Thomas Hardy wrote that ‘No historian’s Queen Elizabeth was ever so perfectly a woman as the fictitious Elizabeth of Kenilworth.’ And in the beginning of the twentieth century, the real Elizabeth’s ‘unwomanly’ qualities were again used against her when Kipling, in his eerie fantasia of 1910, Puck of Pook’s Hill, saw the rejected Leicester as a ghost levelling reproaches at Elizabeth:
The Queen was in her chamber, a-weeping very sore,
There came Lord Leicester’s spirit and it scratched upon the door,
Singing, ‘Backwards and forwards and sideways may you pass
But I will walk beside you till you face the looking-glass
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass,
As hard and unforgiving or as wicked as you was!’
The Queen was in her chamber; her sins were on her head;
She looked the spirits up and down and statelily she said: -
‘Backwards and forwards and sideways though I’ve been,
Yet I am Harry’s daughter and I am England’s Queen!’
Just eighteen years later, the story took a new twist. Lytton Strachey in his psychobiography Elizabeth and Essex (not, obviously, a fictional presentation; but well within the sphere of creative writing) reinvents Elizabeth yet again as ‘a post-Freudian hysteric . . . not quite fully heterosexual’. The words are those of the authors of England’s Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy, and it is hard to disagree. As Strachey wrote of Essex’s downfall (and Essex was Leicester’s stepson, successor and surrogate): ‘Manhood - the fascinating, detestable entity, which had first come upon her concealed in yellow magnificence in her father’s lap - manhood was overthrown at last, and in the person of the traitor it should be rooted out.’
This interpretation has never (to date!) quite gone away. Certainly it stuck around long enough to influence the Bette Davis/Errol Flynn movie, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. But by the middle of the twentieth century the tale of Elizabeth and Essex, that intrinsically abortive relationship, was once again out of fashion, and Leicester came back to the foreground for the first time in more than a century. The purview of ‘the woman’s film and the woman’s novel’ (as England’s Elizabeth puts it) relied on Leicester to exhibit an Elizabeth who ‘despite her public chastity . . . had been quiveringly alive with bona-fide reproductive heterosexuality’.
You can see this reliance in many of the pictures of Elizabeth still around us; on the screen, on the bookshelves, or in our memory. In the middle of the last century there were (among many other lesser luminaries) the novels of Margaret Irwin and Jean Plaidy. In Irwin’s trilogy - Young Bess, Elizabeth, Captive Princess and Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain - Robin is the romantic lead to whom Elizabeth is several times on the point of yielding until abruptly prevented; as much by the demons in her psyche as by any outside agency. Irwin’s edgy, haunted, intelligent Elizabeth, treading the knife-edge between heroism and hysteria, long remained a staple of the public libraries, and indeed might still convince today. (It seems an anomaly that her works are long out of print, while those of Jean Plaidy - like the far less considerable Gay Lord Robert - are back in the shops.) Certainly nothing in them seemed to jar when I read them as a young teenager, as late as the 1970s. This was an Elizabeth who gave first place to her own powers, her own priorities.
In the same decade, the BBC’s great Elizabeth R copped out, a little, from this particular dilemma. Glenda Jackson’s Elizabeth was in love with Robert; was prepared, even (in the second play of the series, written by Rosemary Anne Sisson), to promise a secret marriage ceremony. But she arrived too late for the date; he had not waited long enough . . . It was a fictional reprise of the London Bridge story told on page 196).
In the last decades of the twentieth century, an alternative portrayal of Elizabeth as a career woman’s role model tended to downplay her personal relationships, to see them as just one weapon in the armoury of a woman who had it all, and at a price many of us might be prepared to pay. Books on the management secrets of Elizabeth I, and ‘Elizabeth CEO’, compete with feminist academic study.87 But of course the more romantic portrayal has never gone away; indeed, it has had some important outings recently. In print, the most familiar example is probably Philippa Gregory’s The Virgin’s Lover (with The Queen’s Fool), which follows the relationship through the death of Amy Dudley. Gregory’s Elizabeth - while manipulative enough to take a tacit part in Amy’s murder, as a way to make sure she could enjoy Robert without ever having to marry him - is essentially the foolishly passionate creature, guided by a wiser Cecil, painted by the great historian Froude in the nineteenth century. No question here but that she and Robert go all the way . . . but to assume that all fictional interpretations now choose to believe Elizabeth no virgin is still a jump too far.
It’s true that Shekhar Kapur’s feature film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes, at the very least suggested plenty of bona fide sexuality. The sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age, though set in the run-up to the Armada, will not feature a Robert or indeed a Cecil. But the personal drama of the Elizabeth/Ralegh/Bess Throckmorton story acted out here surely borrows from the emotional dynamic of the Elizabeth/Robert/ Lettice story. In the first film, Elizabeth moved away from Robert, assuming the white mask of an iconic virginity at the end of the movie. Perhaps this second film, by contrast, portrays a lover figure who (as Leicester did) ultimately moves away from Elizabeth to choose a less challenging model of humanity.
Of the two recent British television dramas, the Channel Four version starring Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons was set towards the end of Robert’s life, when not even their worst enemy seriously believed that these two were still the last of the red-hot lovers. (A doctor who had just given Elizabeth the near-obligatory gynaecological examination did mutter ‘virgo intacta’ to Cecil at the very start of the programme.) The BBC’s longer but in some ways less considerable The Virgin Queen [sic] did indeed have to tackle the question of the relationship more directly - but cheated, you might say. Twice, we saw a red-headed woman writhing in Robert Dudley’s arms. Once it was indeed Elizabeth - but only in a dream, from which she abruptly awoke. Once, it proved to be another woman in her dress: the Queen’s cousin Lettice Knollys, the one Robert married, eventually. The substitute lover in the Queen’s dress had of course already been seen in Elizabeth; and indeed a number of dramas, filmed and written, have chosen to play the sex life of one of Elizabeth’s ladies as a kind of surrogate for her own . . . Striking how the same devices do come round with regularity. Quite a number of fictional stories bring Lettice into the tale rather earlier than is justified by history. The surrogate theme is a neat way for the reader or viewer to experience what they want without compromising the notion of Elizabeth’s virginity . . . It is interesting to see that all the actors interviewed for either of the two recent dramas declared their belief in that virginity, incidentally - rather like the ambassadors of the sixteenth century! There are sometimes surprising similarities to be found between modern attitudes and those of Elizabeth’s own day.
But as we discuss the precise nature of Elizabeth’s relationship with Robert Dudley - as we edge around the precise limits, in fact or fiction, to their physical intimacy - perhaps we are missing the real, the final point. Just assume, for a moment, that uncontrovertible evidence were to be discovered, showing that Elizabeth had full sex with Robert. How much difference would it make, really? We are, after all, the first generation of historians to be able to ask the question - not to feel that if Elizabeth were guilty of ‘immorality’, she would be less worthy to rule her country.
Knowledge that Robert and Elizabeth had full (rather than partial) physical relations would, it is true, offer a new prism through which to consider every aspect of their dealings. But try to do it, just as an exercise, and you still, in even sharper focus, see an Elizabeth notable for her refusal to commit. You still see a Robert who (long keeping a secret he could have used to become the pow
er behind the throne) was notable for his loyalty.
When Martin Hume, in 1896, wrote the first version of his classic Courtships of Queen Elizabeth, he was (he said, introducing the extended version eight years later) staggered by the number of letters he received, most of them making a particular plea. Correspondents from around the world lamented that ‘the actual relations that existed between the Queen and various favourites’ had not been dealt with more thoroughly. ‘As a political historian,’ Hume wrote, ‘I must confess that this phase of the subject did not appear to me to be one of any great importance.’ His job was to tackle ‘the national results’ of Elizabeth’s various courtships, while ‘a study of the non-political philanderings’ seemed to him a very minor matter. At the safe distance of a century, perhaps one might venture to disagree.
Starting from a different standpoint, I too none the less set out with a curious reluctance to write on the subject of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley. It’s not a question of the historical high ground, to which I can hardly stake a claim - but there is surely a kind of shame in seeming to reduce Elizabeth I to a romantic story. To approach a great stateswoman primarily through her love life seems at first distinctly retrograde.
Writing this book showed me I was wrong. The Arthur Dudley story described in Appendix II is just one of many episodes capable of either a personal or a political interpretation, neither to be assessed without some awareness of the other. Elizabeth’s statecraft and her sexuality were inextricably intertwined. (Perhaps it is that very unusual fact that makes her so interesting to us today.) That ‘the personal is political’ was a slogan of modern feminism. But one thing I’ve learnt is this - it was just as applicable in the court of England in the late sixteenth century.
Notes on sources
General
The last quarter-century alone has seen an impressive list of biographies of Elizabeth, notably those by (in alphabetical order) Carolly Erickson (The First Elizabeth, Macmillan, 1983), Christopher Hibbert (The Virgin Queen: The Personal History of Elizabeth I, Viking, 1990; Wallace MacCaffrey (Elizabeth I, Edward Arnold, 1993), Maria Perry (The Word of a Prince: A Life from Contemporary Documents, The Folio Society, 1990), Jasper Ridley (Elizabeth I, Constable, 1987), Anne Somerset (Elizabeth I, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991) and Alison Weir (Elizabeth the Queen, Jonathan Cape, 1998; following on from Children of England: The Heirs of King Henry VIII, 1996, and The Six Wives of Henry VIII, 1991).
Of the recent more academic studies, I was especially interested by the work of Susan Doran (Monarchy and Matrimony, Routledge, 1996), Carole Levin (The Heart and Stomach of a King, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), and Julie M. Walker, ed. (Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana, Duke University Press, 1998).
Among the older biographers of Elizabeth, first place now and always must go to Agnes Strickland, whose Lives of the Queens of England (vols 7 and 8, London, 1844) is an invaluable guide back to original sources (even though she does occasionally cite the late-seventeenth-century chronicler Gregorio Leti, some of whose most succulent ‘finds’ appear to have begun and ended in his own imagination). The works of Frank Arthur Mumby are useful in that his ‘lives in letters’ reprint much original correspondence in full. See The Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth (1909); Elizabeth and Mary Stuart (1914); The Fall of Mary Stuart (1922), all published by Constable. Queen Elizabeth and Her Times, edited by Thomas Wright in 1838, is likewise a collection of contemporary correspondence.
No-one can ignore the biography by J. E. Neale (Queen Elizabeth, Jonathan Cape, 1934); or that of Elizabeth Jenkins (Elizabeth the Great, Victor Gollancz, 1958) - who, of course, is also the author of Elizabeth and Leicester (Victor Gollancz, 1961). Earlier books on the pair include those of Milton Waldman (Elizabeth and Leicester, Collins, 1944) and Frederick Chamberlin (Elizabeth and Leycester, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1939), whose The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth (John Lane, 1920) includes such invaluable oddities as the collection together of all Elizabeth’s medical records, and of all the ambassadorial statements concerning the existence or otherwise of her sexual relations; while his The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth (John Lane, 1923) groups together her most famous and/or revealing remarks. Perhaps it is here, too, that one should mention Martin Hume’s classic The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth (extended edition, Eveleigh Nash, 1904), and Josephine Ross’s Suitors to the Queen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975).
Three biographies of Robert Dudley appeared in less than a decade: Alan Kendall’s Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (Cassell, 1980); Alan Haynes’s The White Bear: Robert Dudley, the Elizabethan Earl of Leicester (Peter Owen, 1987); and Derek Wilson’s important Sweet Robin: A Biography of Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester 1553-1558 (Allison & Busby, 1988). Anyone writing on Leicester now must acknowledge a particular debt to Wilson’s work, not only in Sweet Robin but in The Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black Legend of the Dudleys (Constable, 2005). The study of Robert - unlike that of Elizabeth herself, but with obvious ramifications for their relationship - is still one where new material may be explored; the other immense debt one must acknowledge here is to Simon Adams, whose Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics was published by Manchester University Press in 2002; his edition of the Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1558-1561, 1584-1586 was published by Cambridge University Press (for the Royal Historical Society) in 1995. See also Adams’s articles: ‘The Papers of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester’, in Archives, xx (1992), 63-85; xx (1993), 131-44; xxii (1996), 1-26.
A selection of Elizabeth’s own letters, and a collection of her speeches, prayers and poems were recently gathered together into an authoritative and comprehensively annotated volume (superseding the older collection edited by G. B. Harrison in 1935): Elizabeth I: Collected Works, ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller and Mary Beth Rose (University of Chicago Press, 2000). The poem quoted by way of epigraph can be found on pp. 303-5, with a discussion of the attribution to Elizabeth. The letters selected include those Elizabeth wrote to Alençon; her teasing letters to the Shrewsburys about Leicester’s diet; and of course her letters to Leicester and others concerning his acceptance of the governorship of the Netherlands. In this volume can also be found some other relevant documents from the collections of state papers - for example, Parliament’s pleas to Elizabeth to marry (as well as her responses to those pleas) and Cecil’s letter urging her to the Alençon match; also the most important correspondence on the Thomas Seymour affair.
State and official papers
As always, the HMSO Calendars are an essential source; we today are all indebted to those tireless Victorians (and neo-Victorians) who docketed and in some cases transcribed the collections of manuscripts that are the building blocks for any attempt at Tudor history.
Several volumes of the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, ed. Robert Lemon and M. A. E. Green, 1856-72, hereafter abbreviated to CSP Dom., contain letters to, from and about Elizabeth and Leicester. (See also Miscellaneous State Papers from 1500 to 1726, ed. the Earl of Hardwicke, London, 1778, which has, for example, in vol. I interesting correspondence from Mary to Norfolk, and Walsingham to Stafford.)
CSP Dom. 1547-1580: This and the following volume are often frustrating, in giving abstracts of or extracts from letters, rather than the whole thing. Among the multitude of more political documents, however, are several letters from Robert either to or about Elizabeth (see e.g. pp. 448, 503).
CSP Dom. 1581-1590: This volume includes on p. 116 a memo of a letter from Robert to the Queen suggesting that he was indeed behind the Bond of Association; on p. 265 his letter to Walsingham about the ‘very pitiful words’ she used to keep him back from the Netherlands; on p. 276 his plea (after returning from there) that she should pity his ‘wretched and depressed estate’; on p. 514 his letter inviting her to Tilbury; and on p. 538 his last letter.
The two volumes labelled ‘Addenda’ are more satisfying, as usually containing complete letters. CSP Dom.
Addenda 1566-79 includes Leicester’s despairing letter to Throckmorton (pp. 28-9) and the letters from Kenilworth in the winter of 1569-70 (pp. 575, 198-9); for others of his letters to the Queen in this period, see pp. 231-2, 339-40, 360, 361. There is also a good deal of material about the Norfolk affair. In CSP Dom. Addenda 1580-1625, see pp. 95-6 for Leicester’s ‘goodness of God’ letter to Elizabeth; also pp. 99, 141.
Letters to and from English emissaries abroad are to be found in the Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, ed. Joseph Stevenson et al., 1863-1950. For example, the volume that covers 1558-59 includes, on the first page, Cecil’s memorandum about sending out the news of Elizabeth’s accession; the next (1560-61, from p. 347 on) contains the letters Throckmorton in Paris wrote after Amy Dudley’s death.
Letters exchanged with Ireland, however, get their own series of volumes - as (more importantly in this particular context) do those with Scotland. The Calendar of State Papers Relating to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scots, 1547-1603, ed. Joseph Bain et al., Edinburgh, 1898-1952 (CSP Scottish), contains in the second volume (1563-69) much correspondence concerning Elizabeth’s attempt to marry Robert to Mary, and in the fourth (pp. 32-40) Norfolk’s confession.
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