by Lisa Hilton
Jewelry was as much a part of the Elizabethan “brand” as her white complexion or elaborate ruffs. Jewels were, of course, a display of wealth, but they also engaged those who gave them and those who wore them in a symbolic language. Pearls, with their associations of sacred chastity and purity, were much favored by the queen, but sapphires and emeralds, which recalled the description of the heavenly Jerusalem, its walls built of gems, also had mystical properties. Jewel “dictionaries,” lapidaries, explain such properties. Sapphire was considered particularly appropriate for kings to wear on their fingers, believed to dissolve discord—hence, perhaps, the choice of Elizabeth’s sapphire ring to be sent as the token of his accession to her patient heir, James of Scotland. Diamond made its wearer indomitable, carnelian promoted concord, emerald was associated with eloquence. Thus the jewels which encrusted Elizabeth’s gowns also spoke of her personal qualities. Elizabeth’s jewels, many of which are listed in the inventories of the New Year’s gift-givings, often featured her symbols, the crescent moon, the phoenix, the pelican, the sieve. In 1571, the Spanish ambassador reported a gift from the Earl of Leicester of a jewel fashioned as Elizabeth on her throne with the countries of France and Spain submerged at her feet, and Mary Stuart groveling in the waves. In 1587, Elizabeth received two hands in gold holding a trowel, a reference to the rebuilding of Jerusalem by the Israelites. Both these jewels have been read as encouragements to the queen to pursue her “godly programme” more assiduously.6 Jewels could be celebratory, like the magnificent phoenix in gold and rubies presented by Lord Howard, or playful, like the curious Antony and Cleopatra on the prow of a ship. They swarmed with creatures—crabs, tortoises, butterflies, with flowers and leaves, with bows and arrows and swords, each conveying a narrative, a joke, a hope. Jewelry was also a means for Elizabeth to connect with people—cameo rings and bejeweled miniatures featuring her image were fashionable at court (though Elizabeth, ever stingy, tended to give away the miniature and expect the hapless recipient to provide a suitably costly setting), while medals with the queen’s portrait and a suitable emblem were a more accessible means of demonstrating loyalty. Worn on the clothing, such medals were an adaptation of the holy medals which had been used to commemorate particular saints or pilgrimages before the Reformation—so popular with the Duke of Norfolk that he rattled, it was said—another instance of the monarch’s absorption of religious imagery. For jewelry, when worn by a king, had particular spiritual qualities. Precious objects were spiritually profitable: “Out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God—the loveliness of the many coloured gems has called me away from external cares … transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial.”7 The light emitted by jewels, in a much darker age, indicated holiness. Elizabeth sparkled, she gleamed, she shone with the radiance of the anointed.
10
WILLIAM CECIL WAS perhaps Elizabeth’s greatest friend, Robert Dudley her great love, but the longest and most curious relationship she experienced with any man was possibly that with her former brother-in-law, Philip of Spain. Six years her senior, the leader of the greatest superpower in the known world was the contemporary of the lone monarch of Europe’s pariah Protestant state, her relative, her sometime, some said, admirer, and ultimately her most implacable enemy. For decades, the two were constantly in one another’s thoughts, neither able to act without consideration of the other’s movements, bound together by their most profound differences. Philip had been proposed as a bridegroom for Elizabeth when she was just nine, and, like a dysfunctional long-distance marriage, the tie between them was broken only by Philip’s death in 1598. While their relations were governed by the impersonal demands of political strategy, they were also colored by their mutual status as members of that very tiny elite of God’s anointed. As with another relation and enemy, Mary Stuart, there was at the core of Elizabeth’s feelings for Philip an acknowledgement of the mystical status of monarchy which only they could be expected to understand.
Although the prospect of a childhood betrothal had come to nothing, Philip was the first, and most powerful, suitor for Elizabeth’s hand as queen, after the humiliating failure of his first attempt at a Tudor matrimonial alliance with Mary. In the aftermath of the Dudley plot in 1555, the Venetian ambassador confirmed that it had been Philip’s intervention with her sister Mary which saved Elizabeth from imprisonment, if not the scaffold: “There is no doubt whatever but that had not her Majesty been restrained by the King … she for any trifling cause would gladly have inflicted every sort of punishment on her.” After the embarrassing fiasco of Mary’s phantom pregnancy, the ambassador noted that Philip was much pleased with his charming, vivacious sister-in-law, whose intelligence and spirit could not have been in greater contrast to his dour, disappointed, and lumpen wife, and it was not long before court gossips were giving out that Philip was in love with Elizabeth, to Mary’s natural horror. That Philip’s feelings towards Elizabeth were only ever conditioned by strategy is abundantly clear, but, as queen, Elizabeth did not quite dispel the rumors. To flirt with Mary’s husband while her sister lived would have been suicidal, but to have it believed that the world’s most powerful man had been suffering from unrequited passion for his beleaguered sister-in-law after the fact was not displeasing. When Philip authorized his envoy Count Feria to propose for the queen as his proxy in early 1559, he specified that he was acting contrary to his own inclinations, explaining that “If it was not to serve God, believe me, I would not have gone into this.” Only the prize of retaining England within the Catholic fold could prompt him to the sacrifice.
Two weeks after Philip’s authorization, Elizabeth’s first parliament met. Its primary goal, in the words of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, in his opening speech, was “the well making of laws for the according and uniting of the people of this realm into an uniform order of religion, to the honor and glory of God, the establishment of his Church and tranquility of the realm.”1 While Parliament debated the form of the bill for her supremacy over the Church, it was inconceivable that Elizabeth might seriously entertain Philip’s proposition, since to do so would be to undermine the very principles of that supremacy. Since Philip had been married to her sister, he and Elizabeth were related within the prohibited “degrees” specified by the Catholic Church, as set out in the book of Leviticus. Marriage within the degrees had been a complex legal problem for European monarchs throughout the medieval period; indeed, Henry VIII had invoked it in relation to his divorce from his brother’s widow, Katherine of Aragon, but solutions had commonly been achieved by dispensations from the pope permitting related couples to marry. Such a dispensation, Feria was instructed to stress, could dissolve the objection to a marriage between the monarchs of England and Spain, but this would require Elizabeth to concede authority to the pope in such matters. Not only would this contradict the conditions for governance over the Church which Cecil was presently so carefully calibrating in the Commons; it would effectively deny Elizabeth’s own claim to the throne, since acceptance of a dispensation would be an admission that the papal ruling on Henry and Katherine’s marriage was authoritative, and that Elizabeth herself was, indeed, therefore a bastard.
Moreover, in an objection which was to influence the diplomatic choreography of her marriage negotiations for the next twenty years, Elizabeth was acutely aware of the unpopularity of a foreign match. While Philip was a tremendous matrimonial prize, not only in terms of his power as a counterpoint to the threat of France but also economically, through the crucial trade links with the Spanish-controlled Netherlands, the main center for English trade with the Continent, Elizabeth had pointed out bluntly to Feria before she became queen that Philip’s marriage to Mary had lost her sister the affection of her people. When she received the king’s formal proposal in February 1559, however, Elizabeth was obliged to play for time. If Cecil and his allies in Parliament could pass the supremacy bill in the form that they wished, it would definitively set England aside from the
Catholic monarchies of Europe. In the meantime, negotiations were proceeding between France and Spain towards the Peace of Câteau Cambrésis, which would resolve a lifetime’s conflict between the two countries over dominance in Italy and, Elizabeth and Cecil hoped, achieve the restoration of Calais in addition to peace between England and France.
In 1557, the French had contravened the truce they held with Spain in Flanders. Despite the clause in her marriage treaty that “This realm of England, by occasion of this matrimony, shall not directly or indirectly be entangled with the war,” Mary Tudor gave in to pressure from Philip and reluctantly declared war on France on 7 June that year. In January, 27,000 French troops, commanded by the Duc de Guise and not a little aided by the fatal Tudor stinginess—Mary had economized on the Calais garrison with disastrous consequences—succeeded in taking the last pathetic scrap of the once mighty Angevin Empire in just eight days. The English had held Calais since 1347; the city was the last, crucial symbol of pretensions to continental power. Mary’s reputation never recovered from its loss.
It was therefore vital that Elizabeth at least pretend to entertain Philip’s proposal in order to ensure Spanish support at the conference as the supremacy bill continued under debate. On 3 April, Câteau Cambrésis was concluded with the achievement of only the latter of the English objectives. Despite some nominal diplomatic flummery about a potential restoration of Calais after eight years, it was painfully apparent that the last remnant of England’s French territories was gone for good, a humiliation Cecil felt very deeply. Two weeks previously, Elizabeth had been emboldened to inform Feria coolly that there was no possibility of her accepting his master, as she was, simply, a heretic. This was both an acknowledgement of the revolutionary gesture her government was poised to make and an acceptance on her own part of a decisively Protestant destiny. In refusing the greatest suitor she was ever to have, Elizabeth was thus making a profound political and theological gesture, one which would ultimately make of her prospective husband a potential nemesis.
The bill which Cecil prepared for his queen’s signature on 29 April 1559 was based on the “uncompromisingly radical” “Device for the Alteration of Religion,” which historians now concur was drafted by the Secretary himself.2 As the members had taken their seats earlier that year, Cecil had already begun a propaganda campaign in the City of London. Week after week, Protestant divines, including many returned Marian exiles, preached at St. Paul’s Cross on the evils of the papacy and the need for true and reformed religion which would safeguard English freedoms. On 8 February, Elizabeth heard a sermon at Whitehall from Dr. Richard Cox, her brother’s former tutor, who had escaped persecution under Mary by fleeing to Frankfurt. It was a clear indication of the new order, which the bill presented to the Commons the following day was to establish. Under the guidance of Sir Anthony Cooke, Cecil’s father-in-law, and Elizabeth’s kinsman Sir Francis Knollys, the bill was guided towards presentation in the Lords on 28 February. Among conservatives it provoked outrage. Both sides invoked centuries of precedent and the collated arguments of scholars, lawyers, and theologians. Most pertinent for many objectors was the issue of Elizabeth herself—as the Archbishop of York dared to state, “preach or minister the holy sacraments a woman may not, neither may she be Supreme Head of the Church of Christ.”3 After Easter, on 10 April, a new amendment was presented. Elizabeth, the Commons were informed, was too humble to accept the title of “supreme head” but would be known as “supreme governor.” Since two of the most strident opponents of the bill, the Bishops of Winchester and Lincoln, were now conveniently lodged in the Tower, charged with contempt of common authority on the warrant of the Privy Council, this rendition received a milder reception. Simultaneously, the Lords were voting on the Act of Uniformity, which required the restoration of the 1552 Edwardian Prayer Book, to be used by all ministers of the Church on pain of dismissal—a practical legal basis for the use of the Protestant religious service in English. Government and Church officials were obliged to accept both this and Elizabeth’s declared governorship, and any who refused to accept supremacy or uniformity could now be lawfully punished, on an expanding scale from fines for a first offence to the ultimate crime of high treason. In the “Device,” Cecil had been calmly lucid about the threats to the realm these revolutionary measures would provoke. He predicted the excommunication of Elizabeth and the placing of England under papal interdict; he foresaw the fury of the Catholic powers and the possibility of a French invasion via Scotland. He predicted domestic dissent and even the dissatisfaction of reformers who felt that the government had not gone far enough. And what Cecil knew, Elizabeth knew.
Elizabeth was aware of her own confessional exceptionalism. A monarch who practiced the reformed faith, she did so, uniquely, within a religious structure—the Church of England—of which she herself was the figurehead. In a prayer she composed herself, she was later to thank God for keeping her “from my earliest days … back from the deep abysses of natural ignorance and damnable superstitions that I might enjoy the great sun of righteousness which brings with its rays life and salvation, while still leaving so many kings, princes and princesses in ignorance under the power of Satan.”4 Elizabeth never wished to cast herself as a defender of the reformed gospel; this became a position into which she evolved under the influence of pragmatic as much as spiritual conditions, but there can be no clearer indication of Elizabeth’s private views on her religion than her active compliance within this first legal structuring of religious reformation. Her famous remark about not wishing to make windows into men’s souls may well have been an acknowledgement of her reluctance to intrude on the ultimate compact between God and conscience, but from the outset of her reign, she was prepared to enforce conformity, and to do so ruthlessly. The Protestant princess had come into her own, and whatever the inconsistencies of her personal practice, she had stood by her Secretary in enshrining that inheritance in statute. Elizabeth could not possibly have known the personal anguish that would ensue, the challenges with which her own ethics would be confronted, or envisage the length and complexity of the process of establishing England as a secure Protestant polity, but she knew as she gave her signature to the bills that she was turning her face irrevocably from the Catholic haven offered by her brother-in-law’s unwilling yet dutiful arms.
In so decisively rejecting papal authority, Elizabeth and her ministers threw down an implicit gauntlet to Spain. The conflict which came to dominate so many aspects of her reign, and which would result most famously (if not conclusively) in the Armada, had its roots in the alliance between the Spanish crown and Rome which had obtained since 1493. As part of a series of diplomatic favors advantageous to his own dynastic ambitions on the Italian peninsula, the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, that year promulgated the bull Inter caetera, dividing the recently discovered territories of the New World between Spain and Portugal along an axis drawn from the Azores islands. Territories to the east of the line were to be held as papal fiefdoms by Portugal, those to the west by Spain. In 1494, the pope bestowed the title of “Catholic Kings” upon Isabella of Castile and her husband Ferdinand of Aragon—the parents of Katherine of Aragon—in recognition of their conquest of Granada, the last remaining Muslim state of the Iberian Caliphate. The title reflected an alliance between secular and sacred power crucial to Spanish dominance of the next century:
The assumption of this exemplary duty to preserve the True Faith was understood … as a quid pro quo for the near-miraculous acquisition of a vast and profitable empire. To challenge one was to deny the other, as Spain’s future enemies well understood.5
Yet to view Elizabeth’s Spanish policy as a defensive response to Philip’s aggressive imperialism is to misunderstand the English (if not the Tudor) element of the conflict between the two nations. Philip shared with Elizabeth a self-perception of his role as the instrument of God’s will, but, tyrannical evangelist of the Counter-Reformation as he undoubtedly was, English policy from the outset was aggressive
as much as reactive. Cecil’s “Device” represented not only a clear statement to Elizabeth’s subjects as to how the relationship between state and religion would henceforth function, but a belligerent isolationism motivated by the belief that attack was the best form of defense. The Act of Uniformity was by no means the end of the Elizabethan Reformation, whose form, in 1559, remained both incoherent and uncertain, but it was indisputable that no accommodation could be made with Roman Catholicism; the Old Faith did not permit of a relativism which could acquiesce in Elizabeth’s authority to govern. Initially, though, both Spain and England sought to encourage peace. Despite the disappointment of Câteau Cambrésis, Philip had been diligent in promoting the English case and, with an eye to France, was keen to cement the amity of existing Anglo-imperial treaties with the distribution of “pensions” to leading Protestants including the Earl of Leicester and Cecil himself.
Although there were to be many skirmishes on the way, it would take almost thirty years for Elizabeth and her brother-in-law to find themselves at war. Initially, Philip was prepared to support Elizabeth’s “heretical” state during its vulnerable early years, while Elizabeth herself never showed any inclination to diminish Catholic authority in Europe at large. She maintained for many years—sometimes with spectacular hypocrisy—that her primary commitment was to retaining peace with Spain: “The King of Spain doth challenge me to be the quarreler, and the beginner of all these wars; in which he doth me the greatest wrong that can be; for my conscience doth not accuse my thoughts wherein I have done him the least injury.”6 For his part, Philip moved only reluctantly towards an aggressive stance on England. Anglo-Spanish enmity was not an inevitable condition but one which came about, slowly, through a mixture of “spiritual ambitions and temporal grievances” in which France, Scotland, the Netherlands, Rome, and the New World all played a part.7 Nor were the policies of the papacy and Spain so closely aligned as many English people came to believe. When England confronted the “tyrannous prosperity” of Spain in 1588, few cared to recall that, had it not been for Elizabeth’s rejected suitor, there may well have been no plucky Protestant England to set sail against the Armada.
