The Men Who Would Be King

by Josephine Ross

  As though to combat the stings of tears and scandal and the ache of illness, she applied herself, when well enough, to long hours of study, finding refuge in books, toiling to build herself a reputation for self-discipline and scholarship that should supplant the old rumors. It was still only twelve years since the scandal and death of Anne Boleyn, and in palace galleries and crowded alehouses the same colorful comparisons must have been drawn and the same interesting forecasts made for the daughter as for the mother. The Duchess of Somerset had been scandalized to hear that Elizabeth had gone down the Thames by night in a barge, and there were “other light parts,” equally shocking, for which she scolded Kat Ashley. An old country tale was revived, about a midwife who was mysteriously called one night to attend a very young lady with red-golden hair as she gave birth to an unwanted child. The lord protector’s proclamations could not quench every spark of hot talk, but the fifteen-year-old girl who had been made the subject of such gossip was painfully determined that her own virtuous conduct should give it the lie.

  Deliberately rejecting finery, Elizabeth adopted a simple, virginal style of dress, so that eminent Protestant scholars such as her own tutor Roger Ascham praised her for her admirably restrained taste in clothes as well as for her intellectual achievements. Ascham, to whom the lonely princess clung with unreasonable dependence after leaving Catherine Parr’s household, wrote enthusiastically of his royal pupil, “Numberless honourable ladies of the present time surpass the daughters of Sir Thomas More in every kind of learning, but among them all my Lady Elizabeth shines like a star, excelling them more for the splendours of her virtues than for the glory of her royal birth.” As the pale, quietly dressed girl worked at Greek and Latin with her tutor in the country, the stains of the Seymour affair faded; gradually, as she intended it should, the name of the Lady Elizabeth came to be associated less with the old scandal than with the New Learning.

  In this sober, studious existence she found tranquility, but it was a way of life in which the sister of the King of England could not continue indefinitely. Thomas Seymour’s matrimonial maneuvers had provided bitter proof of her desirability as a wife; she was young, attractive, and second in line to the throne of England, and others would surely seek her as he had done. “He was an ambitious man; I would there were no more in England,” Latimer had thundered from the pulpit, but it was a vain hope. While the English succession lay with a delicate boy and a series of marriageable women, there would always be bold, unscrupulous men such as the admiral who would try to turn the political situation to their own advantage, and their plans would have to take into account the slender person of the Lady Elizabeth.

  It was John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who came to dominate English politics in Edward’s reign, succeeding where Thomas Seymour had failed. Dudley, who acquired the title of Duke of Northumberland in 1551, was as able as he was treacherous; he ousted Protector Somerset, sending him to the block in 1552, and he became, in all but name, governor of the boy king and the realm, with hopes of becoming something greater still. Those hopes depended, even more than Thomas Seymour’s had, upon his gaining control, through marriage, of a female heir to the throne.

  The rightful heir after Edward was the Lady Mary, but she was of no use for Northumberland’s purposes. Fading into her midthirties, she was the representative of the officially discarded Catholic faith, chief champion of the smashed saints and gutted monasteries, still defiantly celebrating the forbidden Mass, her shortsighted eyes peering towards her mother’s beloved Spain. If she were to inherit the English crown, Northumberland’s unofficial reign would come to an abrupt end. But her Protestant half sister, the Lady Elizabeth, was young and vulnerable enough to be a potential candidate for the new duke’s plans. Curious rumors came to the ears of Scheyfve, the imperial ambassador; in November 1550 he reported to the emperor that Dudley was “about to cast off his wife and marry my Lady Elizabeth, daughter of the late King, with whom he is said to have had several secret and intimate personal communications, and by these means he will aspire to the crown.” The same sinister talk was heard again in the spring of 1553, when the young king was very ill and it was becoming obvious that his life and Northumberland’s supremacy would soon be at an end; Scheyfve was informed that the duke intended to ensure his future power either by marrying Elizabeth to his heir or by obtaining her for himself. Though the report was inaccurate it revealed the nature of Northumberland’s intentions, and it showed how Elizabeth might again be made the victim of an ambitious man’s political schemes through marriage. However, something in the “secret and intimate personal communications” that the duke was said to have had with the Lady Elizabeth must have convinced him that he had nothing to gain from presenting himself or one of his sons as an all-powerful suitor to this pale, resolute, red-haired girl. It was not likely that she would consent to mount the throne as the wife and puppet of an adventurer. So she, like her stubborn Catholic half sister, was to be set aside, and the duke’s small shrewd eyes came to rest on the Suffolk family, named next in line to the throne by Henry VIII’s will. It was the “very small and short” fifteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey through whom he intended to rule, and marriage was the means to that end. So Lady Jane became the wife of his youngest son, Guildford Dudley.

  Whispers of poison seemed to linger around the Dudley family like dirty smoke. The duke’s brood of sons, loyal and disciplined as a wolf pack, would follow their father in foul dealing or in fair, and it was murmured that the young king had sickened with mysterious rapidity since the duke’s most promising son, Lord Robert Dudley, had been appointed Royal Carver and Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. Dark, handsome Robert, who in later years was to become the dearest and most intimate of all Elizabeth’s suitors, would never lose his reputation as an expert poisoner. The death of the boy king was, in fact, almost certainly due to natural causes rather than to Northumberland’s orders, but in the light of the events that followed the duke might justifiably have been suspected of almost any crime. Though Robert Dudley would rise to a position of singular greatness and honor in Elizabeth’s reign, he would never be able to rid himself entirely of the shadow of his father’s treason.

  Little Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen, and Mary and Elizabeth found themselves deprived of their rights and in imminent danger of their lives. In the crisis Elizabeth’s health gave way again. It was a timely bout of illness, since it obliged her to stay quietly at Hatfield, uncommitted to either party, but it was almost certainly genuine, for in all such times of stress her sickness returned, sometimes with alarming gravity. Mary, as the immediate heir, was in the greatest danger, but she managed to evade the armed force sent to bring her into captivity, and fled to a stout castle in Suffolk. There the English rallied to her cause. They did not want a spurious Queen Jane and King Guildford, manipulated by the traitor Northumberland, they wanted King Henry’s own for their ruler. For a few tumultuous days in that summer of 1553 the hideous specter of civil war hovered; then it faded, as the support for Mary grew overwhelming. Within a fortnight Dudley’s attempt was over. As though by a miracle, the Lady Mary had won her throne against all odds, without foreign intervention, without the spilling of her subjects’ blood, while a wave of popularity and loyalty surged around her small, stiff, valiant figure.

  For Elizabeth, waiting tensely at Hatfield, the news of Mary’s remarkable victory brought confirmation of her own profound belief in the importance of keeping the goodwill of the people. All her life Elizabeth would take pains to avoid gaining “the ill-will of the people,” as she had written, “which thing I would be loath to have,” but Mary lacked her sister’s perceptive wisdom in this as in so many matters. The people had brought Queen Mary to her throne, yet soon she would lose their precious love and loyalty. It was her marriage, above all, that was to alienate them. If Elizabeth had needed any further proof of the dangers of royal marriages, she would have it in plenty in her sister’s reign.

  The accession of the first queen since the co
nquest was greeted with triumphant rejoicing. “I saw myself money thrown out at windows for joy, and what with shouting and crying of the people, and ringing of the bells, there could no one hear almost what another said, besides banqueting and singing in the streets for joy,” one eyewitness wrote. While London was reeling with relief, the Lady Elizabeth left Hatfield and made her way, “well accompanied with gentlemen and others, right strongly,” to her town residence, Somerset Place, and from there she rode to greet the new queen.

  The half sisters’ first meeting in their new roles as queen and heir apparent was very cordial. At Aldgate, Mary, dressed in purple satin and velvet and gleaming with jewels, embraced the soberly dressed Elizabeth with a great show of affection, and when the splendid procession entered London, Elizabeth was in the place of honor, directly behind the queen. The princely cavalcade wound slowly through the streets, accompanied by cheers and music and halted at intervals by elaborate entertainments, until it reached the Tower, where Mary was received by the constable and officials. She passed through the main gateway to go to her state lodgings; near the great Norman keep a little group of prisoners knelt on the grass. She raised them up, kissed them, and said emotionally, “These are my prisoners.” Two of them were familiar figures from her past, her old friend the proud Duchess of Somerset, whom she used fondly to call “my good gossip Nan,” and the leathery veteran Duke of Norfolk, now nearly eighty. The Catholic bishop Gardiner was there too, imprisoned under Protector Somerset’s Protestant regime; and there was another, a young man, tall and graceful, with the fair hair and handsome features of the Plantagenets. He was Edward Courtenay, great-grandson of Edward IV; with his combination of royal ancestry and personal attraction he seemed the ideal suitor to a queen—or a princess.

  “Yesterday Courtenay, who was thrown into prison fifteen years ago, was released; and there is much talk here to the effect that he will be married to the Queen, as he is of the blood royal,” wrote the imperial ambassador. It was taken for granted that a queen must marry. The events of the six years since the death of Henry VIII had given grim warning of the dangers of a weak succession; Mary must marry and secure England’s future by producing heirs. She was not strong, she was approaching middle age and menopause, the need for her marriage was urgent, and so the gabbling voice of rumor announced that the ideal candidate had been found already, in the handsome person of Edward Courtenay, “the last sprig of the White Rose.”

  “There is in him a civility which must be deemed natural rather than acquired by the habit of society; and his bodily graces are in proportion to those of his mind,” the imperial ambassador wrote, in his lengthy report on the young man. Courtenay’s youth had been even more constrained and overcast than Elizabeth’s, for he had been imprisoned in the Tower since he was a child of twelve, after his father, the Marquis of Exeter, a potential claimant to the throne, had been executed for treason by Henry VIII. Courtenay had grown up behind dark walls, and, like a plant deprived of sunlight, he had grown tall and palely graceful but insubstantial, lacking proper roots, shifting lightly towards any proffered source of benefit, spindly and undependable by nature. His intrinsic weaknesses were not at first apparent, since they were overlaid with charm and accomplishments, and if he appeared somewhat immature for a man of twenty-seven, it was generally felt that he might be forgiven much after his long imprisonment. The imperial ambassador, the great diplomat Simon Renard, informed the emperor that Courtenay had “applied himself to all virtuous and praiseworthy studies” during his years in the Tower, “so he is very proficient, and is also familiar with various instruments of music.” Bishop Gardiner, who had become devoted to the bright young man while they were prisoners, became his principal champion after their release; the old prelate, reinstated as a member of the Privy Council, was determined to see his protégé married to the queen, and it seemed at first that he might succeed. It would be a wise diplomatic match, in the tradition of the marriage of Mary’s grandfather, Henry VII, to Courtenay’s great-aunt, Elizabeth of York; allied to the queen, Courtenay’s Plantagenet blood would reinforce her Tudor muscle to create for themselves and their descendants an impregnable right to the throne. But independent of her, manipulated by skillful men at home or abroad, he might represent a new threat to Mary’s security—above all if his claim were to become linked with that of the heir presumptive Elizabeth.

  Through the autumn of 1553, as the cheers of welcome died away and the first mutters of discontent became audible, Elizabeth remained at court. Mary treated her with determined affection at first, holding her hand when they appeared together in public, but at heart the queen was filled with suspicion of the dignified twenty-year-old girl who was the heretical daughter of Anne Boleyn—“of whose good fame I might have heard,” the imperial ambassador recorded Mary as saying to him sarcastically. As “contention for religion” spread like a stain across the already frayed fabric of English affairs, Elizabeth’s policy of keeping her own colors pale but true became increasingly difficult. To embrace Catholicism, and secure Mary’s favor, would be to forfeit her precious position as the shining hope of the numerous Englishmen who inclined towards the reformed religion. But to remain defiantly Protestant would be to declare herself an open threat to the Catholic queen’s security, inviting loss of her status as heir apparent, courting disposal by marriage, imprisonment, or even death.

  The nets were spread in every direction. While the French ambassador courted Elizabeth’s favor, hoping to use her as a divisive force in the interests of France, Renard was doing his utmost to set Mary against her, uttering repeated warnings about her intentions, seeing in her a dire threat to Mary and Catholicism and the interests of his emperor. Beneath Elizabeth’s caution and subtle quietness he glimpsed something powerful that disturbed him profoundly. “She is a spirit full of enchantment,” he wrote resentfully.

  Not surprisingly, Elizabeth was anxious to leave court for the seclusion of the country. It seemed that allegations against her must always involve talk of a marriage. Renard and his fellow imperial ambassadors warned Mary:

  Many persons are saying that if Courtenay were able to come to an understanding or arrange a marriage with the Lady Elizabeth, the result would be dangerous to Your Majesty as he already has a following, and it is said that Elizabeth’s eyes are fixed on him and she also has partisans. The French ambassadors have feasted him in their lodgings.

  Courtenay’s moment of success was passing. Though Mary had restored him in blood, with the title of Earl of Devonshire, she treated him with nothing more than the indulgent tolerance of an aunt, endeavoring to protect him from his own folly by appointing a gentleman to accompany him everywhere, as a combined social tutor and guardian. However, it became increasingly obvious that his long captivity had left him with graver defects than the mere inability to ride a warhorse or joust like other young nobles. He gave himself exaggerated airs at court and showed off in the streets; he shook off his escort and headed enthusiastically for the stews, dishonoring his rank in the company of London’s whores as though hectically determined to make up for his lost years in the Tower. Renard now described him in very disapproving terms, and he informed the emperor that Courtenay had made himself “odious and insufferable to the whole court.” Elizabeth especially was making a point of snubbing the young earl in public. “Courtenay is in disgrace with the Lady Elizabeth for having spoken otherwise than she had looked for about amourettes said to have passed between them,” Renard sneered, though instead of passing on the circumstantial explanation that gossip had supplied he might have guessed the truth—that Elizabeth, harassed and anxious, was trying to show the court and the world that there was no question of any alliance between Courtenay and herself. Nothing she could do, however, would douse Renard’s crackling suspicions, and at the end of November he wrote that he was convinced that it would be best to send Elizabeth straight to the Tower.

  She was relegated from her rightful position at court; none of the ladies dared be seen in
her apartments, and though she spiritedly encouraged the young gentlemen to visit her instead, de Noailles thought she did so deliberately, “in the hope of obtaining her dismissal so that she might go to her own house, where she lived formerly.” Early in December she was allowed to leave. The Lords Arundel and Paget gave her final admonishments not to meddle in plots with heretics or the French, warning her frankly of the consequences. Mary put on a show of affection and gave her a beautiful fur wrap, and at last Elizabeth was able to depart for her manor of Ashridge in Buckinghamshire, spied on, suspected, schemed over, but mercifully out of sight of her sister’s peering eyes.

  “In the beginning of November was the first notice among the people touching the marriage of the Queen to the King of Spain,” a contemporary chronicler wrote. The entry needed no amplification. Mary had turned to the emperor as to a father, eager to lean on him for advice and support in all things, and in the great matter of her marriage above all; the emperor’s choice for her husband, gradually revealed and subtly urged by Renard, was his own beloved son, Philip of Spain. Mary’s acceptance of that choice was the greatest error of her life.

  One of Northumberland’s most powerful arguments for debarring Mary from the throne had been that she “might marry a foreigner and thus stir up trouble in the kingdom and introduce a foreign government.” The insular English had grown more suspicious than ever of foreigners in the decades since Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and rupture with Rome had cut them off from religious brotherhood with Europe. The gentleman of Kent who cried that “the Spaniards were coming into the realm with harness and handguns, and would make us Englishmen worse than enemies, and viler; for this realm should be brought to such bondage by them as it never was before, but should be utterly conquered,” voiced the fears of many loyal Englishmen. “If we should be under their subjection they would, as slaves and villeins, despoil us of our goods and lands, ravish our wives before our faces and deflower our daughters in our presence” ran a desperate call to arms against the “proud Spaniards or strangers.” But a half-Spanish queen, who, as Renard put it, did not trust her people, knowing them to be variable, inconstant, and treacherous, was not likely to be influenced by her subjects’ street talk. Nor was she prepared to be dictated to by Parliament; when the greatest peers in England, the councillors and members of the Lower House, delivered their earnest petition to her to marry, and to choose an English husband, she became so angry that she was obliged to sit down. The Speaker dwelt on the state of the succession, the strife that might arise if she were to die without issue, and the desirability of her leaving an heir of her own, and then began a passionate diatribe against the dreadful dangers of a foreign match. When Mary had regained control of her anger, she adopted a benevolent tone and assured them that though her own inclination was against marriage, she would conquer her feelings for the sake of the welfare of her kingdom. But unlike her keen-eyed half sister, she lacked the vision to see in which direction the welfare of the kingdom lay.