In the early 1570s, the young Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, had also become a courtier in the Queen’s Court. As a child, he had been placed in Cecil’s household as a royal ward, and he married Cecil’s 15-year-old daughter in 1571. By 1573, he appeared to be emerging as a favourite of Elizabeth’s. In May, the Court correspondent Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, wrote that de Vere had lately grown in great credit with the Queen, and ‘… were it not for his fickle head he would pass any of them shortly.’36
Although de Vere was the kind of handsome young nobleman who amused the Queen, there is some debate about the true nature of her affections. Some historians have suggested that de Vere was actually the son born of Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour, 37 while others claim that he and Elizabeth themselves had an affair and had an illegitimate child.38 He did receive some patronage from Elizabeth over the years, including an annual pension of £1,000, despite flirting with Catholicism and mismanaging his estates. He would also become a leading patron of Elizabethan arts.
Elizabeth’s were not the only dalliances going on at Court in 1573. At around the same time, Robert’s attentions were taken by Douglass Howard, Baroness Sheffield. The affair seems to have started in earnest with the death of her husband in December 1568. Robert stated that he loved Douglass, but could not publicly marry because it would ruin his position with the Queen. Douglass would later give testimony that she had been his secret wife, entering into a contracted marriage with him. Whatever the truth of this, what is indisputable is that she bore Robert’s son, Robert Dudley, in August 1574. Robert would take custody of the boy when Douglass later married in 1579, and cared for his education and upbringing. He also made provision in his will for his ‘base son’, who later unsuccessfully tried to establish his legitimacy in court.
In the same year, the Court was alive with rumours that Douglass’s sister Frances Howard was also in love with Robert and that the sisters were ‘at great wars’ over his affections. Robert is also thought to have rekindled his affair with Lettice Knollys in 1573, when her husband Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, was sent to Ireland. Despite these romances, Elizabeth maintained her close friendship with Robert. Other favourites might share her affection, but only one man seemed to hold her heart. His gifts were always lavish and personal. In 1572, he gave her a gold bracelet set with diamonds and rubies and a tiny clock mounted in gold. Two years later, he gave her a fan of white feathers with a gold handle decorated with a bear (his arms) and a lion (hers).
In September 1578, matters changed significantly for both Robert and Elizabeth when Robert married Lettice Knollys. Robert and Lettice’s relationship had already been the subject of scandal in 1575, when her husband had returned to England and discovered their affair. When he died of dysentery in 1576, there were rumours that Robert had poisoned the man.
Initially, Robert did not inform the Queen of his marriage. Many months later, when Elizabeth discovered the news, she was devastated. Robert was sent away for a time, while his wife was banished from Court and forbidden to return during the Queen’s lifetime. Elizabeth heartily disliked Lettice and never forgave her. In the end, Robert and Lettice would have one child in 1581, Robert Dudley, Lord Denbigh, but he died at the age of three.
Thus it came to pass that in 1579, at the age of 46, Elizabeth was again considering a marriage to François, Duc d’Alençon, who was by now 24 years old. She had told her desperate Parliament that marriage was still an option, although not one she would embrace for her own sake: ‘If I were a milkmaid with a pail on my arm whereby my private person might be little set by, I would not forsake that poor and single state to match with the greatest monarch.’39 François would be the last of the Queen’s suitors.
There were a number of political advantages to a marriage with François. He was the heir to the throne of France, which was currently occupied by his brother, Henri III, who had become King in 1574 when their brother Charles IX died. Henri, who had made insulting remarks about Elizabeth years before, was married but had no children. There were unproved rumours that he was a homosexual and liked to wear women’s clothes, although it is also recorded that he had many mistresses. During Henri’s reign, the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots continued to rage.
François’ relationship with his brother was one of rivalry. In 1575–76, François had challenged Henri III’s rule and offered protection to both Catholics and Protestants, suggesting that the latter should have the right of public worship of their religion. The brothers made their peace, to the extent that the following year François commanded the King’s army against the Huguenots, but by 1578 he had again fallen from grace and was arrested. François escaped to Belgium, part of the provinces of the Netherlands.
In 1579, the northern part of these provinces formed the Union of Utrecht to break away from Spanish rule (the entire area had been part of the Holy Roman Empire), and François was invited to be the hereditary sovereign. The following year he would be named ‘Defender of Belgic Liberty’ of the northern provinces, opposing the Spanish in the Catholic southern provinces. François had the support of the English Crown, which preferred the option of neither Spain nor France ruling the Netherlands. Elizabeth’s political interest in François was his wish to drive Spanish forces out of the country to gain a free and independent Netherlands. During the courtship, the two also grew very close.
In 1579, François sent his charming envoy Jean de Simier to begin wooing Elizabeth on his behalf. He was ‘a most choice courtier, exquisitely skilled in love toys, pleasant conceits and court dalliances.’40 Elizabeth nicknamed him the ‘Monkey’ (a play on his name ‘Simier’) and enjoyed the imagination he put into the courtship, including sneaking into her bedchamber to steal a night cap to send to François as a love token. Despite his efforts, negotiations stalled because of the Duke’s demands – he wanted to be crowned King after they married, receive a pension of £60,000 a year, and have equal rights to the Queen in allocating gifts of Crown possessions.
The issue of Elizabeth’s heir was paramount, however. Could she still bear a child at her age? This question was discussed at length by her Councillors.
In a memorandum, Cecil noted that there were precedents of noblewomen who had given birth when older than Elizabeth. He noted that the Queen seemed perfectly designed for childbearing, ‘of the largest and goodliest stature of well-shaped women, with all limbs set and proportioned in the best sort … nature cannot amend her shape in any part to make her more likely to conceive and bear children.’41
Doctors were consulted, and they concurred that Elizabeth conceiving a child was possible. Other observers disagreed, believing that Elizabeth’s health excluded the possibility given the dangers of childbirth. François’ mother herself, Catherine de Medici, sought a report on the Queen’s childbearing prospects from an English doctor. The unnamed physician reported, ‘… if the King [François] marries I will answer for her having 10 children, and no one knows her temperament better than I do.’42
Over the years, foreign envoys and ambassadors had been reporting rumours across the spectrum, ranging from her being physically incapable of sex to her being sexually promiscuous and already a mother. Some claimed she had at least 13 illegitimate children and that ‘she never went in progress but to be delivered’, while others asserted that she was regularly ‘cupped’ (a warm cup placed over an incision in the skin to draw off a quantity of blood) to compensate for her lack of menstruation. However, Henri III’s Ambassador to Elizabeth’s Court wrote that he could state with truth that the stories of Elizabeth’s affairs ‘were sheer inventions of the malicious, and of the ambassadorial staffs, to put off those who would have found an alliance with her useful.’43
Elizabeth decided that she wanted to see François, and it was arranged that he visit England. At the news, Robert Dudley became so ‘ill’ that he was obliged to retire from Court, and Elizabeth let him go, even though she was not yet aware that he had married
Lettice Knollys. Instead she found out about Robert’s betrayal after François’ envoy Simier was shot at by a guard. He suspected that Robert had been involved, and in revenge told the Queen about the secret marriage. Elizabeth was beside herself with rage and would have sent Robert to the Tower had his act been illegal; instead he was banished to his estates at Wanstead with orders to stay there until further notice.
With Robert’s actions no doubt a bitter blow, she wrote sweet letters to François, ‘I confess there is no prince in the world to whom I would more willingly yield to be his, than to yourself, nor to whom I think myself more obliged, nor with whom I would pass the years of my life, both for your rare virtues and sweet nature …’44
On 17 August, François, who was the only of the foreign princes to woo Elizabeth in person, arrived at Greenwich. He was an instant hit. Though small (under five feet) and not classically handsome, he was charming and exciting, and Elizabeth clearly found him attractive. Her French was excellent, so they could woo without an interpreter and were said to enjoy ‘secret visits’. They spent 12 days together and their romance seems to have blossomed. After leaving, he sent her ‘a little flower of gold with a frog thereon, and therein Monsieur, his physiognomy.’45 She fondly nicknamed her suitor her ‘frog’.
However, English public opinion was not in favour of the union. The persecution of Protestants in France and the ongoing religious civil war meant the French were not trusted. Despite François’ concessions to Protestants, he himself was Catholic and his mother, Catherine de Medici, was the Dowager Queen of France. A barrister from Lincoln’s Inn, John Stubbs, added fuel to the flames by writing and publishing The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf wherein England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banns by letting her Majesty see the sin and punishment thereof. He wrote that the Queen’s age would put her in great danger should she become pregnant, and that no young man would wish to marry an older woman unless he had an ulterior motive. François could not be trusted.
In response, a letter signed by the most influential of the Queen’s courtiers was sent to the Mayor of London, advising him that all copies of the book were to be seized and destroyed for slandering the Queen and the Duke, and upsetting the people of the realm. The pamphlet writer Stubbs and the bookseller who had distributed it were sentenced to have their right hands cut off on 3 November 1579. François tactfully tried to intervene to gain the two men a pardon, but Elizabeth refused to back down. Each man lost his hand, and therefore his livelihood.
The Privy Council was also divided on the question. Although Cecil supported the marriage, Robert Dudley, among other Councillors, was strongly opposed. However, her Council left the final decision to her. Negotiations for the engagement continued through 1580, with François making political concessions to keep them going.
In April 1581, the new French envoy, Pierre Clausse Seigneur de Marchaumont, was invited to knight Francis Drake with the Queen’s sword on her behalf. Drake had recently returned from pillaging the Spanish treasure fleet in the West Indies. In the process, she dropped her garter and de Marchaumont begged to keep it for François. Elizabeth said she needed it to get back to the palace with her stockings in place, but he could have it later, which he did. Many assumed the marriage was as good as signed.
Later in the year, François returned to England and was again royally entertained. He wrote the Queen messages of love, stating his desire to be ‘kissing and rekissing all that Your beautiful Majesty can think of’ as well as to be ‘in bed between the sheets in your beautiful arms’.46 He had no doubt that their passion would soon engender a son ‘made and forged by the little Frenchman who is and will be eternally your humble and very loving slave’.47
Elizabeth visited François in his bedchamber, as one scandalized correspondent wrote. ‘There goes much babbling and the Queen doth not attend to other matters, but only to be together with the Duke in one chamber from morning to noon, and afterwards till two or three hours after sunset. I cannot tell what a devil they do.’48 In October 1581, on the day she celebrated the anniversary of her accession, Elizabeth was with François at Whitehall. As they were strolling in the gallery, she kissed her suitor and gave him a ring from her finger. She informed the French Ambassador, ‘You may write this to the King, that the Duke of Alençon shall be my husband.’49
The next day she called François in and told him that, on reflection, she would not be able to marry him. The nation was opposed to the wedding, and childbirth at her age would be risky. She loved him, she said, but the marriage was impossible. François was devastated. He stayed on at Court for a further three months in case the Queen changed her mind. In the end, he was given £10,000 with the promise of £50,000 more when he left England.
In early 1582, Elizabeth accompanied him to Canterbury, where they parted in tears. Whether the whole engagement had been political theatre to gain influence in Europe, vengeance against the recently married Robert, true love, or a combination of all of these is unknown. However, Elizabeth did seem genuinely fond of the Frenchman, as is shown in her poem to him titled ‘On Monsieur’s Departure’:
I grieve, and dare not show my discontent;
I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate;
I dote, but dare not say I ever meant;
I seem stark mute, yet inwardly do prate.
I am, and am not – freeze, and yet I burn,
Since from myself my other self I turn.50
Elizabeth never saw her ‘frog’ again. He returned to the Netherlands, where he contracted an illness that may have been malaria during his unpopular military campaigns. He died of a fever in Paris on 10 June 1584. When Elizabeth was told, her Court was ordered into mourning and she is reported to have wept inconsolably.
In the following years, the Queen would continue to have favourites, but the frenetic years of political and romantic intrigue came to a close with the end of her engagement with the French Duke. She had played her hand masterfully and tactfully, maintaining the hope of her suitors and with it, political alliances. The line of separation between political angling and her true feelings is impossible to ascertain. Was her pattern of entering into and later exiting out of every marriage proposal attributable to personal or political caution?
Now middle-aged, the Queen would use her avoidance of marriage to her advantage, to demonstrate that she was dedicated solely to the nation’s interests. She was ‘married’ to her people. The last twenty years of her life would see the pinnacle of her reign, with her navy winning one of England’s greatest victories in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, England’s seafarers exploring the globe, and the nation’s poets, playwrights and essayists ushering in a golden age of literature.
9
Gloriana, 1582–1603
In the early 1580s, England’s fleets were a growing asset to its strength. Sir Francis Drake had circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580, for which Elizabeth knighted him in 1581. Tensions were rising between England and Spain, with the two nations and navies vying for power in the Netherlands, France and the Caribbean – and anywhere else they could sway influence. Later in the decade the tensions would heighten into war.
There were also revolts against English rule in Ireland, where it was feared the Catholic population would conspire with Spain and give it a base from which to attack England. In Scotland, the teenage James VI (King of Scotland 1567–1625) did not always have a firm grip on power and was imprisoned for a period in 1582–83 by plotting Protestant earls, and Elizabeth still feared plots hatched by Catholics who were trying to put Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne. Some of the greatest tests and victories of Elizabeth’s reign were yet to come.
In 1581 Elizabeth had a new favourite, who reflected the renaissance spirit of the times. An adventurer, navigator, poet and soldier, Walter Raleigh (c.1552–1618) was nicknamed ‘Water’, which reflected the way his name sounded when he pronounced it in his Devonshire accent.
Raleig
h had sailed to America in 1578, and then served as a captain in a company sent to Ireland to suppress an uprising. On his return to England in December 1581, he became a prominent member of the Court, where it is clear that he greatly pleased the Queen. Elizabeth gave him a lease on Durham House on the Strand so that he could remain close to her. In 1585, he was knighted, and in 1587 he was given the post of Captain of the Gentleman Pensioners, the Queen’s bodyguard. During this period, the extremely handsome Raleigh was at the height of his favour with the Queen, and benefited from the honours and gifts she bestowed on him. However, he did not have any real political influence with the Council.
Raleigh and Elizabeth exchanged poems during their relationship. One of the earliest is reported to have occurred when Raleigh, a new arrival at Court, wrote on a window pane, ‘Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall,’ and the Queen then added, ‘If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.’1 On another occasion, Raleigh wrote Elizabeth a poem that began:
Fortune hath taken away my love,
My life’s joy and my soul’s heaven above.
Fortune hath taken thee away, my princess,
My world’s joy and my true fantasy’s mistress …
And Elizabeth replied:
Ah, silly Pug, wert thou so sore afraid?
Mourn not, my Wat, nor be thou so dismayed.
It passeth fickle Fortune’s power and skill
To force my heart to think thee any ill …2
In 1587, Raleigh set off on an expedition to attempt to found the colony of Virginia in the New World and also spent time in Ireland during the years that followed. Despite his absence from Court, Raleigh continued to hold Elizabeth’s affections until 1592, when he was abruptly recalled from one of his expeditions by the Queen after it was discovered that he had secretly married one of her ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth Throckmorton, in 1591; she was five months pregnant. It was strictly forbidden for ladies-in-waiting to marry without the Queen’s consent and Elizabeth Throckmorton was dismissed from Court, while Raleigh was sent to the Tower. After his release, he returned to his estates rather than to Court. Over the years he went up and down in the Queen’s favour, but would never regain his previous standing.
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