Elizabeth

by Philippa Jones

  For the rest of his life, Francis would devote his time to his academic work. He translated his earlier work The Advancement of Learning (De Augmentis Scientiarum) into Latin, revising and improving the text. He worked on his only fictional book The New Atlantis, with its utopian civilization of experimentation, learning and knowledge. He also started a major work, Historia Naturalis, and began working on a chapter on the history of life and death, which looked into the possibility of extending life.

  In 1625, the year in which James I died and was succeeded by Charles I (King of England and Ireland 1625–49), Francis published a translation of the psalms from Latin to English, dedicated to the poet George Herbert. He also published a second book of essays, adding new ones to those published in 1612 and improving some of the existing ones. It is this selection that has enjoyed the most popularity over the centuries.

  In this work, small insights into the man himself appear, as in the section ‘Of Parents and Children’, in which the childless Francis wrote, ‘the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men; which have thought to impress the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed.’25 In ‘Of Marriage and the Single Life’, he noted that single men were more likely to undertake great adventures and to make the best friends and masters. A hint of longing from a man perhaps not happily married? He wrote movingly on the subject of friendship, but his feelings on love indicate that all might not have been well with his wife.26

  By the end of 1625, he was seriously ill. In December, he wrote his final will, adding a codicil that cancelled his bequests to his wife. He stipulated that she should only have as much as the law allowed to a widow from her husband’s estates. Four months after his death, Alice married her gentleman usher, Sir John Underhill.

  Early in 1626, Francis was in London to attend Parliament, but was too sick to do so. He set off home for Gorhambury, but was taken ill on the way and stopped at the house of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, at Highgate, where he died on 9 April 1626, aged 65. According to his wishes, he was buried quietly in the Church of St Michael’s near St Albans, and it is here that a magnificent monumental statue of Francis stands. A second statue stands in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. He died with enormous debts; it seemed that he was as hopeless with money as his mother had warned.

  Over the years Sir Francis Bacon has been the focus of much speculation. Some claim that he wrote the works published under the name of William Shakespeare, while others contend he had an even greater ‘concealed literary career’, writing under the names of John Lyly, George Peele, Stephen Gosson, Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Kyd and Thomas Nashe (playwrights), Edmund Spenser, Geoffrey Whitney and William Webbe (poets), Timothy Bright and Robert Burton (writers on melancholy). It is also claimed that he translated all or part of the King James Bible and penned the novel Don Quixote, published in 1605 under the name of Miguel de Cervantes.

  And as for the evidence of Francis being the illegitimate child of Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley? Apart from researchers attempting to interpret the codes and ciphers that Francis so loved and concluding that they can be decoded to show ‘that Francis was the elder son of a secret marriage between Queen Elizabeth and Lord Robert Dudley’ there is no conclusive evidence. Elizabeth certainly did not grant him the favours that she showed to other members of the Court, and in fact seemed to impede his advancement. It is possible that this may have been a calculated diversion to avoid drawing attention to her parenthood, but apart from Francis’s birth date there is little to indicate that he was the Queen’s illegitimate son. But if Francis was not Elizabeth and Robert’s son, who was?

  11

  The Case of Arthur Dudley

  In June 1587, a boat was intercepted off the northern Spanish coast and a young Englishman was taken in for questioning, suspected of being a spy. He was sent to be interviewed at the house of Sir Francis Englefield, who had been a Catholic politician under Mary I and had fled to Spain under Elizabeth I’s reign. What the captive had to say caused something of a stir, in Spain and later in England.

  According to the young man, his name was Arthur Dudley. He was about 25 years old, which means he would have been born in about 1561. He had been brought up in a village near London in the household of Robert Southern, whose wife had been a servant to Kat Ashley. Arthur had lived as a normal member of the family until, at the age of five, he, alone among his brothers and sisters, was taken to London to be brought up as a gentleman. At the age of eight, Arthur was introduced to Sir John Ashley, Kat Ashley’s husband and Elizabeth’s senior gentleman attendant, who made Robert Southern his Deputy Controller of the Queen’s household at Enfield. This is where the boy spent his summers, while in winter he stayed in London and received an upper-class education, with classes in Latin, French, Italian, fencing, music, dancing and law.

  When Arthur was about 15, he told Ashley and Southern that he wished to go abroad to study, but his request was declined. Arthur stole a purse of silver coins from Southern and headed for Milford Haven, hoping to be taken on board a ship for Spain, a country he had longed to visit. He ended up taking refuge in the house of George Devereux, the brother of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex; however, before he could get on a ship, Arthur was arrested by order of the local justices of the peace. The order for his detention had come from the Privy Council, which had instructed that Arthur was, under no circumstances, to be allowed to leave England. According to his interviewer Englefield’s notes, ‘This letter still remains in the castle of Llanfear, in the hands of George Devereux, and was seen and read by Richard Jones and John Ap Morgan, then magistrates of the town of Pembroke, who agreed that the respect thus shown to the lad by the Council proved him to be a different sort of person from what he had commonly been regarded.’1

  Arthur was returned to London and taken to Pickering Place, where he was met by Sir Edward Wotton, the owner of the house; Sir Thomas Heneage, a favourite courtier of the Queen; and his guardian John Ashley, also close to the Queen, who all impressed on him that he must never do such a thing again. He was also told that it was Ashley, not Southern, who was paying for his education.

  About four years later, after persistent pleading, Arthur was allowed to volunteer as a soldier to fight in the Netherlands under the protection of French Colonel de la Noue. In 1580, he was taken to de la Noue at Bruges in the care of a servant in the livery of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. De la Noue was later captured, and Arthur went on his own to France, returning to England for a brief time for additional funds.

  Late in 1583, while still in France, Arthur received a letter from home, telling him that his father was ill and wished to see him before he died as he had something important to tell him. Arthur returned home and found Robert Southern at Evesham, where he had become an innkeeper. Before his death, he informed Arthur that he was not his father. He told him that in 1561, he had been sent for by Kat Ashley and ordered to go to Hampton Court. In a corridor leading to the Queen’s private rooms, he met Lady ‘Herington’ (possibly Isabella Harington, one of Elizabeth’s attendants), who gave him a newborn baby. He was told that the illegitimate child belonged to a lady at Court and its existence had to be concealed from the Queen. Southern took the infant to a mill at Molesey, where the miller’s wife acted as a wet nurse for the baby. Later Southern took the boy to his home, about 60 miles from London, and brought him up as his own child in the place of one of the Southern children who had died in infancy. Arthur, Southern told him, was the baby in question.

  Southern refused to say who Arthur’s real parents were, and the young man left him in anger. He was called back by Mr Smyth, a local schoolmaster, and Southern finally agreed to reveal his parents’ true identity as the young man had good reason to know. He claimed that Elizabeth I herself was Arthur’s mother and Robert Dudley his father. In a state of understandable shock, Arthur fled to London, where he sought out Sir John Ashley. When he told Ashley and a Mr Drury (
perhaps Sir Drew Drury, Gentleman Usher of the Privy Chamber and Lieutenant of the Tower) what Southern had told him, rather than deny it, the two gentlemen warned him to say nothing further about the matter. If he remained quiet, steps would be taken to provide for him in a fitting manner.

  Their attitude and obvious agitation at his news persuaded Arthur that his new-found knowledge might be dangerous, and he returned to France as soon as possible. He went to the Jesuit College at Eu in Normandy, where he told the rector part of his story, but did not reveal everything. The rector recommended that he visit the Count of Eu, Henri, Duc de Guise, but Arthur went instead to the Jesuit School in Paris, where he had heard there was an English priest, Father Thomas. Again, Arthur did not reveal the full story, fearing that the French might use the information against England if they found out his true identity. He wrote to Ashley, who never replied. He then wrote to Edward Stafford, the English Ambassador in Paris, telling him only that he had been the foster-child of Robert Southern ‘whose memory she [Queen Elizabeth] had reason to have graven on her heart’.2

  When it looked as if there was a possibility of war between France and England, Arthur set sail for home on a vessel belonging to a Mr Nicholson of Ratcliff. When they arrived at Gravesend, Arthur must have appeared suspicious to Nicholson, who threatened to have him arrested. Arthur wrote a letter to Robert Dudley and persuaded Nicholson to have it delivered; years later, Nicholson was proud to report that the great Earl of Leicester had thanked him most kindly for this service. As they passed Greenwich, two of Robert Dudley’s attendants came on board and transported Arthur to Greenwich Palace. There, Arthur met Robert Dudley in person. Arthur reported that Robert had taken him to his rooms where he confirmed that he was, indeed, his father. He claimed that Robert had cried over him, and left Arthur to believe that he would do all he could for his beloved son.

  The arrival of this mysterious youth, however, had not gone unmarked. Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s spymaster, had informants in the other ships in the convoy back to England, and Arthur’s appearance was reported to him. Robert duly contacted Walsingham, stating that Arthur was a friend. Robert told his son, ‘You are like a ship under full sail at sea, pretty to look upon but dangerous to deal with.’3

  At first, Walsingham accepted the story and agreed to issue a licence to allow Arthur to travel freely without molestation. But when Robert took Arthur to meet Walsingham in person, once the spymaster had seen the young man, he began to drag his heels about the document. After their first meeting, he asked to see Arthur again. Frightened that he was about to be unmasked and fearing the consequences, Arthur went to the French Ambassador de la Mauvissière to ask for a passport for France. This was arranged; Arthur was to travel as the Ambassador’s servant.

  When they got to Gravesend the next morning, Arthur found his passport would only be validated if he presented it to William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham, Lord Warden of the Port, who was presumably checking the papers of everyone using the port. However, fortune smiled on Arthur that day; he was able to leave the country after joining English soldiers on a troop transport sailing for Flanders; he landed with them at Bergen-op-Zoom.

  It seems that, at this point, Arthur’s allegiance to England and her Queen began to wane and he became involved in various plots to forward the Catholic cause. Englefield’s report of his interview with Arthur relates ‘Arthur's plot with one Seymour to deliver the town of Tele to the Spaniards, which plot was discovered … He opened up communications with the elector of Cologne and the Pope … After many wanderings about Germany he received a messenger from the Earl of Leicester at Sighen, but to what effect he does not say.’4

  Had Robert become aware of his son’s activities? Was he trying to bring him back to the English camp? Whatever the reason for that contact, Arthur went on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Montserrat in Catalonia, visiting the shrine in October 1586. While in Spain in early 1587 he heard of the death of Mary, Queen of Scots and decided to go to France by ship. It was at this point that in June 1587 he was found off the Spanish coast and questioned. As he was an Englishman, Arthur’s tale that he was a Catholic and had just completed a pilgrimage was felt to be suspicious, so he was arrested and held in San Sebastian. When he asked to speak to Sir Francis Englefield, he must have decided that he risked being imprisoned or worse by the Spanish and so revealed his incredible story.

  Arthur said he had decided to go to France because he was terrified that his fate would be the same as Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been executed. Robert Dudley, he believed, had plotted against Mary and this had contributed towards her death. He wrote in a letter to Englefield that he was worried that agents of the Queen would seek him out and arrange to have him murdered so that the secret of his birth would never be known.

  He reminded his captors that there were other claimants to the throne of England apart from James VI of Scotland: he named Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon (a descendant of the house of Plantagenet), and Edward Seymour, the eldest son of Catherine Grey. He added, presumably with himself in mind, ‘… both of them are descendants of Adam, and perhaps there is someone else who is their elder brother.’5 If Philip II would protect him, he offered to write an account of the truth of his birth and life, which the Spanish could use as they liked. In the book he would reveal all, but show that he was ‘… everybody's friend and nobody’s foe’.6 He suggested that once this had been done, he could write to Robert, his father, so as to keep his good opinion.

  Englefield did not know what to think of the young man’s story. Arthur seemed to be as well educated and well travelled as he claimed to be, but there were many possibilities and Englefield certainly suspected that Elizabeth’s Court ‘may be making use of him for their iniquitous ends’.7 Perhaps it was all a plot engineered by Elizabeth, to dupe the Spanish into acknowledging the young man as her son so that he could be offered as a possible heir to the throne, cutting James VI of Scotland out of the succession? Perhaps he was just a spy with a cover story so strange that he would either be believed or thought a lunatic; in either case, he would be released and allowed to go on his way?

  Finally, Englefield came to the tentative conclusion that there was a good chance that Arthur was telling the truth:

  … it is also manifest that he has had much conference with the Earl of Leicester, upon whom he mainly depends for the fulfilment of his hopes. This and other things convince me that the queen of England is not ignorant of his pretensions; although, perhaps, she would be unwilling that they should be thus published to the world, for which reason she may wish to keep him [Arthur] in his low and obscure condition as a matter of policy, and also in order that her personal immorality might not be known (the bastards of princes not usually being acknowledged in the lifetime of their parents), and she has always considered that it would be dangerous to her for her heir to be nominated in her lifetime, although he alleges that she has provided for the Earl of Leicester and his faction to be able to elevate him (Arthur Dudley) to the throne when she dies, and perhaps marry him to Arabella (Stuart). For this and other reasons I am of opinion that he should not be allowed to get away, but should be kept very secure to prevent his escape.8

  Although Arthur’s claim was by no means proved, the Spanish Crown clearly felt it was sufficiently believable that it could cause political troublemakers to latch onto the story and create problems for them. As neither Englefield nor Philip II were willing to take any chances, it was ordered that Arthur be sent to a monastery for the time being. As his name does not occur again in Spanish or English records, it may be that he remained in the monastery until his death, or that he escaped and his elaborate cover story, no longer needed, was simply discarded.

  So was Arthur Dudley, as he reported himself to be, the son of Elizabeth and Robert? His upbringing and experiences seem to make this unlikely. Firstly, it seems odd to go to the effort to bring up a child in secret only for the custodian to later tell him of his true parentage. The whole point of a
secret child is that it remains secret. Also, a royal child would have been more likely to be placed in a household of minor nobility or gentry, rather than with an assistant estate manager who ended up as an innkeeper. Secondly, a potential, albeit illegitimate, heir to the throne would hardly have been allowed to roam around Europe unchaperoned for ten years. Countries hostile to England could have used him for their own ends or had him terminated if he had told his story to anyone. Thirdly, while Robert was apparently fond of Arthur, Elizabeth seems to have had no maternal feelings for the man. If she had felt her throne was threatened, she would have had no qualms about ordering his death for the good of the country.

  What is more plausible is that part of the story is true. A child may have been handed over to Robert Southern at the palace in 1561. At this time, Robert Dudley was still courting Elizabeth, but perhaps had liaisons with other women as well. It is possible that Arthur was indeed the son of Robert, but by a lady at Court, not by the Queen. We know from the Queen’s reaction to Robert’s marriage to Lettice Knollys in 1578 that Elizabeth would have reacted badly to any lady who had an affair with her beloved Robert. She might expect, at the very least, to spend some time in the Tower and to be exiled from the Court, never to return. It was therefore exceedingly likely that such a baby would be born and smuggled out of the Court as soon as possible without any word of it getting back to the Queen.

  Perhaps Arthur himself invented the story that Elizabeth was his mother, or may have come to this conclusion of his own accord since rumours about Robert and Elizabeth’s relationship were rife. Or it is possible that Robert may have allowed this myth to take shape. In an attack on Robert Dudley published in 1584, Leicester’s Commonwealth, the writer suggests that Robert would try to foist one of his illegitimate children on the throne by pretending that the child was Elizabeth’s, and to this end the wording of the Act of Succession had been changed to allow the Queen’s ‘natural issue’ as opposed to ‘lawful issue’.