The Men Who Would Be King

by Josephine Ross

  Robert himself was “all this while, as it were, in a dream,” as he wrote to Cecil. In his temporary exile at Kew—“too far, too far, from the place where I am bound to be”—he had longed to return to court, to wield his personal influence with Elizabeth, instead of remaining, taut with hope and anxiety, at an enforced distance, while his glistening prospects of marriage were darkened by the world’s talk of infamy. Yet, once back at court, he found that his return resolved nothing. The queen loved and favored him as she had before, but she was both uncertain and unyielding. In November she intended to make him Earl of Leicester, but when the letters patent were brought to her to be signed, with a sudden angry gesture she picked up a penknife and slashed them through, crying that the Dudleys had been traitors for three generations. Active, ambitious Robert, deprived of a reward so nearly within his grasp, fumed with frustration, and again the changeable vane of Elizabeth’s humor veered round. She patted his cheek, as though amused by the anger she had roused in him, and smilingly said, “No, no! The bear and ragged staff are not so easily overthrown.” She could neither accept nor refuse him. Not for years would Robert Dudley give up all hope of winning the magnificent prize, but from the outset of his serious pursuit, in that turbulent autumn of 1560, the queen had set a wearisome pace.

  Amid the clamor of speculation and slander, the Earl of Sussex raised a rational voice. Though deeply opposed to Dudley as a person, he nevertheless wrote to Cecil from Ireland to recommend that the match between Lord Robert and the Queen should take place. If Elizabeth were allowed to “choose after her own affections,” he urged, it would be the surest way to provide England with the heir that was so desperately needed. “Whomsoever she shall choose,” Sussex wrote loyally, “him will I love and honour, and serve to the uttermost.” Behind his words lay sympathy, wisdom, and consciousness of the royal prerogative, of which Parliament was to receive such a ringing reminder six years later. The choice of her consort rightfully lay with Elizabeth alone, both as a queen, and, Sussex was intimating, as a woman. The earl’s argument was very sound except in one respect, and that was his basic premise—the generally held belief that Elizabeth’s passion for Lord Robert must signify a desire to marry him and find normal fulfilment for her undisguised physical attraction to him. Robert himself based much on that mistaken belief.

  Though disappointed, he was not deterred by the setbacks with which his wooing met during the closing months of 1560. “Whatsoever reports and opinions be,” Cecil informed Throckmorton, on December 31, “I know surely that Lord Robert hath more fear than hope, and so doth the Queen’s Majesty give him cause.” But with a crown so nearly within his reach, Robert Dudley was not to be dismayed by the humors of a woman so capricious as Elizabeth; fear of losing the prize only served to spur him on to more energetic pursuit. If his “eminent endowments of mind and body” and unique personal relationship with the queen would not suffice to persuade her to marry him, then he would find a means to add political weight to his suit. No less a power than Spain should be prevailed upon to support him.

  As before, Dudley did not immediately approach de Quadra in person, but sent a relation, this time his brother-in-law Henry Sidney, to open negotiations with the ambassador.

  He began by beating about the bush very widely, but at last came to his brother-in-law’s affairs and said that as the matter was now public property, and I knew how much inclined the Queen was to the marriage, he wondered that I had not suggested to Your Majesty this opportunity for gaining over Lord Robert by extending a hand to him now, and he would thereafter serve and obey Your Majesty like one of your own vassals.

  So de Quadra wrote to King Philip. There was, as the ambassador dryly added, “a great deal more to the same effect,” but the object of Sidney’s mission was already quite plain. Since the archduke’s suit had come to nothing there had seemed to be no prospect of Elizabeth taking a husband who represented the interests of Spain, but now Dudley was proposing a pact that should be beneficial to all parties. If King Philip would use his power and influence to persuade Elizabeth to marry her favorite, Dudley would swear to act as a devoted servant of Spanish interests, and to direct Elizabeth in the great work of restoring England to Catholicism. As he put his brother-in-law’s case to de Quadra, Sidney was full of fine rehearsed sentiments; above all he stressed that Lord Robert’s chief desire was to serve King Philip “at all times, and in all things, to the full extent of his means and abilities, and more especially regarding religion, as is his duty.” The queen, Sidney hastened to explain, would not refer to the matter unless de Quadra spoke of it first to her, but he told the ambassador that he “might be sure that she desired nothing more than the countenance of His Majesty to conclude the match.” Beneath the lofty protestations Dudley’s impatience to secure the quarry was evident. That the religious policy of Elizabeth’s government should be thus reversed was out of the question, but Robert was prepared to use any inducement that would win him King Philip’s support, any means that would make Elizabeth irrevocably his wife. “He then pressed me still further to write to Your Majesty and forward the business,” de Quadra told King Philip, “so that Lord Robert should receive the boon at Your Majesty’s hands.” They would make ill-matched allies, the parvenu traitor’s son and the King of Spain, but de Quadra came to the conclusion that it would be worth accepting Dudley’s proposition. “It is for Your Majesty to decide,” he wrote to Philip, “but I have no doubt that if there is any way to cure the bad spirit of the Queen, both as regards religion and Your Majesty’s interests, it is by means of this marriage, at least while her desire for it lasts.”

  Lord Robert’s ambition, like Elizabeth’s love, was blind. He had conceived his matrimonial coup in the belief that by combining the advantages both of a foreign alliance and an English match, and offering both a politically advantageous marriage and one that would be personally delightful to the Queen, he could sweep away all resistance. But he was setting nets to catch the wind. He did not see that all her fanciful talk of taking a husband, which gave her such intense delight, was not a preliminary to, but a substitute for, the reality of marriage.

  De Quadra had an audience with the queen in February to assess Lord Robert’s progress, and came away with encouraging news for the favorite. Elizabeth had made no secret of her feelings for him, and she had toyed provocatively with the notion of marrying him. “After much circumlocution,” the ambassador reported, she said “that she was no angel, and did not deny that she had some affection for Lord Robert for the many good qualities he possessed, but she certainly had never decided to marry him or anyone else, although she daily saw more clearly the necessity for her marriage.” Teasing and sparkling, she gave it as her opinion that she ought to wed an Englishman, and then asked gravely what King Philip would think if she were to marry one of her servitors? Cautiously de Quadra answered that he knew his king “would be happy to hear of the advancement and aggrandizement of Lord Robert,” as His Majesty “had great affection for him and held him in high esteem.” Dudley was not the only diplomatic liar at Elizabeth’s court. But the queen did not find it strange that others should see fine qualities in the man she loved, and her happiness at hearing Robert praised was almost undignified. Years before she had shown similar pleasure when people spoke well of Thomas Seymour.

  Indications that his courtship was progressing well made Robert “excessively overjoyed.” He begged de Quadra to raise the subject again in his next interview with the queen, insisting “that it was only fear and timidity that prevented the Queen from deciding,” but by the end of March his ruse was obviously failing. “Robert is very aggrieved and dissatisfied,” de Quadra wrote, and added that he had “fallen ill with annoyance.” Cecil had intervened in the favorite’s maneuvers, telling the ambassador blandly that the queen wished to have a letter from King Philip recommending her to marry Robert, which she could openly lay before Parliament. Robert was furious. To be publicly acknowledged as the tool of Spain in this way would do
his reputation no good at all; urgently he pressed the queen to “free herself from the tyranny of these people,” make a stand against the wishes of her own subjects and throw herself entirely on King Philip’s favor. Some of Robert’s adherents were said to be advising him to give the queen an ultimatum—either she must marry him before Easter, or else he would leave the country altogether, and go to the wars in the service of King Philip. It was not at all the outcome that Dudley had expected, yet as the fumes of the affair blew away he was seen to be as high in the queen’s favor as ever. “Lord Robert’s recent discontent has ended in her giving him an apartment upstairs adjoining her own, as it is healthier than that which he had downstairs,” de Quadra recorded. “He is delighted.”

  By the spring of 1561 the critical phase of Elizabeth’s affair with Dudley was past, and their relationship was set on the path that it was to follow through the greater part of her reign. While Robert was a married man, Elizabeth had felt free to pose and flaunt and dally with him to her heart’s content, to smile on his victories in the tiltyard, to gallop beside him on the superb Irish hunters he had obtained for her, to provoke him to passion with her sweet indiscreet favors. But with Amy’s death that game had come to an abrupt end. Elizabeth was faced with the reality of Robert as a hot, urgent, new suitor, no foreign figurehead courting her by letter and proxy, but at her court, at her feet, in person, to press his cause, and ready to resort to any strategy, political or personal, that would speed his wooing. In the months that followed Amy’s death the queen’s inner conflict was clearly visible in her careworn appearance and erratic behavior towards Robert, but from that difficult period she emerged more emotionally dependent than ever upon him. She would not marry Lord Robert, much as she loved to toy with the idea, but neither could she live without him, and so in her personal love affair Elizabeth instinctively resorted to the same policy by which she dominated so many of her diplomatic courtships—that of keeping expectations permanently alive yet permanently unfulfilled. As long as she gave Lord Robert grounds to hope that she would one day yield and marry him she could exact from him the unstinting attentions that she craved, until with time and habit their lives became fused together; and without having had to undergo the torments of marriage, Elizabeth obtained from her beloved Robin a more ardent love and unremitting care than she might have had from a husband. It was Cecil’s private belief that as consort Lord Robert was “like to prove unkind, or jealous of the Queen’s Majesty.” But as her constant suitor, the ever hoping, fearing, and adoring wooer, Lord Robert provided Queen Elizabeth with the greatest emotional satisfaction she ever knew.

  It was a curious relationship, composed of rebuffs and caresses, tender intimacy and neurotic posturing. On Midsummer Day 1561, Robert gave a grand feast; in the afternoon, he, the queen and Bishop de Quadra found themselves alone together in the gallery of the boat from which they were to watch the festivities. On that heady June day Elizabeth was in high spirits, and she and Robert began joking together, “which she likes to do better than talking about business,” de Quadra commented disapprovingly. He went on, “They went so far with their jokes that Lord Robert told her that, if she liked, I could be the minister to perform the act of marriage, and she, nothing loath to hear it, said she was not sure whether I knew enough English.” Sharing jokes, teasing each other about marriage—it was a scene to delight Elizabeth’s fancy and send Robert’s hopes soaring. Such amorous familiarity was characteristic of the queen’s dealings with Lord Robert, and yet she made it very plain that the intimacy that she allowed him was not his right, but a favor that she could withdraw from him and confer upon another at any moment she chose. That he should have developed a proprietorial attitude towards her was understandable, when she encouraged and replied upon him so greatly; in illness it was upon Lord Robert that her tumbling thoughts fastened, and it seemed quite natural when she was suddenly taken ill one night in 1572 that “my Lord of Leicester did watch with her all night.” When she was in good humor she could find a piquant pleasure in permitting Robert to take liberties with her, as on the occasion when, playing a fast game of tennis with the Duke of Norfolk and “being very hot and sweating,” Robert borrowed her handkerchief to mop his face, “which the Duke seeing said that he was too saucy and swore that he would lay his racket upon his face.” The upshot of that commotion was that “the Queen was offended sore”—not with Dudley’s presumption, but “with the Duke.” Yet, privileged though Robert was, neither he nor anyone in the world was allowed to infringe upon Elizabeth’s ultimate mastery. Her royalty, like her person, was inviolable.

  When Dudley put his power to the test, he found that it melted to nothing. His influence was over Elizabeth the woman; over Elizabeth the queen he held no sway, as was vividly illustrated by an anecdote that appeared in the following century. According to this story, an adherent of Dudley’s had tried to enter the Privy Chamber but was prevented by Simon Bowyer, a favorite Gentleman Usher of the Chamber, whose duty it was to bar the way to all but a select few. Dudley’s man argued, and eventually fetched Lord Robert himself, who took the view that his own prestige was at stake; arrogantly informing Bowyer that he would have him dismissed, he strode in to speak to the queen. Bowyer acted swiftly. He overtook Lord Robert and threw himself at the queen’s feet, imploring her to tell him plainly, whether my Lord of Leicester were king, or Her Majesty were queen. His question was a spark to a tinder. Elizabeth flared into glittering anger. “God’s death, my Lord, I have wished you well,” she blazed at Robert, “but my favor is not so locked up in you that others shall not participate thereof . . . and if you think to rule here, I will take a course to see you forthcoming. I will have here but one mistress and no master.” It was said that “this so quailed my Lord of Leicester that his feigned humility was long after one of his best virtues.” Elizabeth’s declaration, “I will have here but one mistress and no master,” was not idly spoken in a moment of anger, it was the expression of her deepest feelings. In that moment Lord Robert must have glimpsed the hopelessness of his courtship of the queen. Yet the “quailing” of his pride and the casting down of his hopes were followed, as always, by a renewal of the queen’s lavish favors, and thus the pursuit continued. The prize was so great, success seemed so tantalizingly close; by no means might Robert Dudley draw his wearied mind from the magnificent woman who dominated his life. He could not abandon the chase, as long as the opinion prevailed, in the words of de Quadra’s successor, “that if any marriage at all is to result from all this it will be his.”

  The bond between Elizabeth and Robert was often subjected to heavy strain, but it was never entirely severed. Not even infidelity could divide them for long; their jealousies ended in weeping, caressing reunions that brought them yet closer together. When Elizabeth entered into a heady flirtation with the handsome young courtier Thomas Heneage in the autumn of 1565, Robert was both aggrieved and unnerved; Throckmorton, who had become his close confidant, urged him to put the queen’s affection to the test by starting a love affair of his own in retaliation, watching “how the Queen took it,” and then asking permission to leave the court “to go to his own place to stay as other noblemen do.” Robert took the advice. The woman whom he chose as the instrument of his vengeance was “one of the best-looking ladies of the court,” the lovely redhead Lettice Knollys, Viscountess Hereford. Tempers and passions rose high; Robert had a furious quarrel with Heneage, then tersely asked for “leave to go,” but Elizabeth too “was in a great temper, and upbraided him with what had taken place with Heneage and his flirting with the Viscountess in very bitter words.” For three days Robert stayed glowering in his apartments, while the Earl of Sussex and Cecil, although “no friends of Lord Robert in their hearts,” tried to smooth over the unpleasant affair, which was not really very difficult. “The result of the tiff was that both the Queen and Lord Robert shed tears, and he has returned to his former favour.” Feuding with Norfolk, infuriating Cecil and the wise councillors, negotiating with foreign
powers for their support in his wooing: it seemed that there was nothing Robert could do for which Elizabeth would not forgive him, as long as he remained devotedly hers. As years went by he would hazard a mistress, even a passionate clandestine love affair, but the prime of his life was dedicated to Elizabeth; marriage, and the lawful heirs for which he longed, were thus denied him. He wrote emphatically, at the beginning of the 1570s, that he would rather never have a wife than marry and lose the queen’s favor thereby. His attraction to Lettice Knollys was not quenched by the joyous tears of his reunion with Elizabeth, but he was to spend fourteen more years in sterile dalliance with the queen before he could bring himself finally to give the coup de grâce to his fallen hopes, and take the voluptuous widow Lettice for his lawful wife.

  The constant vigilant presence of Lord Robert cast a long shadow over Elizabeth’s other courtships. The true nature of his relationship with the queen, and the extent of his influence over her, were questions anxiously investigated by prospective foreign suitors. The answers they received were, however, as contradictory as Elizabeth’s own declarations. The imperial envoy reported enthusiastically in 1565 that Lord Robert was “a virtuous, pious, courteous and highly moral man, whom the Queen loves as a sister her brother, in all maidenly honour, in most chaste and honest love”—a verdict as propitious for the archduke’s suit as the rival French ambassador’s equally exaggerated assertion, that Lord Robert had slept with the queen on New Year’s night, was damaging. Elizabeth’s own statements only added to the uncertainty; her intentions regarding Lord Robert and marriage seemed to change from day to day. “Beggarwoman and single, far rather than Queen and married,” was the dramatic preference that she expressed to the gullible Austrian envoy, but she also informed him encouragingly that if she were to wed it would be as a queen, and therefore she could only take a great prince as her husband—which, in turn, was in marked contrast to her statement to the Spanish ambassador that she must marry an Englishman, to satisfy the will of her people, and that the most fitting consort would thus be Lord Robert Dudley. It was de Quadra’s successor, de Silva, who best summed up the situation when he commented perceptively, “I do not think anything is more enjoyable to this Queen than treating of marriage, although she assures me herself that nothing annoys her more. She is vain, and would like all the world to be running after her, but it will probably end in her remaining as she is, unless she marry Lord Robert, who is still doing his best to win her.”