The Men Who Would Be King

by Josephine Ross

  In doing his best to win her for so many years, Lord Robert gave Elizabeth the unstinting attention and admiration for which she longed. She dared not rely on the affection of a husband, but from an ever eager, unsatisfied suitor she could expect constant devotion. Though he never achieved his life’s desire of taking the Queen of England for his wife, Robert won from her all that she was able to give as a woman, except the ultimate possession of her body and mind. There was in their deep and enduring relationship a sense of underlying reality that set it apart from all Elizabeth’s other flirtations, wooings, and love-dealings, and above all from the cult of fantastical adoration of the queen that grew up in the later years of her reign. When the affair began they had been two lively, attractive young people, the king’s daughter and the duke’s son, yet when it ended some thirty years later, with his death, their feelings for one another had not greatly altered, in spite of his marriage, and her courtships, and the difficult, demanding temperament of the queen who was often “more than a man, and in truth, sometimes less than a woman.” As much as she ever could be, Elizabeth was in love with Robert Dudley, the dearest of all her suitors.

  6

  “The Weal of the Kingdom”

  While there was “but one mistress and no master” in England, there would be no heirs born to the queen. Admirable as her desire to remain a virgin might be, it was not royal chastity that would make England secure from wars of the succession, coups d’état, and the treacheries that thrived on an uncertain inheritance to the throne. For as long as Elizabeth could remember, the stability of the realm had been threatened by the weak state of the succession; the desperate lack of male heirs that had driven Henry VIII through six marriages had caused even the faded old maid Mary to marry in haste, and now that the last of his line, Elizabeth, had succeeded to the throne the situation was graver than ever. If she were to die young and unmarried, the resultant confusion over the rival claims of Mary, Queen of Scots; the sisters of Lady Jane Grey; and others still more distant would undoubtedly “divide and ruin the country.” For the sake of her people, for the weal of the kingdom that she was pledged to protect, it seemed that Elizabeth must marry with all speed, and bear children.

  A state of crisis came perilously close in the autumn of 1562, when, after three years as queen, she still considered herself “as free from any engagement to marry as the day she was born.” At Hampton Court, early in October, Elizabeth began to feel ill, and decided that she would take a bath. It was thought that she caught a chill “by leaving her bath for the air,” then her illness was found to be smallpox, and the ensuing fever was very nearly fatal. Her condition grew steadily worse, until she lost consciousness. “She was all but gone,” it was reported. While the queen was lying close to death her council was hurriedly meeting, trying to reach a decision about the succession. No one spoke for Mary, Queen of Scots, who already regarded herself as Queen of England and Elizabeth as a bastard usurper; the lovely Scottish queen was the senior great-granddaughter of Henry VII, but she was an alien and a papist, and had been passed over in Henry VIII’s will in favor of the Suffolk line—Lady Jane Grey and her sisters, Catherine and Mary Grey. Some believed that King Henry’s will should be obeyed and Lady Catherine named heiress, while others supported the Earl of Huntingdon, who was descended from Edward III. Opinions were dangerously divided. As de Quadra reported: “There was great excitement that day in the palace, and if her improvement had not come soon some hidden thoughts would have become manifest.” But before discussion could erupt into aggression, the queen’s condition began to improve, and as she regained consciousness her flickering thoughts focused on her kingdom. The first words she managed to speak astounded her anxious hearers. She asked that Lord Robert Dudley should be made protector of the realm, with a title and an income of £20,000.

  Weak and feverish though Elizabeth was, she knew what a flood of speculation her demand would unleash, and she roused herself to defend her honor and her suitor’s character as though for the last time, protesting feebly but earnestly “that although she loved and had always loved Lord Robert dearly, as God was her witness nothing improper had ever passed between them.” With death still lurking among the hangings of her bedchamber it was not an oath that she would have taken lightly. Hiding their dismay, hastening to soothe her, the council promised to carry out all that she asked.

  The queen recovered and life at court returned to normal, with Lord Robert enjoying greater favor than ever, but Elizabeth’s illness had left deeper marks than the smallpox scars on her face. It had been a “great terror and dreadful warning,” and Englishmen took heed of it. They had seen how fine the thread was upon which England’s security hung, they had glimpsed the confusion that would follow if that thread were to snap while the succession question remained unresolved, and now there was a new urgency in their talk of “the Queen’s marriage, and succession of the crown.” Just before Parliament met, in January 1563, Dr. Nowell preached a sermon in Westminster Abbey in which he publicly exhorted Elizabeth to marry. “For as the marriage of Queen Mary was a terrible plague to all England,” he declaimed, “the want of your marriage and issue is like to prove as great a plague,” then, his rhetoric swooping between the dynastic and the personal, he argued, “If your parents had been of your mind, where had you been then? Or what had become of us now?” Though Parliament addressed the queen in very different tones from Nowell’s ill-advised harangue, they developed his theme. Humbly but fervently, Parliament petitioned Elizabeth to secure the succession, and marry.

  The Commons’ petition boldly stressed “the great dangers, the unspeakable miseries of civil war, the perilous intermeddlings of foreign princes with seditious, ambitious and factious subjects at home” that would rend the kingdom if Elizabeth were to die without an acknowledged heir; the Lords dwelled rather on the pleasures and benefits that marriage would bring to herself and her realm, before making subdued reference to their grave fears during her recent illness. The Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, drafted a speech in which he appealed to the queen’s maternal feelings, begging her to “imagine the comfort, surety and delight that should happen to yourself by beholding an imp of your own, that should in time to come by God’s grace inherit and enjoy the imperial crown of this realm, to the great rejoicing of all your loving subjects.” The queen to whom all their pleas were addressed was not yet thirty years old; she was a lively, elegant young woman whose liking for male company was only too well known. That she should marry and have babies appeared to be both a natural and a necessary solution to the whole question.

  Elizabeth’s response to the petitions of this Parliament was characteristically moving and impressive. Though she committed herself to nothing, she implied a great deal—observing, somewhat tartly, that “none other tree’s blossom should have been minded ere ever hope of my fruit had been denied you,” and declaring that any who thought she was bound “by vow or determination” to remain unmarried were entirely wrong. “For though I can think it best for a private woman, yet do I strive with myself to think it not meet for a prince,” she conceded. “And if I can bend my liking to your need, I will not resist such a mind.” She brought her speech to a climax with an assurance about the succession: “I hope I shall die in quiet with nunc dimittis, which cannot be without I see some glimpse of your following surety after my graved bones.” Her profound antipathy to marriage, her fear of naming a successor who could become the focus of constant plots, as she herself had been in her sister’s reign, were thus hidden for the time being beneath fine noncommittal pledges, while she sought to find a means by which the “following surety” of her people would be secured. Evasive though her reply was, her profound concern was unfeigned; as she reminded the Commons: “This matter toucheth me much nearer than it doth you all, who, if the worst happen, can lose but your bodies; but if I take not that convenient care that it behoveth me to have therein, I hazard to lose both body and soul.” What Parliament did not know was that even while they w
ere debating the tortuous question, Elizabeth, harassed, isolated, and perplexed, had taken a tentative step towards solving it, by a proposition so utterly unexpected that at first it seemed outrageous. In audience with the Scottish envoy, Maitland of Lethington, in March, she had casually suggested that Lord Robert Dudley should be married to Mary, Queen of Scots.

  The idea seemed in every way preposterous. Maitland, taken quite unawares, “could not reply for confusion” as the Queen of England, curled and jeweled and shining with smiles, sweetly informed him that “if his mistress would take her advice, and wished to marry safely and happily, she would give her a husband who would ensure both, and this was Lord Robert.” Mary Stuart of Scotland had been Queen of France and was now contemplating marriage with the heir of Philip of Spain, while other princes of noble houses vied for her attention; that she should marry the cast-off favorite of her greatest rival, a man who was the son of traitors and had once been condemned as a traitor himself, a courtier of blemished reputation, whose wealth and position had been given to him like lovers’ favors by Elizabeth, was a proposal that amounted almost to an insult. It was with difficulty that Maitland rallied his wits and tried to turn aside her words with chaffing compliments. Elizabeth had announced that Lord Robert was endowed with such graces that if she herself had wished to marry he was the man whom she would take rather than all the princes in the world; Maitland responded that “this was a great proof of the love she bore his Queen, as she was willing to give her a thing so dearly prized by herself.” Gallantly he told her that even if his mistress, Queen Mary, loved Lord Robert as dearly as she, Elizabeth, did, Mary would refuse to marry him, since that would deprive Elizabeth “of all the joy and solace she received from his companionship.” But Elizabeth was not to be deterred; she went on to say that she wished to God that the elder Dudley brother, the Earl of Warwick, had as great an abundance of “grace and good looks” as Lord Robert, for then she might have married one brother and Mary the other. Elizabeth was obviously enjoying herself, but for Maitland it was all very difficult and embarrassing. At last, longing to escape, he steered the conversation around to the succession, “which he knew would shut her mouth directly,” and suggested, with calculated facetiousness, that since his mistress, Queen Mary, was still very young, Elizabeth might first marry Lord Robert herself, and have children by him—“which was so necessary for the welfare of the country”—and then when God should call her from this life she could leave Mary both her kingdom and her husband. Maitland can hardly have intended that joke to afford Elizabeth much amusement.

  Astonishing as the Queen of England’s proposal might have appeared, she was almost certainly in earnest. Beneath the fine cloak of diplomatic affection which covered Elizabeth’s formal dealings with her cousin Mary Stuart lay hostility and fear. As Queen of France Mary had represented a grave threat to the security of England and Elizabeth; now, back in her northern kingdom as an eligible young widow of legendary charms and powerful connections, blatantly eager to enforce her claim to the English throne, she was potentially a still greater menace. As Feria had once said of Elizabeth, “It all depends on the husband that this woman may take,” and just as Philip of Spain had then been willing to sacrifice his private feelings and marry Elizabeth, so Elizabeth was now prepared to set aside personal emotion for the sake of her country. Married to a foreign prince, Mary would remain a constant danger, perhaps become the focus of a Catholic league against Elizabeth. But married to a minor English nobleman, a Protestant, in whom Elizabeth had absolute trust, she would be curbed, watched over, and reported on. The political wisdom of offering Mary such a husband was obvious, and so, in Elizabeth’s eyes, was the choice of Lord Robert. Because of the intimate bond between herself and Dudley she believed that she could rely utterly on his devotion, she “was quite certain that he would sacrifice his life for her,” and she did not doubt that he would defend her interests with unswerving loyalty, so that as the husband of Queen Mary he would remain the servant of Queen Elizabeth. It was an honor and a responsibility of which few would be worthy, but Elizabeth’s faith in her beloved Lord Robert was boundless. Mary Stuart need not scorn to be offered a man of such notable abilities and attractions, who although not himself of royal blood would bring Mary the assurance of Elizabeth’s favor and the likelihood of the succession—and whom, as Elizabeth proudly declared to Maitland, she herself would prefer to any prince in the world if she had a mind to marry. That she was offering him to her rival instead was a tacit admission that she never would have “such a mind.”

  Yet she had assured Parliament that she would try to “bend her liking” to her country’s need in the matter of marriage, and as though to honor that pledge, in the autumn of 1563 Elizabeth reopened matrimonial negotiations with the archduke Charles of Austria. “Marriage can bring Your Majesty and your realm nothing but advantage, weal and blessing,” an enthusiastic envoy told her in the following January, during an audience at Windsor. Had he substituted the word courtship for marriage, Elizabeth’s agreement would have been unfeigned.

  The youngest of the emperor Ferdinand’s three sons, twenty-three-year-old Charles had small power or wealth of his own to make him a match worthy of the Queen of England, but he was a Habsburg, and first cousin to Philip of Spain; a leisurely and protracted courtship with such a prince could be of great service to Elizabeth at this time. It would demonstrate an apparent willingness on her part to marry and produce heirs, so that she would be less harried by her anxious subjects, and to some extent it would deflect Catholic hopes, both at home and abroad, from Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was showing great interest in the idea of marrying Philip’s own son and heir Don Carlos—evidently she did not know that the youth was as sick and savage in mind as he was illustrious in blood—and King Philip, approving the suggestion, had commented menacingly, “The bringing about of this marriage may perhaps be the beginning of a reformation in religious matters in England.” But while there seemed to be a strong possibility that his Catholic cousin the archduke might be peacefully established as king-consort in England, Philip would stay his arm from violent interference in Elizabeth’s affairs. As usual, Elizabeth was using courtship as a means to almost any end except that of marriage.

  The most devoted of her suitors, Lord Robert, was not at all willing to be used as a mere political pawn. However beautiful and fascinating the Queen of Scotland might be, he had no desire to be banished to the far north as her husband; however great the benefits to his own country would be, he had no wish to sacrifice his glorious hopes of marrying Elizabeth. It was plain that her feelings for him were still very strong, and in the autumn of that year, 1563, she presented him with the magnificent castle and parklands of Kenilworth in Warwickshire—yet, to his chagrin, she proceeded determinedly with the scheme of marrying him to Mary, Queen of Scots, while at the same time reopening her own marriage negotiations with the archduke. The need to hinder Mary from embracing “such alliance as may bring trouble to this realm” was greater than any personal consideration in Elizabeth’s eyes, but Robert Dudley was not prepared to go so far in the service of his queen as to wed her rival while he still believed that he had some chance of winning Elizabeth herself.

  The affair proceeded haltingly, but Elizabeth’s resolution to subordinate passion to political necessity was further strengthened by the “troublesome chance” that occurred in the following spring. A pamphlet came to light, Hales’s Discourse on the Succession, in which a member of Parliament named John Hales put forward the arguments in favor of the Suffolk line, thereby pronouncing Lady Catherine Grey to be the rightful heiress to the crown. Lady Catherine was a sly, silly young woman, with none of the qualities of her tragic sister, Lady Jane, but under the terms of Henry VIII’s will she was indeed the heiress presumptive to the throne of England. Her clandestine marriage to the young Earl of Hertford, the late Protector Somerset’s heir, had been officially declared invalid, and both she and her husband had been long imprisoned in the Tower, where
two sons had been born to her. The existence of those two little boys of Tudor descent and Protestant parentage gave further weight to her claim, if, as Hales had sought to prove, the marriage was really legal. Hales’s activities smacked of sedition and conspiracy, and the effects of his arguments upon public opinion could have been far reaching; Parliament, increasingly anxious to see the succession finally established, might, thus incited, have proved hard to restrain. Elizabeth was frighteningly angry over the affair. Hales was later sent to the Tower, Lady Catherine was kept in strict custody, and Elizabeth pressed ahead with the plan that would, if successful, make Mary Stuart a suitable heiress presumptive to the throne, “second person” in England as long as Elizabeth remained unmarried.

  In the autumn of 1564 a special envoy from Scotland, James Melville, arrived in London, and was received with great charm and dissimulation by Elizabeth. “The old friendship being renewed,” Melville somewhat ingenuously wrote in his memoirs, many years later, “she enquired if the Queen had sent any answer to the proposition of marriage.” He gave the dampening reply that Mary “thought little or nothing thereof,” but added that she had referred the matter to the body of commissioners, both Scottish and English, who were soon to meet on the border. Elizabeth’s tone became confiding. She told Melville that before he returned home he should see her create Lord Robert a very great earl: “for she esteemed him as her brother and best friend, whom she would herself have married, had she ever minded to have taken a husband. But being determined to end her life in virginity, she wished that the Queen her sister might marry him.” The two queens’ formal references to each other as “sister” and their diplomatic assurances of affection could not veil the mistrust and jealousy that existed between them. With a genial air, Elizabeth proceeded to tell Melville bluntly that if Mary were matched with Lord Robert, “it would best remove out of her [Elizabeth’s] mind all fears and suspicions, to be offended by any usurpation before her death—being assured that Lord Robert was so loving and trusty that he would never permit any such thing to be attempted during her time.” There lay a frank enough admission of how far she trusted her “good sister” Mary of Scotland, and there was more to come.