What she wished to divulge will rest forever unknown as de Quadra and Philip did not trust Elizabeth, who they felt prevaricated for her own political purposes. Philip told de Quadra: ‘… her words are so little to be depended upon … she has no intention of fulfilling what she says and only wishes to use your authority for her own designs and intentions.’40
Could the secret have been that she was already married to Robert or perhaps even pregnant? The idea was not a stranger to public gossip: in the same month, on 27 February 1561, Thomas Burley was on trial on charges of slandering Elizabeth by saying, ‘Lord Robert did swive [have penetrative sex with] the Queen.’41
Several months later, on 30 June 1561, Robert organized a banquet for the Queen, followed by a river party. Elizabeth, Robert and de Quadra were together on a barge, watching the other boats loaded with her courtiers. The mood was joyful, with singing and music, laughing and joking. Robert suggested that since de Quadra was a bishop, he should marry Robert and Elizabeth there and then. As de Quadra reported, ‘They went so far with their jokes that Lord Robert told her that, if she liked, I could be the minister to perform the act of marriage and she, nothing loath to hear it, said she was not sure whether I knew enough English.’42 De Quadra tried to join in with the spirit of the moment and replied that if she got rid of her Protestant advisers and restored Catholicism, he would be delighted to marry them whenever they liked.
However, the laughter seems to have faded by July, when Elizabeth went on a progress to Essex and Suffolk. She was said to be irritable and to look pale, ‘like one lately come out of childbed’.43 Apart from how she might have been feeling physically, she would have been aware that Mary, Queen of Scots would be imminently arriving in Scotland, and, as a young widow, she was an attractive marriage prospect. Elizabeth would have to play her cards carefully. She knew that foreign kings might reason that by wedding Mary they could rule Scotland, and could then conquer England in her name. In the face of competition from her cousin to the north, Elizabeth needed to exert all her charm and diplomatic skill to maintain European interest in her as a possible choice for marriage.
The summer of 1561 was also disastrous for one of Elizabeth’s possible heirs, Lady Catherine Grey, the younger sister of Lady Jane Grey. As the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary, she had a potentially legitimate claim to the throne. She had already suffered a fall from grace when her sister Jane was overthrown, resulting in Catherine removed from being first in succession to the throne and her first marriage annulled. Mary I had made Catherine and another sister, Mary, Ladies of the Privy Chamber, but Elizabeth, who did not much like the sisters, had demoted them to the lesser rank of Ladies of the Presence Chamber. Catherine was angered, as she saw herself as Elizabeth’s legal heir and thought her rank should be higher.
In 1561, the relations between Elizabeth and Catherine worsened dramatically. At the end of 1560, Catherine had clandestinely married the son of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (Edward VI’s former Protector who had been executed for treason, and who had been partly responsible for the execution of his brother Thomas Seymour). Catherine married Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, without asking the Queen’s permission, which was a penal offence. By the summer of 1561, she found herself pregnant. To make matters worse, she had lost the deed of jointure (a document detailing the financial arrangements of husband and wife), so she had no official proof of the secret marriage, which would make the child illegitimate.
Desperate, Catherine sought the help of Robert, who was her brother-in-law. As she was on the summer progress with the Royal Court, she crept into his bedroom one night, the only time she could find him alone, woke him and told him all, begging him to intercede with Elizabeth for her. The next morning, Robert told the Queen, who was furious. Not only had Catherine married without notifying her, she had no official evidence of the marriage, and Elizabeth did not approve of her choice of husband. She was also with child, something that was potentially dangerous to Elizabeth as it could make Catherine the focus of a rebellion to oust Elizabeth, who had no heir, from power. Elizabeth sent her to the Tower, where Edward Seymour would later join her.
Robert continued to try to gain leverage in his pursuit of the Queen, but Elizabeth seemed to have hardened in her attitude towards marrying him, at least publicly. The scandal over his wife’s death may have cast a long shadow. Robert Kyle, an Englishman acting for Eric XIV of Sweden, wrote to the Swedish King on 27 July that Robert had threatened to have him imprisoned for putting the King’s marriage proposal before the Queen. Kyle’s letter reported that Elizabeth proceeded to humiliate Robert in front of her nobles, maintaining that ‘Lord Robert had plain answer from the Queen’s mouth in the Chamber of Presence, all the nobility being there, that she would never marry him, nor none so mean as he, with a great rage and great checks and taunts to such as travailed for him, seeing they went about to dishonour her.’44 Robert, his pride wounded, asked permission to go abroad, which was granted. He left the Court in high dudgeon, presumably hoping that Elizabeth would soon beg him to return.
In France, there was renewed interest in Elizabeth’s marital status. Stricken by religious conflicts, France had agreed to withdraw its troops from Scotland in the Treaty of Edinburgh that Cecil had negotiated. Scotland itself was torn between Catholic and Protestant factions. All the Royal Courts angled to try to gain the best possible position, and one arm of French foreign policy was alliance through marriage.
In August 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots arrived back in Scotland, escorted by three of her uncles, including François de Lorraine, Chevalier de Guise, the Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy. He was an exciting and extremely handsome gentleman. The three noblemen decided to pay a visit to the English Court before returning to France. Reportedly, Elizabeth enjoyed a most pleasant flirtation with François.
Later in the year, a former French suitor reappeared, Jacques de Savoy, Duc de Nemours; he wanted to send his brother, the Cardinal of Ferrara, to England to ask for Elizabeth’s hand. His suit foundered when it became clear that the Cardinal’s main aim was to use the question of marriage as a means to discuss England returning to the Catholic fold. Elizabeth refused him entry to England on the basis that she would happily accept his visit as a royal messenger, but ‘not as the Bishop of Rome’s minister’.45
By autumn 1561, Robert’s plans to win Elizabeth’s hand were in disarray. It was clear he could not rely wholly on Spanish support to persuade Elizabeth to marry him. He contacted the Huguenot Henri de Navarre, the cousin of 10-year-old Charles IX (King of France 1560–74), and offered English support for the Huguenots in the French Wars of Religion in turn for Henri’s support for Robert’s marriage to Elizabeth. Henri refused to commit himself.
Throckmorton, the English Ambassador in Paris, was furious that Robert had acted independently and in a manner against official policy, but Robert did not care; his hopes were renewed as Elizabeth was granting him gifts that showed he was still in her favour. In February 1562, he was made Constable of Windsor Castle, and later, Constable and Steward of Warwick Castle. He was also finally allowed to inherit the estates of his deceased uncle.
Then, in June 1562, more rumours began to surface, this time about Elizabeth’s marriage to Robert. William Cecil had managed to turn one of de Quadra’s servants, Borghese Venturini, into a spy. Venturini made a report to him about the dispatches de Quadra had sent to Philip, which alleged ‘… that the Queen was married to Lord Robert before only two or three witnesses …’ and that Venturini had heard de Quadra say ‘… that the Queen was secretly married to Lord Robert, of which he had informed the King of Spain.’46
According to Venturini, another of de Quadra’s dispatches reported that the Queen herself had told the Ambassador that, on coming back from William Herbert, Lord Pembroke’s house one afternoon, her ladies had asked if they should kiss Robert’s hand after they kissed hers, if he was now her consort? ‘She told them, no, and they must not believe
everything they heard.’47
Presented with this information by Cecil and accused of acting inappropriately, de Quadra was quite annoyed, not least because he’d been striving for years to convince Elizabeth to marry. He told the Council, ‘I do not think, considering what others say of the Queen, that I should be doing her any injury in writing to his Majesty [Philip II] that she was married, which in fact I never have written, and I am sorry I cannot do so with truth.’48
This gossip, though vehemently denied, revealed the Spanish involvement in Robert’s plans and put paid to his ability to use Spanish influence to gain the Queen’s hand. As Elizabeth reduced her contact with de Quadra to almost none, Robert now made his support of the French Huguenots public, offering them his backing, doubtless expecting their support for his marriage with Elizabeth in return. His brother-in-law, Sir Henry Sidney, joined Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in Paris to try to broker a peace between the Catholic and Protestant factions and may have also lobbied the French Protestant faction on Robert’s behalf.
Robert also used English politics to help gain support for marrying Elizabeth. In the summer of 1562, Mary, Queen of Scots requested a royal meeting in York in order to try to persuade Elizabeth to name her as the formal, legal heir to the English throne. As Mary had refused to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh (which acknowledged Elizabeth as lawful Queen of England) on her return from France, the Council voted against Elizabeth going to such a meeting. Robert, however, was firmly in favour. He reasoned that if Elizabeth named the Catholic Mary as heiress, then the Protestant Lords would be forced to support him as the Queen’s husband in their urgency to get her married and to create a Tudor heir in the line of succession.
However, concerns about the broader political context won out. At the time, in France, the Catholic House of Guise (Mary’s relatives) were attacking the Protestant Huguenots. The Council felt that if François, Duc de Guise was successful in defeating the Huguenots, he might try to attack England on Mary’s behalf. Elizabeth and her Council decided that England should give limited support to the Huguenots and that a meeting with Mary was impossible. The question of Elizabeth’s heir would have to wait. Or had it already been dealt with? Did Elizabeth already have a child, albeit an illegitimate one? Were Robert’s efforts to gain Elizabeth’s hand a way of making a secret liaison an official one? The rumours persisted. In June 1562, testimony was given in a Wiltshire court recounting the following conversation: ‘It is said my Lord Robert is fled out of the realm … It is told me he hath the Queen with child, and therefore he is fled.’49
Whatever the truth of the gossip, the only type of heir that counted was a lawful one, and the fears of the English Council on the urgency of this need were soon to be aggravated.
In 10 October 1562, Elizabeth became ill at Hampton Court after taking a relaxing bath and a long walk. For a week she lay in bed, getting weaker and less responsive. As she did not appear to be recovering, her cousin, Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, arranged for Dr Burcot, a German physician, to visit her. In spite of the lack of any spots or rash, he immediately diagnosed smallpox, a very serious illness that often resulted in death. When he told Elizabeth the news, she furiously ordered him to leave.
With the Queen seriously ill and little idea of how to treat her, a panic ensued as to who should succeed her if she should die. An heir had to be acknowledged and ready to assume the throne. The Council was split on who should be nominated: the candidates included Catherine Grey (the granddaughter of Mary Tudor); the Catholic Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox (the daughter of Margaret Tudor); and Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, known as the Puritan Earl (he was descended from the brother of Edward IV and Richard III). No one recommended Mary, Queen of Scots – the Catholic votes went to Lady Margaret Douglas, who was the mother of two healthy sons.
However, Elizabeth still refused to name a successor. When the Council came to the gravely ill Queen’s bedchamber, she asked them to name Robert the Protector of the Realm, to make him a noble and to pay him £20,000 a year. According to a Spanish account of the scene, she said that ‘although she loved and had always loved Lord Robert dearly, as God was her witness, nothing improper had ever passed between them.’50
She further asked that Robert’s body-servant, Tamworth, who slept in his bedchamber, should be given £500 a year for life. She commended her cousin, Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, to the Council, and also praised her household members. She became so agitated and delirious that the Councillors agreed to all her demands in order to calm her.
Elizabeth’s statement about Robert that ‘nothing improper had ever passed between them’ has long intrigued historians. She appears to be saying that they had never had a sexual relationship. On the other hand, she could also have made this statement with a clear conscience if they had gone through a form of pre-marriage, the de futuro, in which the couple say ‘I will’, rather than ‘I do’, or a de praesenti marriage, in which vows are exchanged in front of witnesses. These were both religiously and legally acceptable marriages, which would have permitted the couple to have officially sanctioned sexual relations.
If such a marriage did take place, it probably would have been in the summer of 1560, in the months before Amy Robsart died. With his wife dying from a terminal illness, Robert and Elizabeth may have gone through the marriage ceremony in front of a few chosen witnesses, which would have made their relationship legitimate in the eyes of the Church. They would have imagined that a second, formal, public ceremony would take place after Amy’s death, but any consequences of their actions, such as a pregnancy, would make the child legitimate since it had been lawfully conceived.
Henry VIII had behaved in a similar manner with Elizabeth’s own mother, Anne Boleyn. In anticipation of divorcing Catherine of Aragon, he had married Anne in January 1533, several months before his divorce became final in April, and in May Henry and Anne were publicly proclaimed to be legally married. This had been in part to protect any child conceived: Elizabeth was born in September. If Robert and Elizabeth also chose a secret ceremony, any sexual activity would be lawful and natural, which would enable Elizabeth to make what she feared was her deathbed vow in all honesty.
Another possibility is that Elizabeth and Robert were having a sexual relationship that did not include vaginal penetration, although this would obviously preclude the possibility of a secret pregnancy or child. This would allow Elizabeth to state publicly that she was a virgin, which would have been technically true. In Tudor England, although anal sex was illegal, it was sometimes used as a form of birth control.
It is notable that most of Elizabeth’s statements on her sexual status tended to be worded in such a way that they referred to her as Queen, neatly sidestepping anything that happened prior to 1558, including her relationship with Thomas Seymour.
Elizabeth’s sickbed wishes never had to be carried out. She began to get better after Dr Burcot was persuaded to return, grumbling and complaining at her rudeness. He wrapped the patient in red cloth, laid her on a mattress before the fire and gave her a potion to drink. She began to cry when spots appeared on her hands, but the doctor asked her brusquely if it were better to have spots or to die. The treatment worked, and within a month Elizabeth recovered, her face unmarked by smallpox scars. However, Lady Mary Sidney, Robert’s sister, who had nursed her throughout her illness, fell ill and was badly pockmarked; she left Court and never returned. Elizabeth never forgot her courage and nobility, and remained her friend for the rest of her life.
By 20 October 1562, Elizabeth was able to resume her duties. She named two new members to her Council, Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk – and Sir Robert Dudley. On November 26, she approached Robert in Windsor Park, where he was having a shooting match. Elizabeth, who had come to watch with several of her ladies, was dressed as a maid, with her hair loose and wearing informal robes. She told Robert that he was in her debt as she had ‘passed the pikes’ for his sake.51 The phrase literally meant that she had passed throug
h some deadly danger, which could have referred to her bout with smallpox. But why ‘for his sake’? Could it have referred to her going through the trauma of childbirth?
Following the Queen’s brush with death, Parliament was frantic about the question of the succession. They presented her with a petition, begging her to marry or to name a successor. She obfuscated, stating that even if she did not desire marriage as ‘a private woman’, as a Queen she realized she had certain duties and would not rule it out.52 Given this, she would not be pressed to name a successor, as she might yet produce an heir by birth.
Her Councillors wouldn’t give in. January 1563 started with yet another broadside to persuade Elizabeth of the vital importance of marrying and having a child. When she attended services at Westminster Abbey, the Dean of St Paul’s preached about Elizabeth’s lack of an heir and her duty to get one: ‘For as the marriage of Queen Mary [to Philip of Spain] was a terrible plague to all England, the want of your marriage and issue is like to prove as great a plague … If your parents had been of your mind, where had you been then? Or what had become of us now?’53
The Queen was furious that once again she was being lectured on a matter that she considered her personal and private concern. It did not bode well for the next sitting of Parliament, at which the issue would come up again.54
Cecil realized the futility of acting in this manner, but the government continued its campaign. In April 1563, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Nicholas Bacon, made a submission to the Queen on behalf of Parliament, begging her to marry and beget an heir; this time he emphasized the joy of motherhood: ‘If your Highness could conceive to imagine the comfort, surety and delight that should happen to yourself by beholding an imp of your own … it would, I am assured, sufficiently satisfy to remove all manner of lets, impediments and scruples.’55
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