Robert did not receive official orders until December, and they were not what he had hoped for. Elizabeth remained nervous. This was not a plan for a Protestant war of liberation. Everything about it was penny-pinching:
The Lieutenant General was to fight a purely defensive campaign and not to ‘hazard a battle without great advantage’. English captains must not be allowed to misappropriate funds. [He] must ensure that the Dutch contributions to the war effort were efficiently collected … As [security] for her expenditure Elizabeth … claimed Flushing, Brill and Rammakens [which Robert was to garrison and administer]. He was to act in a purely advisory capacity towards the States General.9
She was not attempting to take away these territories from the King of Spain, their lawful sovereign, but was seeking only to secure a degree of civil and religious freedom for the Dutch. The Swedish King considered it ‘uncommonly brave of her to risk the crown on her head; no one else in Europe was going to do such a thing’.10 Elizabeth’s policy, which she applied consistently, was to maintain the Spanish in control of the Netherlands as a means of keeping out the French, but she would support the local nobility and local liberties so they were strong enough to prevent the Netherlands being used as a base for a Spanish invasion of England.
Robert was nervous at having limitations imposed on him and wrote to Burghley while still in England to express his doubts and fears at Elizabeth’s apparent ambivalence. He hoped that he could rely on Burghley’s ‘particular good will and regard for [him]’,11 to ensure that she followed through with her commitment, which he duly did. Nevertheless, shortly before Robert’s departure Burghley remonstrated over a personal slight against him reported by his tiresome sister-in-law, Lady Russell (née Elizabeth Cooke). She had told him that Robert had made derogatory remarks about him. Robert knew that Burghley was sensitive to personal criticism. He replied that there was no truth in Lady Russell’s assertions: ‘Your own wisdom will easily discharge me, being so well acquainted with the devices and practices of these days, which men go about rather to sow discord betwixt such as we are, than to do good offices.’12 He did not need to be side-tracked by having to deal with such issues.
On 8 December 1585, having left Lettice to manage his vast estates, Robert set out for Harwich with a personal retinue of ninety-nine gentlemen and yeoman officers with their servants, including chaplains, cooks, musicians and a troupe of actors. They comprised the cream of the English force, who had answered his call to arms. The bulk of the army of 1,000 cavalry and 6,000 foot sailed from the Thames. Essex, who was ready to taste military action for the first time, accompanied him. When he started to recruit men, he incurred the wrath of his grandfather, Sir Francis Knollys, for running up huge debts. Knollys wrote hoping that ‘youthful wilfulness and wasteful youth do not consume you before experienced wisdom shall have reformed you’.13
Robert did not know the terrain he was fighting over, and it ‘was partially submerged by tidal waters and intersected by dykes, [which] had hitherto proved one of the best defences of the country.’14 Manoeuvring to every objective was made difficult by intersecting waterways. He was up against Parma, the most brilliant military general of his age, who had used his eight years of experience in the Netherlands to make a minute study of the local landscape. Parma had successfully subdued the southern part of the country and was threatening Antwerp.
Robert’s impossible situation caused him to become hopelessly overtaxed. For someone with a reputation for mildness, he became easily irritated, prone to bouts of bad temper and unable to accept criticism. In November 1583, his old friend, John Aylmer, had written:
I have ever observed in you such a mild, courteous and amiable nature, that you never kept as graven in marble, but written in sand, the greatest displeasure that ever you conceived against any man. I fear not, therefore, my good Lord, in this strait that I am in to appeal from this Lord of Leicester … unto mine old Lord of Leicester, who in his virtue of mildness and of softness … hath carried away the praise of all men.15
It was the fall of Antwerp that finally triggered Robert’s departure. He had recently fallen from his horse and told Burghley that he could not pull his boot on. On leaving Harwich, he instructed Admiral Stephen Borough to head for Brill. Borough remonstrated that the harbour at Brill was unsuited to so large a fleet, that Flushing was a better anchorage and he had insufficient pilots for a landing at Brill. Robert fumed that he should get more pilots, and instructions were sent to the Thames fleet to make for Brill. Eventually, Borough’s experience and the pilots’ advice won the day and the fleet made for Flushing, although the confusion meant that some of the Thames vessels, laden with horses and provisions, landed at Brill.
On arrival, Robert’s troops received an ecstatic and unified reception from the Netherlanders, with banquets, church bells, cannon and fireworks. People in the streets shouted: ‘God save Queen Elizabeth.’16 Robert was received by Sidney, who had set out three weeks earlier, and over the next two-and-a-half weeks, made a triumphant progress passing through Middelburg, Dordrecht, Rotterdam and Delft to the Hague, with each town competing to provide ever more magnificent displays of welcome.17 At Delft, the citizenry spent £5,000 on their greeting. Masques and plays hinted at Elizabeth’s sovereignty and Robert’s princely standing.
Robert plunged himself into his task with great vigour, ‘because he believed that the security of the United Provinces was inextricably bound up with the safety of England’.18 Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine a project facing so many pitfalls. He had to deal with Elizabeth who, in typical fashion, was hopelessly ambivalent about any decision to support the expedition or to provide Robert with authority to act decisively. He led a combined English and Dutch army, ‘whose interests differed, and who needed a general of clear vision and iron will to hold them together’.19 The United Provinces were united in name only and failed to agree a clear plan of action or to take decisive military decisions. Although they expected him to lead them, they proved unreliable and failed to provide the money to fulfil their part of the bargain.
There were the zealous Reformers, particularly strong among the urban working class and led by firebrand Calvinist ministers, many of whom had fled from the south and had all the enthusiasm of religious exiles; there were the burgher oligarchies of the towns of Holland whose guiding principle was the maintenance of trade and municipal prosperity; there was the small, but by no means irrelevant Catholic minority, quite capable of betraying a walled city to besiegers; and the noble class, the traditional leaders of Netherlands society, whose members shared a common concern for national and territorial integrity but could not agree on how to achieve it.20
Each of these groups was represented in the States General, which was split into political factions unable to agree whether to support French, English or Prince Maurice of Nassau. Burghley despaired of them, complaining that if they could not trust each other, it was difficult to see how anyone else could trust them.
The campaign was already wreaking havoc with Elizabeth’s carefully husbanded exchequer. She began preliminary discussions with Parma over the possibility of coming to a settlement. It soon became clear that Philip II would never countenance religious toleration, despite the economic consequences for himself, and his campaign of persecution was based entirely on religious fanaticism. Nevertheless, Elizabeth argued that it was one faith and one Jesus Christ, hoping that if a return to Catholicism were conceded, she could gain fiscal and civil liberties for the seventeen states in revolt and arrange the removal of the Spanish army of occupation. As eleven of these were already Catholic, she did not believe that a settlement should be foregone simply to satisfy the religious sensibilities of the remaining six. Although this sounds like a sell-out of the Dutch Protestants, she was adhering to the political principle of the day of ‘cuius regio eius religio – it was the business of the Prince to determine the faith of his subjects’.21 Any acceptance of Catholic observances, however, completely contravened the wishes of
the United Provinces, ‘whose inhabitants were prepared to die rather than concede their right to worship in the way they considered the only true one’.22
When the Dutch heard rumours of Elizabeth’s negotiations, Robert and his colleagues on the ground believed that they were about to desert their English allies. Robert soon realised that the Netherlands were in great confusion:
the common people without obedience; the soldiers in misery and disorder for want of pay; the governors weary and tired for lack of good assistance and due obedience; the provinces themselves staggering in their union; and every town near [the Spanish] ready to seek new means for their safety, such was their fear of the enemy, triumphant with continual victories and especially now with the recovery of Antwerp; so little was their hope of their own ability to resist and so many were the enemy’s deep and secret practices, even in the very bowels of them.23
Despite their lack of cohesion, the Dutch were determined to extract every last penny out of their English allies. If they could persuade them to take political control in a gesture of defiance against Spain, Elizabeth would be forced to commit all her material resources behind them. It might also weld them into a unified group with Spain as the common enemy. Elizabeth had already turned down the crown on two occasions, realising that its acceptance would be dynamite.
Robert was instructed to sow seeds that she might accept the crown if the provinces worked in unity together and raised ‘liberal taxations’ for their own defence. He was to create a new assembly with authority to act without every important decision having to be referred back to provincial governments.24 He received rather different advice from the Dutch treaty commissioners. They expected him to take the offensive both by sea and land, and to ‘keep his court’ at Middelburg. He was also to promote the ‘reformed evangelical religion’ and to bar papists from important offices.25
On New Year’s Day 1586, a delegation approached Robert with an offer to appoint him as supreme Governor of the United Provinces. This would give him control of Government in all matters civil as well as military.26 He knew he needed the Queen’s approval and, after giving a noncommittal answer, sent a message to England to seek her advice. The idea of it greatly appealed to his inflated ego, allowing him to tour the United Provinces of Holland and Zeeland in royal state. Nevertheless, for someone who claimed to know Elizabeth’s mind better than anyone, and knew she had turned down the Crown, he was treading on very dangerous ground with her. On 14 and 15 January, he wrote to Burghley and Walsingham to explain that the Dutch remained insistent on him becoming Governor, and common sense dictated acceptance, even though Elizabeth might disapprove. He argued that the so-called United Provinces needed a powerful figurehead to prevent further quarrelling and make them work together. The timing was critical, as no money had been sent to pay troops from either England or the United Provinces, and Parma was progressively gaining control of towns, some of which were coming to terms with his agents. The letters arrived safely in England, but, with the wind continually in the north and east, no ships could leave for the Dutch coast and Robert waited in vain for a reply. On 22 January, he again wrote to Walsingham urging the Queen not to delay as the enemy was temporarily perplexed.27 On 25 January, the Dutch persuaded him to wait no longer, and ‘in a burst of splendour’ he was invested with the ‘highest and supreme commandment’ within the United Provinces. He sent Davison to explain and to excuse his action to the Queen, but Davison was held up by adverse winds and did not arrive until 5 February.
Robert’s decision was most unwise. Unfortunately, Elizabeth heard the news, not from Davison, but in a letter received from the Hague by one of her ladies. Quite maliciously, this reported that Lettice was about to arrive ‘with such a train of ladies and gentlewomen, and such rich coaches, litters and side saddles as her majesty had none such [to] establish a court of ladies as should far pass her majesty’s court’.28 Although there was no truth in this, it was in direct contravention of her instruction before Robert had left England, and the letter from the Hague seemed entirely plausible. As late as 24 March, Sidney had heard rumours of Lettice’s planned arrival and hoped to stay her from coming. Elizabeth was apoplectic, telling Lettice that there were to be no English courts except her own. It took her months to view Robert’s position as Governor dispassionately. She believed she had been deceived and that all her advisers were aware of what he had done but lacked the courage to tell her. She sent a letter to him without a greeting:
How contemptuously we conceive ourself to have been used by you, you shall by this bearer understand, whom we have expressly sent unto you to charge you withal. We could never have imagined had we not seen it fall out in experience that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken our commandment, in a cause that so greatly toucheth us in honour; whereof, although you have showed yourself to make but little accompt, in most undutiful sort, you may not therefore think that we have so little care of the reparation thereof as we mind to pass so great a wrong in silence unredressed: and, therefore, our express pleasure and commandment is, that all delays and excuses laid apart, you do presently, upon the duty of your allegiance, obey and fulfil whatever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in our name: whereof fail you not, as you will answer the contrary at your uttermost peril.29
The bearer was to be Heneage, probably chosen because he had been Robert’s rival at court.
It was only now that Davison reached London, having gone first to Walsingham and being shocked to find him so downcast. When Elizabeth received him in the inner drawing room at Greenwich, her anger was ‘at white heat throughout the interview’.30 She ‘harangued him’ over ‘Robert’s ingratitude and disobedience’.31 He provided Robert’s explanations, ‘but could not slake her consuming indignation’.32 Taking control of the Netherlands to conduct an aggressive campaign was the one thing Elizabeth had wanted to avoid. She saw his action as treachery, insolence, self-seeking and maddening idiocy.33 Davison could not persuade her to change the letter she had written three days before. He persisted by seeking a further meeting and was granted two more interviews. Although supported by all her principal advisers, he made very little progress, but eventually persuaded her to modify her instructions to Heneage and to study Robert’s account of his negotiations with the States General.
When Burghley heard that Robert was required to make a public renunciation of the governorship at the place he had received it, he remonstrated that the effect would be disastrous, and it would be a lesser evil to allow him to retain it in a personal capacity. When Elizabeth refused to listen, he obliged her to compromise by threatening to resign. A formula was eventually found to enable her to accept Robert as governor, as he had accepted it from the people of the United Provinces and had not usurped it from his monarch. Any attempt by the States to provide the English Crown with sovereignty was utterly repudiated. In all matters affecting the Crown, Robert remained Elizabeth’s Lieutenant General, and he was careful to demonstrate his subordinate position on public and ceremonial occasions.34 At the St George’s Day Feast at Utrecht, a chair of state was set aside for the absent Queen, while Robert sat on a stool at the end of the high table. During the banquet, food and drink were proffered to the vacant chair.
Ambrose wrote to Robert to support his acceptance of the governorship but warned him that Elizabeth’s ‘malice is unquenchable’. He assured him: ‘You were never so honoured and loved in your life amongst all good people as you are at this day, only for dealing so nobly and wisely in this action as you have done, so that, whatever cometh of it, you have done your part.’35 As a further mark of her disapproval, Elizabeth deliberately held back delivery of the funds necessary to pay the army. Robert was full of ‘abject self-commiseration’. He asked to return home to resume his duties as Master of the Horse.36 He should have stood up to her, but instead wrote a long minute, blaming Davison for encouraging him to accept the governorsh
ip without her consent, which Davison hotly denied. Elizabeth did not blame Davison and he was appointed to the Council in July, later becoming Elizabeth’s secretary. In March, Robert sent Sir Thomas Shirley and Thomas Vavasour to London to explain his position. Shirley adopted the tactic of telling Elizabeth that Robert was unwell, and she immediately sent her physician, Dr Goodrowse to administer to him. By the end of the month, Raleigh was able to report that Robert was once again her ‘Sweet Robin’.37 On 1 April, Elizabeth wrote to him that despite the provocation caused by the inappropriate and inexcusable steps he had taken:
Your grieved and wounded mind hath more need of comfort than reproof … [having] no other meaning and intent than to advance our service, [so] we think meet to forebear to dwell upon a matter wherein we ourselves do find so little comfort.38
By the end of July, the old familiar tone had returned. She wrote:
Now will I end, that do imagine I talk still with you, and, loathly say: ‘Farewell ō ō, though ever I pray God bless you from all harm and save you from all foes, with my million and legion thanks for all your pains and cares. As you know, ever the same. E.R.39
Robert’s principal concern was a shortage of money. Elizabeth was reluctant to provide more, even to pay her troops. She had a point to make and Robert had been cavalier about accounting for his expenditure. She had agreed to send £160,000 per annum – half her normal annual outgoings – and large instalments had already been sent, but she had received no accounts to justify how they had been used. There can be little doubt that costs had been underestimated. The treasurer told Walsingham that disbursements had grown above the rate agreed at the army’s departure and Robert had increased officers’ pay, including his own, from £6 to £10 13s 4d per day. Burghley made clear that until expenditure was explained, no further money would be forthcoming. There were several areas of confusion. Before Robert’s arrival, there had been 7,000 English troops in Holland in the pay of the Dutch, but these were now transferred without explanation to the English payroll. Money to pay troops was delivered to their captains. They drew pay for their full muster, even if some had disappeared by desertion or death. Elizabeth wanted soldiers to be paid individually, but it was claimed that this would be difficult to enforce. This left soldiers’ pay months in arrears. This was not unusual; the Dutch thought they were doing well if they paid their men for six months out of twelve. The suffering was dreadful; they lacked clothing and the officers cheated them of food. They made their ‘resentment known by indiscipline, desertion and pillaging of the local citizenry’.40 Robert considered both Elizabeth and the States General ‘slow and niggardly’ in contributing to costs. He complained vociferously to the Council in London that ‘any men sent as we are and in action for the realm … [should] be so carelessly and overwillingly overthrown for ordinary wants’.41 He criticised the treasurer for failing to deliver proper accounts as requested and considered him incompetent. (The treasurer’s name is unclear. One source says that he was an uncle of Norreys, but this is unlikely.) Robert was left to bemoan lost opportunities. With soldiers at the point of mutiny, he met £11,000 of military expenses out of his own pocket. This simply encouraged the Dutch to delay further contributions. He realised that his authority with the States General had been undermined by Elizabeth dissociating herself from his office of Supreme Governor, which was ‘completely hollow’. This had ‘cracked his credit’.42
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