by David Field
‘It is unlikely that any harm will befall the Duke, since there will be a sizeable army in front of him, including, it is to be hoped, several thousand Englishmen.’
‘That is a matter currently under consideration by your dear sister,’ Philip explained for Elizabeth’s benefit. ‘She seems curiously reluctant to declare war against a nation whose Ambassador has been obliged to leave the country in disgrace, following France’s support for the pathetic attempt by another of the Northumberland brood to invade England. He got no further than the Isle of Wight before he was forced to return to France, where he remains in permanent exile. As for de Noailles, he was forced to leave England by the embarrassment of it all. He was your friend, was he not, my Lady?’
Elizabeth shook her head. ‘He would hang round my person only for sight of my bosom, or so I was advised.’
‘The man Henry Dudley, to whom Philip refers, was a distant cousin only,’ Robert Dudley added, ‘and I rejoice in the prospect that I may meet him on the battlefield in the war to come, where I may cleave his traitorous head from his shoulders.’
‘This is all a long bowshot from the Duke of Savoy, is it not?’ Elizabeth reminded them, even though it was the last matter that she wished to discuss.
Philip smiled. ‘I am heartened by your eagerness and I have arranged for his portrait to be painted by Georgio Soleri, one of our finest. It should arrive over here by mid-summer and I would be gratified were you to allow it to be hung here in this hall, which seems to be somewhat lacking in paintings. Then, should the painting be to your liking, you would wish me to bring its original back with me, very much alive, on my next return from the Low Countries?’
‘That would be excellent,’ Elizabeth purred. ‘Now do tell me of your plans to put the French in their place, since I am tired of hearing of the boasts from Scotland that once the daughter of its Regent, Mary of Guise, is wedded to the Dauphin, France and Scotland will combine to overrun England.’
‘This will never happen, my Lady, let me reassure you,’ Philip announced as he puffed out his chest with pride. ‘This man by my side, who assures me that he has been your friend since childhood, is a fine warrior and leader of men. The French are poorly led and there are deep divisions at their Court, due to King Henry’s dalliance with his mistress and the constant bickering between the Houses of Bourbon and Guise, which we may put to our advantage, even though his Holiness is said to favour the French, because of their firm suppression of the Huguenot heresies. This has also disinclined my dear wife against lending English troops to the Imperial cause, since she so wishes to remain in favour with Rome.’
‘Perhaps we tire the Lady with our constant talk of warfare, when she wishes to fill her thoughts with prospects of marriage?’ Robert suggested.
Philip nodded. ‘Indeed, and I confess myself tired after all that riding along your badly rutted roads. I shall, with your permission my Lady, withdraw to the chamber you so generously put at my disposal and rest before supper. Robert here may answer your further questions regarding my cousin Emanuel, since he spent much time with him.’
Philip withdrew and Robert remained silent until the door was firmly closed behind him, then looked at Thomas.
‘He is a faithful servant and loyal to our interests, so you may speak freely,’ Elizabeth told him.
Robert smiled. ‘That is as well, since I must impart certain additional information regarding the man who Philip seems to think would make a suitable husband for you. When I made mention earlier that Emmanuel Philibert would be safely hidden from danger by thousands of armed men ahead of him, I was of course telling the truth, but I doubt that Philip was aware of the contempt in my description. Emmanuel always ensures that he has thousands of armed men ahead of him because he leads from the rear, never risking his precious person in combat.’
‘He is no hero, then?’
‘Only in the alehouses and stews that we encounter where we ride. He is brave enough with the whores and doxies, and more than once Philip has been obliged to bribe alehouse keepers to remain silent regarding the man’s brutality towards women he regards as beneath him — bodily, in most cases. He is a contemptible bully and coward, a braggart and a pompous loudmouth, too fond of wine and common women. As for Savoy, he has merely a claim to it, since it lies in French hands and he hangs around his cousin Philip in the hope that he may one day be assisted in getting it back. All in all, he would make a poor husband for a Queen of England.’
‘I am not yet Queen, Robert,’ Elizabeth reminded him with a wry smile, ‘and given your oft-expressed regard for me, I could dismiss your warning as born only of jealousy. I am not jealous of the wife you married without reference to me first, so why should you be jealous of a man I have not even met?’
‘Trust me, my dearest Lillibet, I speak not from jealousy, but from love of you and love of England. Whatever you may think of my motives, do not entertain any proposal of marriage from the Duke of Savoy.’
‘Lillibet,’ Elizabeth repeated softly, with a sad smile. ‘I have not been called that since I was in the nursery and Kat Ashley was urging me back to my studies or my needlework.’
‘It is how I remember you and to me you will always be Lillibet,’ Robert replied as he moved a step closer and reached out for her hands.
Elizabeth took a step backwards and reminded Robert, with a jerk of her head towards Thomas, that they were not alone. Robert dropped his outstretched arms with a defeated look and took his leave.
Once the door was closed again and Elizabeth and Thomas were alone, she was the first to speak. ‘What will you tell Middleshaw?’ she asked.
Thomas shrugged. ‘Since you were talking for most of the time in a foreign tongue, he wouldn’t believe me if I tried to pretend that I understood any of it. However, I shall tell him that the conversation between all three of you, so far as I could tell from what Dudley was saying, was that a husband was being proposed for you and that you were very interested to hear more. Will that suffice?’
‘Perfect. You will not mention Dudley’s attempt to embrace me?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And what did you discover in the accounts?’
‘Your estate appears to prosper, my Lady, and I shall so inform Cecil. I only hope that when I can return to Knighton I will find that it, too, prospers. At least I can now manage an estate and I must think of returning to assist my mother, since our own Steward must be long dead by now.’
‘Do not think in terms of leaving me just yet, Thomas,’ Elizabeth requested with a frown, ‘since I have a feeling in my waters that it will be many a day before I can dispense with your disgraceful talents.’
Just when it seemed doubtful that Mary would ever, despite even the seductive wiles of her husband Philip, commit English troops to France, events forced her hand. The failed Wyatt Rebellion had left many exiles in France who had no love for the latest Tudor, and Thomas Stafford was one of the most determined, given his ancestry. He was the nephew of Archbishop of Canterbury Reginald Pole and the executed Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury had been his great aunt. As such he could claim descent from the last of the Plantagenets and like the few who remained he resented the continued presence of a Tudor on the throne of England. To this he added his anger at Mary refusing to restore him to his rightful title as Duke of Buckingham and her marriage to Spain.
In April 1557, he set sail from Dieppe with only two ships and thirty men and seized Scarborough castle. He found it undefended, and occupied it while proclaiming himself the ‘Protector of the Realm’, denouncing Mary’s marriage to Philip of Spain and claiming that he intended to restore ‘true English blood’ to the throne. He was quickly overcome by Henry Neville, Lord-Lieutenant of Durham, a faithful sycophant of Mary and — ironically — a Stafford himself through his mother. Thomas Stafford and over thirty of his supporters went the way of all traitors on Tower Hill in June of that year, but his vainglorious and largely symbolic rebellion had two aftermaths.
The first was that Mary was finally convinced that nothing good ever came out of France and that it was time that meddling from Paris was finally extinguished. The French were only too willing to provide a safe haven for disaffected English rebels, since it was one way of undermining Spain’s influence over the nation and it was one of Mary’s deep-seated fears that the French would one day prevail upon Elizabeth, who not only spoke fluent French but was also known to incline favourably towards French manners and fashion, to rise up and unite all Protestant backsliders who were seeking an end to persecution by a Catholic monarch.
In June of 1557 she therefore declared war on France, despite the displeasure of Pope Paul IV, and the combined forces of England and Spain clattered onto the battlefield at St Quentin in Picardy, under the notional command of Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy. The resulting slaughter of thousands, in which the ultimate victory went to Spain, left a battlefield so horrendous to view, and later to smell, that Philip turned back in disgust and left the peace treaty negotiations to his cousin Emmanuel. High on the latter’s agenda was confirmation that he was now Duke of Savoy in more than name and under the terms of the same treaty — without reference to Philip — he become betrothed to Margaret of Valois, sister of Henry of France and aunt of the Dauphin who would soon marry Mary of Scotland.
Philip now had to seek another Habsburg husband for Elizabeth, particularly when he returned home to England for long enough to be advised by a glowing wife that she believed herself once again to be carrying his child, and that this time it was not merely some disorder of her female parts. Philip was careful to hide his alarm at the news, since Mary added that she had instructed that a document be drawn up making Philip the Regent of England should Mary die but leave issue. The child was due in March of the following year, 1558 and Philip now had an urgent need to shore up support in England for himself, not merely out of courtesy as Mary’s husband, but also in his own right, as the man who commanded enough armed forces to keep France at bay.
Mary did not, on this occasion, make a big public display of her condition and in particular was anxious to keep the news from Elizabeth, whose ambitions for the crown might be reignited by the prospect that her older sister would not survive the lying in. Deciding, in her mounting paranoia, that she would need to keep a closer eye on Elizabeth and those who associated with her, she ran her mind through the various Privy Councillors whose loyalty she had never been given any reason to doubt and settled on Henry Neville, Earl of Westmorland, the man who had put down the latest Buckingham Rebellion.
Neville was surprised and a little concerned, to be summoned to a private meeting with Mary in her private chambers at Greenwich Palace, but relaxed when he was advised that in return for his proven loyalty, he was to be appointed Lieutenant-General of the North.
‘Your Majesty does me great honour,’ he whispered as he bowed, then straightened up to see a sly smile on the Queen’s face.
‘I always reward loyalty, my Lord. And hopefully we shall be able to further reward you when you bring me word of what my sister Elizabeth is plotting.’
‘You believe that she plots against your crown, Your Majesty?’
‘She is forever plotting against my crown, Neville, in the belief that her youth and beauty will bring her a great following when the moment comes for her to seize what will be hers anyway if she only has the decency to let me enjoy, in my turn, what our father left us both.’
‘How may I be of assistance, think you?’ Neville asked, totally at a loss.
Mary lowered her voice and leaned forward. ‘I have my spies at Hatfield House, where she skulks with her tame lapdog William Cecil. Of late they have brought me nothing of any value and are content to attempt to fool me into believing that my sister has accepted her current position. But I know her better and I suspect that I am being misled. I wish you to improve the gathering of information by the installation of a spy of your own.’
‘And how is it proposed that I achieve that, Majesty?’
Mary made an impatient noise in her throat and glared back at him. ‘That is for you to determine, my Lord, but lose no time in doing so. And now you may leave me.’
Neville wandered down the outside corridor at a complete loss to know how he was to achieve this latest task. Then he remembered Mary Dudley.
XVII
All the Dudleys had cause to thank Henry Neville, and Mary Dudley was no exception. As the older of the two Dudley daughters born after the long line of boys that their parents had brought into the world, Mary was the younger sister of Guilford Dudley, sister-in-law to the ill-fated Jane Grey and the daughter of the Duke of Northumberland who had sought to put Jane Grey on the throne ahead of Mary Tudor. Once Queen Mary had come into her own she’d lost no time in imprisoning as many Dudleys as she could justify and the former Mary Dudley had only escaped the Tower because she was by then married to Sir Henry Sidney, whose three sisters had become favoured ladies-in-waiting to Mary following her coronation.
But despite her fortunate connections, Mary Sidney remained anxious not to give rise to any further suspicion regarding her loyalty to Queen Mary and she was eager to take the opportunity to earn the royal favour offered to her by Henry Neville, whose good word had saved several of her brothers from ending their lives in the same savage way as her father and her brother Guildford. Her older brother Robert had also survived, despite his lifelong friendship with the Lady Elizabeth, and had even recently begun to prosper as the result of his military service alongside the royal consort Philip of Spain.
‘It will be simple enough and you will by this means convince the Queen of your undying loyalty,’ Henry told her during an unexpected visit to the Sidney estates in Penshurst, in Kent. ‘You will also be well placed within the Court when Elizabeth becomes Queen.’
‘And all you require of me is to learn the ways of Court and advise you of conversations that I may overhear during my time at Hatfield?’
‘That is correct,’ Henry assured her. ‘You are not being required to spy on the Lady Elizabeth, but simply to advise me — and therefore Her Majesty — of any sign there may be that Elizabeth is being used and manipulated by those who seek to bring about a downfall of the Tudors, by innocently involving Elizabeth in any traitorous scheme that might ultimately prevent her attaining the crown when her time comes.’
‘Robert certainly speaks highly of her, and I sometimes gain the feeling that he would have wished to wed her, were she not destined to be Queen and were he not already married to Amy. Will she agree to take me into her service, think you?’
‘Your brother has been her favoured companion since they were small children, and a favourable word from him should be all that is needed. Elizabeth has outgrown her former nursemaid and governess Mistress Ashley and her confidante Blanche Parry is more like an older sister to her. As such, she cannot be expected to fulfil more humble duties and Elizabeth lacks ladies-in-waiting. Should you become a favoured lady at this early time in Elizabeth’s life, you may one day rise to be Senior Lady at the English Court.’
‘You do me great favour by making me aware of this wonderful opportunity, Sir Henry. What reason have you for once more showing your friendship for the Dudleys? Or is it this time the Sidneys?’
‘It is my love for the Tudors who have raised my humble family from nothing, my unswerving devotion to the current Queen who has shown me such trust, and the Queen to come who has kept the Protestant lamp burning through difficult times for those of us who follow the Reformed Church in our hearts.’
‘That is a lot of loyalties, my Lord,’ Mary observed. ‘I shall speak to my brother Robert regarding what you have advised me, in the hope that he may persuade the Lady Elizabeth to take me into her service. And I will, of course, repay your service to me by conveying to you anything I hear that might strike at the peace of the realm and the certainty of the succession.’
‘She is well established in her country estates, already married to a wealthy Courtier and the mother of a he
althy boy in his third year of life,’ Robert Dudley told Elizabeth, who was not entirely convinced, and voiced her doubts. ‘She lost her first child in the unhealthy miasma of the Irish bog that she and her husband were forced to occupy while her husband attended to the Queen’s business, so there can be no doubting her wish not to return there, with all its unhappy memories, but say you that she is nevertheless prepared to humble herself to become my lady-in-waiting?’
Elizabeth was clearly suspicious of this application and had it not been made by her own dear friend Robert and had the lady seeking the intimate position not been his sister, she would have dismissed the idea. But, as Robert urged upon her, the uncertain health of her sister Mary rendered it a stronger than average possibility that Elizabeth might be called upon to rule England at very short notice, and to do so without ladies who were trained to her every wish and requirement would make her a laughing stock among European royalty.
‘Very well,’ Elizabeth conceded with some reluctance. ‘Tell her she may travel to Hatfield whenever she can make alternative arrangements for the nursing of her son following her husband’s return to Ireland.’
‘You have examined her personally?’ Philip asked, through his latest interpreter, of Ralph Swindley, one of the royal physicians who was these days rarely absent from Greenwich.
Ralph nodded, then it fell silent.
‘Well?’ Philip demanded, as he unhooked a small bag from his money belt and threw it onto the carpet in front of the terrified physician.
‘I do not seek further payment, Your Majesty, since I am already adequately recompensed. I seek merely to retain my head.’
‘You will only lose it by remaining silent,’ Philip told him. ‘What is the Queen’s physical state?’
‘Not one of childbearing, Majesty, so far as I have done my best to ascertain.’
