Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History

by Bucholz, Robert

  The queen could not put the whole of a parliament in the Tower. Generally, Burghley or, after his death in 1598, his son, Sir Robert Cecil, were sufficiently persuasive to convince Parliament to fork over the money and behave. If this failed, the queen could deflect the peers and honorable members from these issues by alternating Tudor imperiousness with Tudor charm. In particular, she tended to hector the House of Lords, which had fallen to about 60 noblemen and bishops at this time. But in dealing with the 462 members of the House of Commons, she more often relied on persuasion. That is, with her Commons, she played her trump card: the aura of sanctity, courage, affection, and popularity which was at the heart of her image as “Gloriana.”

  A perfect example of the Commons’ growing sense of grievance and Elizabeth’s skill in manipulating their feelings occurred near the end of the reign, in 1601. By 1601, the Elizabethan taxpayer was heartily sick of the war, the constant state of emergency, the incessant calls for money. Add to this the strain of militia musters and recruitment of soldiers for duty overseas, the queen’s exploitation of feudal dues, and the practice of purveyance, by which the royal household had the right to commandeer a specified amount of food from each county to feed the court. To make matters worse, the economy was in crisis in the 1580s and 1590s. The Dutch revolt and Wars of Religion had played havoc with the wool trade; plague recurred in the early 1590s, followed by four disastrous harvests in the mid-90s. Wheat prices more than doubled and famine hit the North and West Country. Londoners rioted and Newcastle-upon-Tyne reported “sundry starving and dying in our streets and in the fields for lack of bread.”7 The death rate rose by half. As we shall see in chapter 6, these crises were part of larger trends caused in part by rapid population growth resulting in price inflation, wage stagnation, and unemployment. This led to many small business failures, restriction of credit, and spikes in the crime rate. It was, perhaps, little wonder that the Parliament of 1601 met in a surly, disrespectful mood.

  Though Parliament had attempted to deal with economic and social distress by passing new Poor Laws in 1598 and 1601, the big issue around which the abovenoted surliness converged was that of royal monopolies. Because the queen had so little money with which to reward favorites and friends, she had taken to granting them monopolies on the sale of commercial goods, such as the privilege to sell all the nails in England, or all the soap, etc. For example, she granted the courtier and adventurer Sir Walter Ralegh (1554–1618) monopolies on tin, playing cards, and the licensing of taverns. This did not mean that the courtier so rewarded suddenly became a merchant. Rather, it meant that he took a cut of the profits from any merchant selling the commodity in question, who, naturally, passed the added costs onto the consumer. Whatever the benefit of monopolies to a government strapped for cash and for the small minority of products needing protection in lieu of patent law, they hurt consumers. To give just two examples, starch prices trebled after the licensing of a monopoly on that product while salt prices increased 11 times! In effect, monopolies were taxes that had never been voted by Parliament, not to mention a violation of the paternalism implied in the Great Chain of Being. By 1601, they had been granted for so many goods, both luxuries and necessities, that when a list of monopolies was read out in Parliament, William Hakewill (1574–1655), MP, asked sarcastically, “Is not bread there?”8

  Parliaments tried to address the issue in 1559, 1571, and 1576, but had achieved little. In 1598 the queen had promised to do something about monopolies, but afterwards granted more. When Parliament met in order to fund the war in 1601, it found Westminster Palace surrounded by angry crowds, demanding action. The Commons responded with a bill to outlaw the hated practice. The queen, aware of the anger behind the measure and anxious to avoid a statutory limitation of the royal prerogative, responded with honeyed persuasion instead of bluster. On November 30, she summoned the Commons to an audience. To fully understand what happened next, it has to be recalled that Elizabeth had now been queen for over 40 years, as long as most of the honorable members could remember. By 1601, she had aged considerably, and showed that age in her pale complexion, her excessive use of makeup, her need to use a wig (her own hair had fallen out), and her decayed teeth. And yet, she still insisted upon cultivating the aura of Gloriana, still dressed magnificently, still affected the regal bearing of a Tudor. And thus, when she spoke, it must have seemed to those who listened, kneeling, as if a goddess, at once familiar and yet from another world and time, had opened her mouth.

  The queen began by thanking her Parliament for its work that session and by assuring its members that:

  there is no prince that loves his subjects better, or whose love can countervail our love. There is no jewel, be it of never so rich a price, which I set before this jewel; I mean your love. … And, though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves.

  Having reminded them that they loved her, she assured the members that she loved them back:

  Therefore, I have cause to wish nothing more than to content the subject, and that is a duty which I owe. Neither do I desire to live longer days than I may see your prosperity; and that is my only desire. … My heart was never set on any worldly goods, but only for my subjects’ good.

  At this point, she asked her Commons to rise and then thanked them for informing her – as if she did not already know – that monopolies were causing her subjects pain,

  For, had I not received a knowledge from you, I might have fallen into the lapse of an error, only for lack of true information. … That my grants should be grievous to my people and oppressions privileged under colour of our patents, our kingly dignity shall not suffer it. Yea, when I heard it I could give no rest unto my thoughts until I had reformed it.

  And then the old queen began a philosophical discourse on monarchy:

  I know the title of a King is a glorious title; but assure yourself that the shining glory of princely authority hath not so dazzled the eyes of our understanding but that we well know and remember that we also are to yield an account of our actions before the great Judge. To be a King and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it, than it is pleasant to them that bear it.

  She then came to the emotional crux of her speech, reminding her hearers of Tilbury and 1588, when God

  made me His instrument to maintain His truth and glory, and to defend this Kingdom … from peril, dishonour, tyranny and oppression. There will never Queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my country, care for my subjects, and that will sooner with willingness venture her life for your good and safety, than myself. For it is my desire to live nor reign no longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. And though you have had and may have many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had, nor shall have any that will be more careful and loving.

  She then concluded by asking of her privy councilors who sat in Parliament that “before these gentlemen go into their countries, you bring them all to kiss my hand.”9

  It was a masterful performance. There can hardly have been anyone unmoved at the sight of the queen, probably addressing Parliament for the last time, reminding them of the dangers and glories which they had shared together, and of the love which she had reserved for her subjects, rather than share it with any man.

  One suspects that many in her audience were so overwhelmed with emotion that they failed to notice that she had made only another oblique promise to do something about monopolies. Rather than encourage a new law, her dismissal of Parliament had killed it for at least another session. Admittedly, she did repeal 12 monopolies shortly thereafter. But she did so of her own will, not because she was forced into it by parliamentary statute. The honorable members had shown that they could apply pressure to the monarch and get a reaction, possibly even a modification of policy. But the Crown’s right to grant monopolies remained intact. On balance, the queen had won – again.

  But she could not avoid all such controversy indefini
tely. By the 1590s, Elizabeth was an old and often difficult woman. She was also, increasingly, a lonely one, for many of the councilors and courtiers who had served and entertained her for decades began to die off: Leicester in 1588, Walsingham in 1590, Hatton in 1591. Burghley remained, as influential with the queen and dominant in council as ever, but even he was run down by illness. New favorites arose such as the aforementioned Essex and Ralegh. The dashing Ralegh rose to be the captain of the queen’s guard, but was never appointed to the Privy Council, which remained the keystone of late Tudor government. The council did more than deliberate and advise; it oversaw revenue collection and expenditure; it named commissioners, lords lieutenant, and JPs, and issued Books of Orders for their conduct; and it sat as a court of law in Star Chamber. Unlike some of her predecessors, who saw the council as almost a representative body, to be filled with every important administrator, magnate, and clergyman in the realm, Elizabeth kept hers to a small cadre of trusted personal advisers – almost a cabinet – of between 11 and 13 members toward the end of the reign.

  During the 1590s, the old division in council between administrators and courtier-soldiers intensified. The former were led by Burghley until his death in 1598 and thereafter by his son, Sir Robert Cecil, who had been added to the Privy Council in August 1591 and made secretary of state in 1596. Like his father, Cecil was an assiduous administrator with a following among the queen’s officials. Like his father, he was opposed by a faction of courtier-adventurers. This faction was led by Essex, who struck many as a reincarnation of Leicester. He had inherited both the Dudley clientage network and his old household office, serving Elizabeth as master of her Horse. Like Leicester, Essex was courtly and warlike, having served with distinction in the Netherlands and France and captured Cadiz in 1596. Much less successfully, he had led a failed expedition to the Azores in 1597 and the disastrous Irish campaign of 1599. Like Leicester, he patronized artists and writers and had a following among those courtiers who thought the queen too frugal and prudent. Indeed, Essex saw himself as the embodiment of the old aristocratic values that the Tudors were systematically crushing. In a final similarity with his stepfather, Essex attracted the sovereign’s affections. Elizabeth enjoyed a flirtatious relationship with the earl despite his married state, and he undoubtedly made her feel young again. But unlike her previous love affair, this was a May–December romance: while Essex was in his thirties, Elizabeth was in her sixties. Perhaps predictably, the earl of Essex was conceited and overbearing, qualities which created many enemies for him at court, not least the quiet and methodical Cecil.

  The two men and their followers clashed over policy and patronage. The Cecils still favored supporting the Dutch and the French as auxiliaries, largely because it was cheap and relatively free from risk. From 1598, the Cecil faction even began to urge a negotiated settlement with Spain. Essex wanted a more aggressive amphibious strategy, largely to give him and his friends a chance to enhance their glory and their purses. As for patronage, throughout the medieval and Tudor period, one way a great man proved he was great was by finding government jobs for his clients. Since few offices required special skills or formal qualifications, nearly all were filled on the basis of family connection or clientage. Unfortunately for Essex, most of the government’s patronage had been sewn up long before by the Cecil faction and, despite the war, the central government did not expand much. At the end of Elizabeth’s reign there were perhaps just 2,500 officials of the central government, of which about half, 1,200, held posts suitable for a gentleman. Moreover, Elizabeth was frugal: she held her household expenses down to just £40,000 a year by not expanding the court and, in sharp contrast to her father, not building new palaces. (The paucity of glittering prizes did not stop the competition for favor: even in the last decade of the aging queen’s life, hopeful courtiers vied for her attention by wearing gaudy hose and even dyeing their hair green!) Elizabeth also wanted to keep her court apolitical, which meant that she was not about to turn out Cecil’s men just to please Essex. Finally, because she was a woman, women filled the places which involved the closest contact with her, such as the ladies of the Privy Chamber and maids of honor. This served to close off such opportunities to politically ambitious males.

  As the reign wound to a close and the succession question loomed ever larger, the rivalry between the Cecil and Essex factions grew more intense: each wanted to be in power when the next monarch ascended the throne. Because the Cecil faction dominated patronage and since Elizabeth refused to adopt a more aggressive war policy, Essex became profoundly frustrated. Things came to a head in a Privy Council debate on Irish strategy in July 1598. After a heated verbal exchange, Essex rose and turned his back on the queen – an act of profound disrespect to any sovereign. Elizabeth ordered him to return, struck him across the face, and told him “Go and be hanged.” For Essex, a proud nobleman, to receive such treatment from a woman, even a queen, was too much. The earl clasped the hilt of his sword, saying that Elizabeth had done him “an intolerable wrong.” The implied threat of physical retaliation now bordered on treason. At this point other councilors restrained Essex. Naturally, he was immediately thereafter banned from court.10

  This left the earl in an impossible position: how could the leader of a great faction, the patron of a vast clientage network, continue to be so if he did not have access to the royal ear? In October 1598 he apologized to Elizabeth and in the following March he was given command of the queen’s forces in Ireland. While Essex undoubtedly saw this as a last chance to prove his courage and military abilities, it actually played to Cecil’s advantage by removing his rival from court.

  As we have seen, Essex blew his chance, botching the Irish campaign, abandoning his forces, and returning to England without permission. The first anyone knew of this at court was when he burst into the queen’s Privy Chamber on the morning of September 28, 1599 in order to plead his case in private. She reacted by charging him in Star Chamber with abandoning his command and entering into dishonorable negotiations with Tyrone. After a private hearing in June 1600 he was stripped of his offices except his mastership of the Horse, and confined to his London residence, Essex House. Even worse, that autumn the queen refused to renew the earl’s valuable monopoly on the importation of sweet wines. This was a devastating blow because Essex’s noble generosity and high living had left him deeply in debt.

  The favorite began to plot rebellion. Counting on his popular following among the London populace, Essex claimed that he intended to free the queen from the clutches of Sir Robert Cecil; others thought that he aimed at the Crown himself. Whatever his aims, the scheme was utterly mad. He began his revolt on the morning of February 8, 1601 by marching on the heart of London. Few joined this foolhardy enterprise. Fleeing to Essex House, he surrendered by the end of the day, was tried and executed by the end of the month. Essex’s career, particularly its end, demonstrated a great truth about the later Tudor state: noble power was no longer to be found in vast landholdings or feudal affinities but in royal favor and one’s standing at court. In other words, England under the Tudors had become a relatively united and centralized state under a powerful personal sovereign. This becomes even more clear as one examines the last great crisis of the reign: the royal succession.

  In the months following Essex’s abortive rebellion, the succession question loomed ever larger. Elizabeth, remembering her own position under her sister Mary and deeply afraid of death, basically refused to address the issue. Being childless, she obviously represented the end of the Tudor line, but she adamantly opposed the idea of publicly naming an heir, both because that heir might begin to supplant her while alive and because to do so would be to admit that she would, in fact, die. Privately, she seemed to agree tacitly that the next logical heir to the English throne was James VI, the Stuart king of Scotland and the son of her late cousin Mary (see genealogies 2–3, pp. 430–1). King James, for his part, cultivated those who advised the queen, especially Sir Robert Cecil. They worked
out an agreement whereby James would make no attempt to seize or claim the throne until after the queen’s death. In return, Cecil would ensure James’s smooth succession – and, in the process, his own power in the next reign.

  Queen Elizabeth died at Richmond Palace on March 24, 1603. Immediately, Secretary Cecil had James VI proclaimed as King James I of England (reigned 1603–25), establishing the Stuart line there. The reign of the Tudors was over. It is a tribute to the Tudor achievement in government that the transition to the new king and royal house was handled smoothly and peacefully in the middle of a war, economic crisis, and much national anxiety. That smoothness and peace contrast sharply with the uncertainty and violence that had brought the first Tudor to the throne over a century before. Henry VII and his descendants had calmed the disorder that had brought them to power, tamed the nobility and the Church, and, in the process, forged a nation that was English and Protestant, ruled by a strong centralized monarchy, well able to defend itself against foreign enemies. In short, England was far more stable and secure in 1603 than it had been in 1485 or even 1558. Still, as we shall see in chapter 6, the English people remained very much at the mercy of such unpredictable natural and human phenomena as the weather, disease, population growth, and their economic and social consequences. Moreover, the Tudor achievement in government had ignored, marginalized, or oppressed many who lived under Tudor dominion, both English and non-English, particularly on the borderlands of the North and in Ireland. It had also left unanswered potentially unsettling questions about sovereignty, finance, religion, foreign policy, and central vs. local control. As we shall see in chapter 7, the resulting tensions would do much to unsettle the Stuart century.