by Lisa Hilton
The term of Mary’s “pregnancy” had already come and gone. On 30 April, the bells had been rung in the capital at the false report that the queen had been delivered of a son, and even if Mary was still convinced that she was with child, Philip was more realistic. Until an Anglo-Spanish succession was secured, he needed Elizabeth. By early August, even Mary could maintain the fiction no longer, and thanks to Philip’s influence, Elizabeth enjoyed a renewed measure of status as the court moved to Oatlands and on to Greenwich during the summer of 1555. She was even allowed to attend his official leave-taking on 25 August, when he sailed from Greenwich. Just over a month later, Elizabeth received permission to return to her own house at Hatfield. One wonders whether brother-in-law or sister was more relieved to be gone.
SPECULATING ON FEELINGS at nearly five centuries’ distance is never a wise idea, particularly when it comes to an individual so intensely private as Elizabeth I. But as she departed for Hertfordshire, Elizabeth might well have felt that after the wretchedness of the past two years, her ordeal in the Tower and her imprisonment at Woodstock, something extraordinary was beginning. The signs were there. Her popularity was almost embarrassingly evident. Tactfully, she had requested her gentlemen to restrain the cheering crowds as she departed court, but there could be little doubt that where Mary had once been beloved, she was now loathed. The bonfires which had been lit to acclaim her accession had been transformed into horrific funeral pyres. Mary’s holy fanaticism had prompted even Philip’s own chaplain, Alfonso a Castro, to advocate restraint. In a sermon delivered when the burnings began, he observed, “They learned it not in Scripture to burn a man for his conscience.” When Elizabeth had arrived at Hampton Court in the spring, disgraced, her birth still called into question (for though Mary had thus far resisted Gardiner’s suggestion to have her once more declared a bastard, it remained a possibility) and, to her sister’s smug eyes, painfully unmarried, she was very much the poor relation. Now, vindicated, free, and most importantly healthy and Protestant, it seemed that under the terms of her father’s will, she might indeed succeed. Short of a miracle, there would be no heir, and the sickness which would kill Mary in two years was already making itself known.
Elizabeth was quick to re-establish her household on its old footing. Thomas Parry returned, as did Katherine Ashley, and Roger Ascham arrived to resume her program of studies. On the surface, Elizabeth’s life had resumed its quiet, scholarly tenor, yet she had barely had time to recover from the upheavals of the recent past before her name was once again being associated with treason. Once again, the unfortunate Katherine Ashley was the source.
In 1550, Elizabeth had obtained Durham Place on the Thames in London, between Whitehall and the then–Lord Protector’s residence at Somerset House, as part of her father’s bequests. It was a spacious property, with a large garden, but Elizabeth never lived there (in spite, or perhaps because, of the fact that it was once used by Anne Boleyn). After Seymour’s fall, the Duke of Northumberland, Robert Dudley’s father, arranged for Elizabeth to take Somerset House, the first truly Renaissance building in England. In the spring of 1556, Somerset House was searched and a number of “seditious” materials recovered, including books, pamphlets containing “libels” on Mary and Philip, and a box of drawings and paintings which insulted the royal couple and the Catholic religion. The box, or cabinet, belonged to Katherine Ashley, who departed from Hatfield in May for her third spell in the Tower. But why were Elizabeth and her household yet again under scrutiny?
Mary’s fourth parliament, which met three days after Elizabeth left court, was her most difficult to date. Martyrdom was one thing, but money was another. Two principal bills were proposed, one to return the crown properties originally confiscated by the Church, and the second to confiscate the properties of those reformists (eight hundred or so) who had voluntarily gone into exile to avoid Mary’s persecution. Both bills were extremely unpopular, and though the crown managed to inch the first through—effectively by locking the Commons in the house and starving them into submission—the second was vehemently opposed by Sir Anthony Kingston, who also took the measure of locking the Commons in, though this time the door was bolted from the inside. In a passionate speech, he challenged the House not to pass a bill which was contrary to so many consciences, and the crown’s proposal was defeated. Among those who voted against it was William Cecil. Kingston was connected with another disaffected gentleman, Sir Henry Dudley, and through him to his father-in-law, Christopher Ashton. Dudley was a distant relative of Robert Dudley (precisely, his father’s second cousin once removed), and had been a Northumberland client during the days of the duke’s ascendancy, travelling to France to promote the cause of Jane Grey. He was in Paris again at the end of 1555, where he discussed the implications of Mary’s Spanish marriage with none other than the French king himself.
The Dudley plot might almost be seen as a prototype of the continentally based conspiracies of Elizabeth’s reign, in which religious division in England was (prospectively) exploited to the advantage of either France or Spain. Christopher Ashton and Anthony Kingston agreed between them that Dudley would lead an invasion force from France, via Portsmouth, which would join with a rebel force raised by Kingston. Together they would march on London, dust off Edward Courtenay (presently kicking his heels in Venice), marry him to Elizabeth, and “dispose” of Mary—the original plan seems to have been exile with Philip, though wilder accounts suggest they intended to murder the queen. In February 1556, however, the French and Spanish kings signed a truce at Vaucelles, and the plot was put into abeyance. What was crucial, the French ambassador in London, Noailles, was informed, was that Elizabeth should not be involved: “And above all, make sure that Madame Elizabeth does not begin … to undertake what I have written to you. For that would spoil everything and lose the benefit which they can hope for from their schemes.”4
There are two ways of reading this. One, that Elizabeth was ignorant of the plan and that the French ambassador was being warned that she should not be involved in it. Or two, that the French ambassador thought that Elizabeth was already informed of the plan “what I have written to you,” and was poised ready to act, that is, she was fully aware of and had acquiesced to the coup. But had there been the least bit of evidence of this, why would Mary not have leaped upon the excuse to dispose of her troublesome sister once and for all? Perhaps she was allowing the plot to play itself out and then strike at Elizabeth when she had firm proof, for, incredibly, Dudley and Ashton now succeeded in robbing the Exchequer. They carried out the burglary to fund the scheme in lieu of monies from Henri II and got as far as actually touching the bullion stores. By the time this was revealed to Cardinal Pole, the Archbishop of Canterbury and principal councilor to Mary, the pair had sailed for France to organize the invasion. In March, the London group of plotters had been rounded up and Kingston was dead, possibly a suicide as he was taken into custody. Elizabeth expressed her shock and outrage in her highest style, writing to Mary that
Among earthly things I chiefly wish this one, that there were as good surgeons for making anatomies of hearts that might show my thoughts to Your Majesty as there are expert physicians of the bodies, able to express the inward griefs of their maladies to their patient. For then I doubt not but know well that whatsoever other should suggest by malice, yet your majesty should be sure by knowledge, so that the more such misty clouds obfuscates the clear light of my truth, the more my tried thoughts should glister to the dimming of their hidden malice.
Having unraveled all that, it is a tiny bit tempting to wonder whether Elizabeth’s tongue was a little in her cheek.
Mary was not entirely blinded by obfuscating clouds, and though she later sent a diamond ring and a polite message to Elizabeth, still Somerset House was searched and arrests were made at Hatfield in May. Along with Katherine Ashley and three more of Elizabeth’s women, Elizabeth’s Italian tutor, Battista Castiglione, and another servant, Francis Verney, were taken away. “The nu
mber of persons imprisoned increases daily,” reported the Venetian ambassador excitedly, “which has caused great general vexation… . Among the domestics is a certain Battista … who has twice before been imprisoned on her [Elizabeth’s] account, he being much suspected on the score of religion.”
Francis Verney was one of the members of Elizabeth’s household who had provoked Bedingfield’s suspicions during her confinement at Woodstock. A Protestant from a Buckinghamshire gentry family, he had hung around the Bull with Parry and had apparently managed to poke his nose into several letters from Mary’s council. Both he and his brother Edmund had the government’s eyes on them. “If there be any practice of ill, within all England, this Verney is privy to it,” Bedingfield was warned.5 By June, Elizabeth was informed that four confessions of knowledge of the Dudley plot had been extracted, but Mary’s envoys assured her that she herself was not suspected.
Mary did not believe her sister to be innocent. But Philip, in Brussels, insisted she be exonerated. If Elizabeth were eliminated, the next heir was Mary, Queen of Scots, the future Queen of France, an intolerable outcome for what had been very much a dynastic Hapsburg marriage. So Mary, desperately loyal to her husband, excused her sister, who loftily refused an invitation to attend court. It can only have been a painful decision for Mary, to whom her negligible value as a woman, rather than as a conduit for Spanish ambition, had been made hatefully plain.
In a sense, though, the Dudley plot is something of a red herring. It was a crazy scheme, and one which only briefly had the backing of the serious military power of the French king. What deserves more scrutiny is the Italian connection—the arrest of Castiglione and the evidence which this provides that Elizabeth’s household had been connected with anti-Mary propaganda for some years.
IN THE SUMMER of 1556, Sir William Cecil and his wife, Mildred, received a pleasant invitation to the country house of Sir Philip Hoby at Bisham. Lady Cecil was pregnant, and Sir Philip considerately offered to send his carriage if the Cecils would consent to be of the party. It was very much a family gathering—among the guests were Cecil’s brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Hoby, and his wife, Elizabeth, Mildred’s younger sister. The planned gathering on a July afternoon collected together some of the most influential characters of what might be termed the “Marian resistance,” which, through Battista Castiglione, leads back to Katherine Ashley and her “libellous pamphlets” and, from there, to Elizabeth.
Another member of the group was Richard Morison, whom Elizabeth’s tutor, Roger Ascham, had accompanied as secretary when Morison was ambassador to the imperial court in 1550. Morison had attracted unwelcome attention during his embassy for staging public readings of the works of Machiavelli. He was also a colleague of Bernardino Ochino, one of a small number of Italian religious reformists who had a significant influence on the progress of Protestantism in England. The Reformation in Italy itself was of brief duration. Between a program of concentrated oppression from the Church and the Holy Roman Empire, which controlled much of the peninsula, the movement to reform was thoroughly quashed in about seventy years. Yet Italy briefly provided a significant locus of dissent for English exiles during Mary Tudor’s reign and, moreover, continued to inject English reform with the energy of Renaissance humanism. Padua, governed by the republic of Venice and hence beyond the reach of imperial authority, was a particular center for those seeking refuge from Catholic persecution. Its university was a magnet for humanists while (curiously) the superlative art of its public buildings, adorned with works by Giotto and Mantegna, provided dissident reformists with a background of some of the finest achievements of the Catholic Renaissance. The Hoby brothers were Italophiles, and between 1548 and 1555, accompanied for a time by Cheke, their travels on the peninsula brought them the acquaintance of many Italian reformists, among them Pietro Bizzani, whom Cheke made a fellow of St. John’s; Bernardino Ochino; and later Jacopo Aconcio. The journeyings of the Hoby group were an unofficial exile. As Mary’s persecutions intensified, they gave out that they were benefiting from a leisurely tour of Italy’s cultural centers and healthful spas. It is possible that among the “refugees of conscience” they may also have encountered Francis Walsingham, later Secretary to Elizabeth, who was present there between 1554 and 1556.
Thomas Hoby himself is best remembered for his travel writings and for his 1562 translation of that essential sixteenth-century text, Castiglione’s Il Cortigiano. He also translated an anti-papal text, Francesco Negri’s Tragedy of Free Will, which he dedicated to Katherine Parr’s brother, the Marquess of Northampton, whose service he entered in 1551. Another Italian reformist associated with the circle, a close friend of Bizzani, was Elizabeth’s tutor Battista Castiglione (a distant relation of the famous author), who had joined her household in 1544. Researchers concur that it is probable that Castiglione’s first two spells in prison were associated with the Seymour and Wyatt incidents. Castiglione later became one of Elizabeth’s gentlemen of the chamber and served her until his death at the age of eighty-two.
Not all members of the Hoby circle felt obliged to take their consciences on a Grand Tour. Some, like William Cecil, reached a compromise with the regime (Cecil voted against the Exile Bill while simultaneously becoming High Steward of Cardinal Pole’s manor near his own home at Wimbledon), while working discreetly against it. Elizabeth appointed Cecil surveyor of her lands in 1550; in 1553, for a fee of £20 per annum, he gave her advice on her property, some of which lay close to his own family home at Burghley. With one exception, they did not meet during Mary’s reign, but they kept in contact through Thomas Parry, a relative of Cecil’s whose name appears occasionally in the latter’s accounts. Both Elizabeth and Cecil, in a strategy which prefigured the essential harmony of their future political relationship, were prepared to keep their heads down during the Marian ascendancy, to see which way the wind blew: “We are used to the great old Protestant narrative of English history which has Mary’s reign as a monstrous aberration … in 1555, there was no triumph of Tudor Protestantism.”6
But neither Elizabeth nor her future minister were entirely submissive. Cecil tolerated the presence on his land of a printing press owned by one John Day, which from the very day of Mary’s coronation issued tracts against her. And Elizabeth, whatever the extent of her involvement in the Wyatt and Dudley rebellions, was harboring a rebel in her own household, in the form of Castiglione.
John Cheke, the center of this circle of covert dissidents, was less able to accommodate himself to the times. He had left England after one spell in the Tower, then, as he travelled between Brussels and Antwerp, he was taken on the orders of Philip of Spain and returned to captivity. Prison was too much for him. Although he had written to Cecil earlier that year to warn him of the spiritual consequences of conformity, the second spell in the Tower broke him. Just two weeks after Sir Philip Hoby’s planned party, he made two formal recantations of his reformist faith and was received back into the Catholic fold by Cardinal Pole, with Mary’s court as witnesses. He died soon afterwards, unable to forgive himself.
Elizabeth’s reaction to Cheke’s betrayal of his beliefs is not recorded, but, interestingly, she communicated briefly with Cecil at the time on an innocuous matter concerning her estates in Northamptonshire. By then, the Dudley conspiracy was dead and, thanks to King Philip, she was officially innocent. However, the Cheke-Cecil-Hoby circle gives some clue as to what exactly those “pamphlets” were which had so incriminated the hapless Katherine Ashley. The influence of Italian reformists at large in London had been observed by the imperial ambassador, Renard: “There are countless Italians here … who go about talking as evilly as they know how in merchant circles.”7 Richard Morison was known to be involved in “resistance” literature (as well as being a promoter of Machiavelli), and it is notable that many of the libels issued against Mary and Philip had a distinctly Italian slant, emanating from the cities—Venice, Ferrara, and that particular center for the Marian diaspora, Padua. Due to its relative rel
igious freedom, the city was an ideal center for the production of inflammatory tracts. In May 1555, the Venetian ambassador reported that more than 1,000 copies of a Dialogue, “full of scandalous and seditious things against the religion and government” had been distributed in London.8 He also reported on two books in translation, The Mourning of Milan and The Lament of Naples, which warned the English against the example of Spanish domination on the peninsula.
