As the news of Mary’s death reached court, fires were lit across London in jubilation. In Paris, where she was mourned as a former Queen of France, it was said with disgust that the London mobs had demanded more fuel from the house of the French ambassador to celebrate the execution.17 But Elizabeth put on mourning clothes and promised the French ambassador that Mary’s death would ‘wring her heart as long as she lives’. In a manner it did. It gave Elizabeth no pleasure to have been obliged to take the life of her fellow queen. But now she had to focus on the immediate crisis. Elizabeth sent a letter to James swearing her innocence of Mary’s death and laying the blame with those who had delivered the warrant. James refused the messenger his presence for several days. Eventually, however, he accepted Elizabeth’s version of events.
Mary’s last request, to be buried alongside her mother in France, was denied her. This was not out of spite or cruelty, but again was a consequence of political anxieties: a burial in France would have risked prolonging the outrage there over what had occurred. Instead, after six months of Mary’s corpse rotting at Fotheringhay, Elizabeth decided she should be buried at Peterborough Cathedral, the resting place of that other Catholic queen, Anne Boleyn’s rival, Katherine of Aragon. Elizabeth now had to face in war Katherine’s great-nephew, Philip II, and the full might of the world’s greatest power.
40
THE ARMADA
‘THE KING AND HIS ARMADA ARE BECOMING RIDICULOUS’, POPE Sixtus observed to the Venetian ambassador in Rome. Five months after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Pope had given Philip’s invasion of England his financial as well as moral support, but by the new year of 1588 he judged that Philip’s plan to conquer Elizabeth’s small island kingdom had little chance of success. There were interminable delays, and he found he rather admired Elizabeth’s courage in confronting Philip’s global empire. ‘If that woman were only a Catholic, she would be loved by us more than any other sovereign for she has great qualities’, he sighed.1 With Mary, Queen of Scots dead, Philip could claim England in his own right, as a descendant of John of Gaunt. That the son of the man who had sacked Rome in 1527 should become still more powerful was not a prospect that gladdened the Pope’s heart.
Come the spring of 1588 Sixtus refused a request to pay out any more money to Philip. He would give more only when the invasion had achieved its objective to overthrow Elizabeth and announced he had ‘strong presentments’ that it would not.2 Nevertheless, on 30 May the 130 ships of the Armada, carrying over 18,000 men, set sail from Lisbon for the invasion of England. The intention was that the Armada join the Duke of Parma’s army in the Netherlands, where Parma would provide the main invasion force. The fleet reached Calais on 7 August, sailing in a perfect crescent formation, flags flying from ships that resembled castles of oak. Impressive though the sight was, however, their wooden hulls made them vulnerable to fire, and when the English fleet sent eight blazing fireships in amongst these timber fortresses, the Spanish formation began to break up. Cannon then thundered into the ships.
The English began firing at 8 a.m. on 8 August and were still firing at 7 p.m. when the Armada was already ‘in the Act of retiring’, a Spanish captain called Cuellar recorded. His ship, the galleon San Pedro, was filling with water through huge holes made by cannonballs and – less easy to spot – also from shot. The wind blew them north and ‘I don’t know how I can say it – the fleet of our enemy followed behind us to drive us from their country’, he wrote.3
As the Spanish fleet continued northwards Elizabeth set off in her barge from St James’s Palace for Gravesend. She knew the Armada was badly damaged and the enemy had suffered mass casualties from England’s cannonade. But the battle was not over yet and as she disembarked at West Tilbury ‘in princely robes and rich array’ to inspect the army, she faced a defining moment in her reign.
Elizabeth had to be careful how she approached the coming spectacle. To the English of this period the notion of a female warrior was a perversion of nature, akin to a talking dog, or a baby born with a cow’s head.4 Her sister Mary I had, however, already negotiated an inspection of her troops highly successfully. On 20 July 1553, when Mary I was poised to take her crown from the usurper Jane Grey, she had ridden ‘out from Framlingham Castle to muster and inspect the most splendid and loyal army’. A contemporary described Mary’s troops drawn up in battle line, ‘the banners unfurled and the military colours set up’. She was mounted on a white horse and the men fell on their knees as she approached. Mary’s animal had shied as she reached the line, so she had dismounted and walked, talking to each in turn. Elizabeth now rode by her troops and ‘Her faithfull soldiers, great and small, upon their knees began to fall.’ Her horse was better behaved than her sister’s. Elizabeth was able to stay mounted, and when she spotted more troops further up the hill, ‘on her feet upright she stepped, tossing up her plume of feathers . . . waving her royal hand’.5
The next day Elizabeth returned to Tilbury for a march past and a further inspection. Robert Dudley, who had been in charge of establishing the camp, was there to greet her. The former lovers had grown old. Robert Dudley was florid and sickly while Elizabeth, at fifty-four, was a generation older than Mary had been at the inspection of her army in 1553. Elizabeth was, however, once more ‘bravely mounted on a stately steed’, and this time she rode in a grand procession behind Robert Dudley and the Lord Marshal who carried their plumed hats in their hands.6 Eight footmen walked at her stirrups and her ladies-in-waiting followed her in diamonds and cloth of gold, while she shone ‘attired like an angel bright’, carrying a staff as a symbol of her authority.7 One description refers to her ‘as armed Pallas’.8 This has been misunderstood to mean Elizabeth was wearing armour. In fact Elizabeth was being compared to the classical figure of Pallas Athene, as Mary I had been in a Florentine pageant at her accession. In both cases it was done to project a positive image of a woman in a military context. Elizabeth probably wore white and gold, certainly not the breastplate of modern film fiction as she watched the march past of the men.
When Elizabeth’s army came to a halt she rode alone with Robert Dudley to inspect the companies. She had not liked to see the men kneel in the mud the previous day, and as she passed the troops the men dipped their pikes, colours and lances in salute instead. Elizabeth now rode to a high spot to give her address. In 1554, when Mary I had given a speech that had mobilised London against the Wyatt rebellion, it was rumoured she had ‘even asked to go and fight herself’.9 According to a contemporary ballad account Elizabeth too now promised that ‘in the midst of all your troop, we ourselves will be in place/to be your joy, your guide, your comfort, even before your enemies face’. Decades later a chaplain who had been at Tilbury recalled Elizabeth’s speech in full.10 There had been fears that coming to Tilbury would put Elizabeth at risk of assassination. Robert Dudley had countered this, telling Elizabeth her visit would ‘comfort not only these thousands but many more will get to hear of it.’11 Elizabeth’s famous address achieved far more than that and remains one of the most stirring speeches in the English language:
My loving people, we have been persuaded by some, that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery, but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful, and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself, that under God I have placed my chief strength, and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects. And therefore I am come amongst you as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport; but being resolved in the midst, and heat of the battle to live, or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my Honour, and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body, but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my Realm, to which rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself wi
ll take up arms, I myself will be your General, Judge, and Rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.12
Happily, there was to be no battle on English soil and the Spanish ships continued sailing north, up the east coast of England and around Scotland. Short of water, they were forced to throw their horses overboard and the animals were seen swimming desperately for a shore they would never reach. In time their masters would also be swimming in a series of shipwrecks as they continued on the long route home. Cuellar recalled how, clinging to the top of the poop of his sinking ship in Sligo Bay, ‘I gazed at the terrible spectacle’ of other Spanish ships also breaking up in a storm: ‘Many were drowning within the ships: others, casting themselves into the water, sank to the bottom without returning to the surface; others on rafts and barrels, and gentlemen on pieces of timber.’ The Spaniard reached shore, and with difficulty made his way to what he hoped would be the sanctuary of a monastery. ‘I found it deserted, and the church and images of the saints burned and ruined, and twelve Spaniards hanging within the church by order of the Lutheran English, who went about searching to make an end of all of us.’13
At least 9,000 men from the Armada perished, either drowned, murdered for their gold, or summarily executed in Ireland after being handed over to the English authorities. Elizabeth wrote to King James in Scotland that Philip’s plans to destroy her had instead ‘procured my greatest glory’.14 She was right. But the war was not over, and Elizabeth’s most difficult years were yet to come.15
41
SETTING SUN
JOURNEYING HOME TO KENILWORTH IN WARWICKSHIRE, JUST A FEW weeks after the defeat of the Armada, Robert Dudley wrote to ask Elizabeth ‘how my gracious lady doth, and what ease of her late pains she finds?’ He was also ill, but he assured her that he had been taking the medicine she had sent him for his fever and said it made him feel ‘much better than any other thing given me’. It did not prove enough. He died six days later, at Cornbury in Oxfordshire. ‘His last letter’, Elizabeth wrote on it sorrowfully, and put it in a cabinet by her bed, where she kept her most precious and personal possessions.1
Dudley’s death signalled the passing of the old order, but Elizabeth still hoped she could continue ruling according to her motto, ‘Semper eadem’ (Always the same). As the years began to pass and her servants died she either did not replace them or found a near equivalent to the servant she had lost. Dudley’s replacement was to be his stepson, the tall, handsome, soldier-scholar Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. A man who longed for military glory and fame, he represented the aspirations of a young and frustrated generation of courtiers. When Essex joined Elizabeth’s Privy Council in 1593 he was twenty-seven, while the average age of his fellow councillors was almost sixty and the seventy-three-year-old William Cecil, Lord Burghley had a secured position of unrivalled authority. The only other young member was Burghley’s son, Robert Cecil, appointed to the council in 1591 when he was twenty-eight, and he was being groomed to replace his father, just as Essex had replaced Dudley.
Robert Cecil was short, no more than five feet two, and hunch-backed. Elizabeth would refer to Cecil affectionately as her ‘pygmy’; his many enemies preferred to call him ‘Robert the Devil’. He was notoriously corrupt, even at a time when corruption had grown commonplace. Theft by royal official was adding to the burden of the vast cost of the continuing war with Spain and further impoverishing the queen. She did what she could to economise, and in consequence was accused of growing ‘very covetous in her old days’. It was said Elizabeth neglected the court and ‘people were weary of an old woman’s government’.2 Essex’s followers, who fought in the war with Spain and gained little profit from their loyalty, resented the fact those ‘goose-quilled gents’, the pen-pusher Cecils, were so successful at lining their pockets and, increasingly, their hopes seemed to lie in the passing of the Virgin Queen.
Debate on the succession was now forbidden as treason, but the rival Essex and Cecilian factions made frantic – if secret – efforts to secure the throne for the heir who they believed would best represent their future interests.3 William Cecil’s association with the execution of King James’ mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, saw him remain allied to the cause of Katherine Grey through his continued friendship with her widower, the Earl of Hertford. Unfortunately for the Cecils, Katherine Grey’s eldest son had married the daughter of a mere gentleman, which did nothing to boost his royal status.
Essex was allied to by far the stronger candidate, King James. He was indisputably royal, and his wife, Anne of Denmark, delivered their first son, Henry, in 1594. James’ candidature also had the advantage of attracting followers from across the religious spectrum. The so-called Puritans backed James because the Scottish church was far more Protestant than the one Elizabeth allowed. Catholics, on the other hand, saw James as the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, whom they regarded as virtually a martyr, and many believed he would allow Catholics the freedom to practise their faith.
There was, however, to be one last attempt to move the succession out of the Tudor bloodline. This came from another group of Catholics: those who suspected that James would never grant religious toleration, and who sought a Catholic successor to Elizabeth. In November 1595 a book written by English members of the Jesuit order was published under the name R. Doleman. Entitled A Conference About the Next Succession to the Crowne of Ingland it was to have a huge impact on the succession debate.
‘Doleman’ claimed that England had long been what was, to all intents and purposes, an elective monarchy. Henry VII had no blood claim to the English throne, yet his crown was endorsed by Parliament. Clearly ‘ancestry of blood alone’ was not of primary importance. It was, however, accepted as vital that a monarch have all the attributes of honour necessary to majesty and, Doleman argued, there was no such candidate within the Tudor family. All were tarred by illegitimacy or poor marriages, save James, who was disqualified under English law because his mother had plotted against Elizabeth.
Having dismissed the Tudor candidates, the Doleman book announced that in seeking a successor to Elizabeth, ‘the first respect of all others ought to be God and religion’.4 It was an argument that Protestants had made in the 1550s, and in the next century the exclusion of Catholics from the throne would become incorporated into English law. On this basis England would accept Dutch and German Protestants as their reigning kings. Doleman’s argument was a precursor to this with Catholics told they could look to Europe for a monarch of their own faith, and that they were blessed with an excellent candidate: Philip II’s favourite daughter, the twenty-nine-year-old infanta, Isabella Clara Eugenia.
Like her father, Isabella was a descendant in a legitimate bloodline from John of Gaunt. ‘A princess of rare parts both for beauty, wisdom and piety’, she also came from a rich kingdom, and was less likely to ‘pill and poll’ her English subjects than James, the king of poverty-stricken Scotland.5 The Doleman arguments severely damaged the cause of Katherine Grey’s eldest son, while also tapping into nationalist sentiment against ‘the old beggardly enemy’, the Scots. Everything was thus left to play for when André Hurault Sieur de Maisse, the ambassador of the French king Henri IV, arrived in England in 1597.
Elizabeth’s kingdom had sunk into the kind of malaise it had known at the close of Mary I’s reign. The people were bowed by successive harvest failures, disease, and the costs of war. The national mood was cynical and Elizabeth often ill, as de Maisse soon found. His first audience was put off because the queen had toothache, but on 8 December he was at last invited to the court at Whitehall. The Frenchman’s barge pulled up near the entrance, a dark, covered alley from where he stepped into a low hall. A flight of steps took de Maisse to a series of small and gloomy rooms above. From there he was escorted to the Privy Chamber, with its giant Holbein mural of Henry VIII, codpiece thrust forward, and the fragile, receding figures of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. On the far side of the room were the queen’s ladies and several councillors. Amongst them William C
ecil, so ‘very old’ he had to be ‘carried in a chair’. Also sitting, but under a cloth of estate, and on a raised platform, was the shrivelled figure of Elizabeth I.
As the queen rose to greet the ambassador, de Maisse saw she was decked out in an extravagant dress of silver gauze and white satin, the sleeves slashed with scarlet and sown with false sleeves that hung to the ground. Her red wig was spangled with gold and silver, and two girlish curls fell almost to her shoulders. Her face, however, was ‘very aged’, ‘long and thin, her teeth . . . very yellow and unequal’. Indeed she had lost so many teeth that he found ‘one cannot understand her easily when she speaks quickly’. Elizabeth seemed fretful, twisting and untwisting her false sleeves, and she complained the winter room was too warm. This sensitivity to heat and anxious fiddling may be symptoms of the thyroid disease that her sister Mary I also suffered from. Despite the bitter December cold she kept pulling open her silver dress, exposing her wrinkled breasts, and eventually demanded the fire be doused with water.6
De Maisse came to notice that Elizabeth often wore low-cut dresses, after the fashion for unmarried girls. She feared that the older and nearer to death she was assumed to be, the bolder her enemies would become, so she dressed youthfully, wore thick make-up, and she would skip off to her rooms after their meetings, almost coquettishly. When she joked that she was ‘foolish and old’, de Maisse recognised that he was expected to demure. He often heard Elizabeth talk proudly ‘of the friendship her people bore her, and how she loved them no less than they her, and she would rather die than see any diminution of the one part or the other’.7 But it was also clear to him that the ordinary people hated her favoured servant William Cecil ‘strangely’, and some courtiers seemed to view her almost with contempt.
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