Much of this was malicious gossip, although the question of Amy’s illness would later arise. The Queen was well aware of Amy’s existence but she was never invited to court, and resided primarily in the country. For Elizabeth, her relationship with Robert allowed her to have the best of both worlds. Robert’s marriage meant that he was unable to present himself to her as a suitor, thereby allowing Elizabeth to maintain her image as the Virgin Queen while still being able to flirt with and revel in his company. Since Elizabeth’s accession Robert’s presence was almost permanently required at court, and although the Queen knew that he was married, given his favour it was more politic for Amy to be kept away. Elizabeth was the shining star of her court, and demanded the full attention of her male courtiers – married or not. Robert was more than happy to comply.
Though Robert was largely occupied with affairs at court, he did not completely forget about Amy. He continued to send her letters and gifts, and she in turn busied herself with buying costly new clothes to add to her wardrobe of beautiful garments. On occasion she did visit London, and on one such visit Robert’s accounts show that twelve horses were hired in order to convey her there.52 Such visits were, though, a rarity. The couple did not have any children, and this has sometimes been interpreted as evidence of an estrangement, but this is not necessarily the case. When rumours about Robert and the Queen surfaced, it was maliciously reported that ‘he thinks of divorcing his wife’.53 Robert, however, never made any attempt to dissolve his marriage, and there is no other suggestion that it was unhappy.
By the summer of 1559, Robert and Elizabeth’s relationship was the subject of much gossip, both in England and abroad. It was also widely rumoured that the couple were planning to marry if only Robert could rid himself of his wife. Cecil had already been spreading the word to this effect, for it was through him that Bishop de Quadra had informed the Duchess of Parma that ‘Robert was thinking of killing his wife, who was publicly announced to be ill, although she was quite well, and would take very good care they did not poison her.’54 In the late summer of 1560, de Quadra had heard that Amy was doomed.
EARLIER IN THE year, Amy had taken up residence at Cumnor Place in Oxfordshire.55 It was here that, on 8 September, she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase. She had sustained serious injuries that included a broken neck, and it was widely believed that her death was no accident, but murder. Robert was with the court at Windsor when the news of his wife’s death was brought to him. Shocked, he immediately sent his chief household officer, Sir Thomas Blount, to Cumnor to find out what had happened. When the Queen heard the appalling news, she knew that it would have serious consequences for her relationship with Robert. Realizing that it would give their enemies a reason to slander them, she promptly ordered Robert to leave the court for his house at Kew while the matter was investigated. As suspected, Amy’s death caused a scandal and blackened Robert’s name – in an instant, Elizabeth tried to distance herself from the man with whom she had been spending much of her time. Gossip began to spread that Amy had been murdered on Robert’s orders, and on 11 September Bishop de Quadra told the Duchess of Parma that ‘Certainly this business is most shameful and scandalous, and withal I am not sure whether she will marry the man at once or even if she will marry at all, as I do not think she has her mind sufficiently fixed.’56 Lettice may still have been at court at this time, and if so she would have witnessed at first-hand the scandal that Lady Dudley’s death had caused, and heard the rumours of Robert’s involvement. Did she suspect him, too?
Historians are still divided as to whether Amy’s death was a tragic accident or murder. If it were murder, at whose hands was Amy killed? Her death left Robert free to marry again, but was it instigated on somebody else’s orders? Cecil also had a motive for wanting Amy dead; he was concerned about Robert’s relationship with the Queen, and fearful lest she did eventually consent to be his wife.57 The nature and intensity of the rumours that spread following Amy’s death served to ensure that a huge strain was placed on Robert’s relationship with Elizabeth. Vicious gossip spread that Robert had killed his wife in order to marry the Queen, and was so injurious that it permanently damaged his reputation. This could only be to Cecil’s advantage, for now any hopes that Robert may have harboured of eventual marriage to the Queen had been dashed – at least in the short term.
On 22 September, Amy’s funeral was conducted at St Mary’s Church in Oxford. No expense had been spared, although, as was customary for husbands, Robert did not attend.58 Neither did he make any public display of grief for his wife. His private feelings are unknown, but it seems hard to believe that, whatever the circumstances of her death, he would not have felt some sorrow at the loss of the woman who had been his wife for the past decade.
It is evident that he was anxious to get to the bottom of the cause of Amy’s death, and a number of letters between him and Thomas Blount in which they discussed the matter survive. Much to his relief, a verdict of accidental death was returned, clearing Robert of any involvement. Yet still suspicion loomed large over him. Mary, Queen of Scots, is reported to have remarked that ‘The Queen of England is going to marry her horse keeper, who has killed his wife to make room for her.’ In spite of these rumours, once the verdict was delivered Robert was immediately restored to royal favour and his place by the Queen’s side, but any hopes of a royal marriage had been crushed – for the time being at least. Amy’s death cast a dark cloud over Robert for the rest of his life, and his enemies never let him forget it. To this day the rumours that he was responsible have persisted, and the truth about what happened at Cumnor will never be fully known.
Following Amy’s death, Robert’s feelings for Elizabeth and their relationship intensified. When the matter of the mysterious events at Cumnor had died down, he would spend more than a decade attempting to convince Elizabeth to become his wife. Arguably, he came closer to achieving success than any of her other suitors. Though Elizabeth’s feelings towards Robert had not changed, she found herself torn and in a quandary over what to do. Ultimately, however, it was the Queen and her head, rather than Elizabeth the woman and her heart, who won the game. She had made her decision, and she would not marry Robert. But he did not give up.
AS THE 1560S got underway, Robert tried to put the scandal of Amy’s death behind him. He and his family continued to bask in Elizabeth’s favour, and at Christmas 1561 Ambrose was created Earl of Warwick. It was the title that had once been given to their father, and that had belonged to their eldest brother John before his death. In addition, the following year Ambrose was granted Warwick Castle, also a former property of their father’s. It was soon after this that he and Robert readopted the bear and ragged staff motif, made famous by the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick in the fifteenth century.59 Having also had an ongoing family connection with the title of Earl of Warwick, the Dudley family had always proudly associated themselves with this house, and their father had also used it. From now on it would become a central part of their identity, and both Robert and Ambrose proudly displayed it in both their houses and their belongings.
Ambrose’s promotion was just the tip of the iceberg. In October 1562 Robert, alongside the Queen’s cousin the Duke of Norfolk, was admitted to the Queen’s Privy Council. This was a sign of Elizabeth’s trust in him, and the value she placed on his abilities in matters of state. But there was more to come. In 1560, François II of France, the husband of Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, died from an ear infection. Nine months later, in August 1561, the widowed eighteen-year-old Queen returned to Scotland. Many people considered the young Queen to be Elizabeth’s heir, but Elizabeth herself refused to acknowledge Mary as such. However, she advised her cousin that when choosing a second husband, it ought to be someone who was on good terms with England. In March 1563, Elizabeth stunned one of Mary’s ministers and those around her when she proposed a suitor for the Scottish Queen: her suggestion was Robert Dudley. If Mary married Dudley, Elizabeth in return would name Mary
her heir. She claimed that Dudley was so noble that ‘she would have herself married, had she ever minded to take a husband. But being determined to end her life in virginity, she wished that the Queen her sister might marry him’. Elizabeth’s proposition caused both shock and amazement, not least to Mary.60 She regarded it as an insult, for she had heard the rumours about Elizabeth and her favourite. She was also acutely conscious of the fact that Dudley was not of royal blood, rendering him an even more unsuitable match. Elizabeth’s answer was to raise her favourite to the peerage, and she further suggested that once he and Mary were married the couple should live at the English court with her – perhaps as a way of keeping Robert close.
Having been granted the former royal castle of Kenilworth, close to Ambrose’s castle of Warwick, on 9 June 1563, Robert was granted an earldom in the following year. No longer was he to be known as Lord Robert Dudley, for he was now the Earl of Leicester. It was a triumphant moment, but one that had another meaning. He was strongly opposed to Elizabeth’s suggestion that he ought to marry her cousin, and had been astute enough to realize that the idea of the three of them living in England as a kind of ménage à trois was ill thought out. True it is that he harboured ambitions of a royal marriage, but not with Mary. He had no wish to leave behind England – or Elizabeth – for Scotland, and it was on Elizabeth that his hopes still rested firmly. Though the Queen had made up her mind, she and Leicester were still close, and he still hoped that she might eventually consent to wed him. To his immense relief, all thoughts of a marriage between him and the Scottish Queen came to nothing. Mary did take an English husband, but it was not one of Elizabeth’s choosing. On 29 July 1565 she was married to her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the son of Lady Margaret Lennox, who Elizabeth had given permission to travel to Scotland in February.61 Elizabeth was outraged, not least because both Mary and Darnley had a claim to the English throne, and married they posed a combined threat. But there was nothing that she could do.
Elizabeth’s true intentions in regards to Mary and Leicester have long been a topic of debate. It has been suggested that she deliberately proposed Leicester as a suitor in order to insult Mary; there was probably an element of this, but it is unlikely to be the whole story. Mary, who understood Elizabeth’s slight full well, made a show of pretending to consider Leicester’s suit. Elizabeth had never expected this, and when confronted with the possibility of losing Leicester she panicked. Had negotiations progressed, it is probable that Elizabeth would ultimately have found the separation from her favourite too much to bear.
Robert Dudley was now Earl of Leicester, yet the ultimate prize of a marriage to Queen Elizabeth – the woman he was devoted to – still evaded him. It would not be long, though, before he aroused her anger, for there were rumours of him sharing a flirtation with another: Lettice.
CHAPTER 5
Flirting with the Viscountess
LETTICE DEVEREUX, THE new Viscountess Hereford, chose the occasion of her marriage to retire from court and the Queen’s service for a time. In 1561 she stopped receiving royal wages, and at some point following her marriage she and her husband left London and her family behind.1 The Queen had presumably – perhaps grudgingly – given her kinswoman permission to leave court, but in her usual way Lettice would have been in no doubt that by so doing she was causing Elizabeth great personal inconvenience. Bourchier Devereux claims that at this time ‘her Majesty felt no great partiality’ towards Lettice, but there is no evidence of this.2 Lettice had never been as close to the Queen as her mother was, but that does not mean that Elizabeth was not fond of her – indeed, all contemporary evidence suggests that the contrary was true. After all, Bourchier Devereux was writing in the nineteenth century fully aware of what was to come.
Together the newlyweds travelled the 150 miles from London to Staffordshire, and Walter’s main family seat, Chartley Manor. The journey was both long and arduous, but Lettice may have deemed that it had all been worth it when she caught her first glimpses of her new home. Situated a little over seven miles from Stafford, Chartley was an attractive moated timber manor house that had replaced the nearby crumbling Chartley Castle as the Devereux family home. Ranulph Blundeville, Earl of Chester, had built the castle in 1220 and Lettice would have become familiar with the sight of its decaying stones, which lay a short distance from the manor house. It had been abandoned in the 1480s when the more comfortable manor house had been built in its stead.3 The house was set in nearly a thousand acres of parkland; John Leland remembered that ‘There is a mighty large park’, and it stood close to Needwood Forest.4 The park provided excellent hunting, a hobby that Lettice became fond of, and was well stocked with red and fallow deer, as well as wild boar. Hunting was a popular sport that provided not only a form of exercise, but also socializing. Chartley Manor itself was a charming house; it was not overly large, but was two storeys high and had three wings built around a central courtyard. A seventeenth-century engraving shows that the courtyard contained an elaborate decorative fountain, and the house itself was half-timbered with gables.5 In the windows and elsewhere throughout the house could be seen the emblazoned arms of the Devereux family, linked with those of the Ferrers and Garnishes, in a proud declaration of Chartley’s past ownership.6 To add further to its appeal, Chartley was also surrounded by a large and deep moat that still survives, giving it the semblance of a picturesque remote island.7
It was to this pleasant country retreat that Walter Devereux brought his new bride, and it was here that Lettice would spend much of her time in the coming years. Bourchier Devereux relates that in the first years of their marriage the couple lived in ‘privacy and retirement’, and that nothing was heard of them at court ‘for several years’.8 This is an exaggeration, for Lettice almost certainly visited the court in order to present her New Year’s gift of ‘a smock with a square collar and a rail wrought with black silk and gold’ to the Queen in 1564 – the first occasion on which she is recorded as Viscountess of Hereford.9 Such a gift shows that she still made an effort to retain her links with the Queen, and she may have visited on other occasions besides.10 In addition, she probably wrote to her family, and they in turn would have kept her updated with the news from court. At Chartley, Lettice would have heard the continued gossip about the Queen and Leicester, and his candidature for the hand of the Scottish Queen in marriage.
Lettice was now mistress of Chartley, and as such Walter expected her to take responsibility for the good ordering of the household. It was with this in mind that she devoted her attentions to her wifely duties. The household at Chartley was largely self-sufficient, and it was Lettice’s job to ensure that everything was run smoothly. When her husband was absent she was expected to manage the estate on his behalf.
Outwardly, Lettice’s marriage was a happy one, and although no letters between the couple survive, there is no evidence to indicate otherwise. In 1574, when Walter was heavily engaged in affairs in Ireland, he would write to several lords of the Council instructing that, ‘If I should die before the enterprise were achieved, the Queen’s Majesty is to have of my lands a third part, my wife another third.’11 Although it was not unusual for husbands to make provision for their wives, interestingly, just two years after writing this Walter’s feelings about Lettice’s welfare had changed, and the arrangements he made for her were not quite so generous. Walter was both handsome and intelligent; he was extremely ambitious, and this was an attractive quality for a girl of Lettice’s temperament who wanted to do well in the world. However, his letters also show that he was hot-headed and blunt, and that he had a temper; he was not afraid to commit his outraged thoughts to paper, and he himself once referred to ‘my plain and open nature’.12 One wonders if, given Lettice’s later strong-willed behaviour, such traits would have caused the couple to clash on occasion.
Lettice’s other primary duty was to provide her husband with an heir, and by the spring of 1562 she was pregnant. She was at Chartley when, in January 1563, she gave birth to
her first child. The baby was not the male heir that both she and her husband had hoped for, but a healthy daughter. All the same, she was Lettice and Walter’s first child, and her parents’ first grandchild, and as such she was a welcome addition to the family. The Queen was asked to stand as the baby’s godmother, a role that she graciously accepted – much to her parents’ delight. Unusually, though, the baby was not styled after her royal godmother, but was instead named Penelope. This was not a particularly common name at the time; it originated in Greek mythology with the wife of Odysseus, who was known for her marital fidelity – an example that would not be mirrored by Penelope Devereux. On 3 February baby Penelope was christened, perhaps in the nearby church at Stowe where Walter’s grandfather lay entombed. Unable to attend her new goddaughter’s christening in person, as was customary the Queen sent both a representative and a gift on her behalf for ‘the christening of Viscount Hereford his child’.13 The gift was a fine ‘gilt cup with a cover bought of the goldsmiths’, a fitting present for the new arrival in Lettice’s family.14 Penelope bore many similarities to Lettice in appearance, with the same red-gold hair and beautiful dark eyes. She would grow to be ‘the most celebrated beauty of the Elizabethan age’, and a vivacious young woman who emulated her mother in many ways.15
Motherhood was a new experience for Lettice, and one in which she took great pleasure. She could at least draw on the knowledge she had acquired during her own childhood, when she had helped to raise her younger siblings at Greys Court. As she spent the next years of her life raising her family, she would prove herself to be an utterly devoted mother, who loved her children almost to the point of obsession. She was fiercely protective of them and was often overbearing, but in spite of this she remained close to them, and would do so for the rest of their lives. During their early years, at least, Lettice was the predominant influence in her children’s lives, and she played a large part in shaping them. Little wonder, then, that similarities in their behaviour and their mother’s would later emerge.
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