and 1580s, a smaller group emerged from among them, who adopted Calvinist doctrine and called themselves Presbyterians in line with the Scottish Kirk. They wanted to do away with Episcopal government, through which the church was administered on the Crown’s behalf. This placed them in conflict with Elizabeth and, coincidentally, with James VI in Scotland.

  Perhaps incongruously, given his pleasure-loving lifestyle, Robert always saw himself as a leading Puritan, taking on the mantle donned by his father. His siblings followed his lead and looked up to him. His brother-in-law Huntingdon, always a devout Puritan himself and impeccably loyal to Elizabeth, considered Robert ‘the most highly placed and influential member of the family’.6 Robert’s enemies saw his Puritanism as hypocritical and ‘a matter of political convenience’.7 Nevertheless, his beliefs were heartfelt and from the start of Elizabeth’s reign he had used his influence to support international Protestantism. In 1568, the French ambassador reported that he was ‘totally of the Calvinist religion’.8

  Robert was not someone who would sacrifice his political standing for the sake of his faith, but nor were any of his politically prominent colleagues. Elizabeth, Cecil and Huntingdon all received Mass during Mary’s reign. Bedford, who was staunchly Puritan, served with the Dudleys under Philip II at St Quentin. Robert took the decision to support a Spanish Counter-Reformation in return for support for his marriage to Elizabeth. This step may well have undone any hopes he had of marrying her, but it was a political ploy which he did not confuse with his Puritan beliefs.

  Rober
t’s patronage of Puritan preachers and radical clergy, often working outside the orbit of the episcopal church, was of inestimable value to their cause, and his benefaction grew as his wealth and power increased. To provide them with greater financial security, Robert endowed lands in Warwickshire into a trust fund for their benefit. As his land ownership expanded, so did his influence and the number of benefices in his giving.9 Many works of Protestant devotion were dedicated to him, and he employed returning exiles as his chaplains, helping several ‘sound’ men to preferment in the Church of England. William Whittingham, a leader of the exiled community in Geneva, returned in 1561 to Leicestershire, where Huntingdon supported him as an itinerant preacher. In 1563, he acted as Ambrose’s chaplain in Le Havre. Robert and Ambrose later gained the Deanery of Durham for him. With Huntingdon’s help, he was ultimately appointed as Master of Wigston’s Hospital, Leicester.

  Robert did much to oppose unsympathetic bishops.10 Independent lay patronage left them ‘powerless to control recalcitrant clergy [who had gained] the backing of great noblemen’.11 Very often, itinerant preachers were paid by benefactors to provide instruction in private houses, public buildings, or churches, ‘entirely outside episcopal control’.12 This alarmed bishops, who deplored the breakdown of their traditional authority. Perhaps their biggest threat was in Northampton, where Percival Wiburn was supported by local gentry to set up a Presbyterian model of church government espousing Calvinist doctrine. ‘Clergy and magistrates jointly ruled a society of enforced morality where the citizens were compelled to attend worship, hear sermons and receive regular instruction in the scriptures.’13 When the Bishop of Peterborough, Edmund Scambler, intervened, Wiburn turned to Robert for support. Although Scambler personally owed much to Robert, he strongly resented interference in diocesan affairs. While Robert continued to defend Wiburn, Scambler saw him as confrontational in every aspect of Northampton’s daily life and threatened to revoke his preaching licence. In 1572, Wiburn was forced to leave Northampton, but with local support, continued his activities in nearby villages.