Elizabeth I's Secret Lover

by Robert Stedall

  Mary’s honeymoon period with the public did not last long. Her initial welcome soon turned to ‘mistrust, hatred and contempt’.15 She faced immediate opposition to the dismantling of the religious structure established over the previous twenty years. When her chaplain preached at St Paul’s Cross, there was a riot. A dagger was hurled at him and he was lucky to escape with his life. The Council was split into factions, particularly when she began to rely on priests and foreigners for advice. ‘Parliament, when it met in October, proved uncooperative about repealing old statutes.’16 Nevertheless, an Act of Repeal was used to dissolve the religious laws established by Edward VI. All religious services were now to be conducted in Latin. Most unwisely, Suffolk abused Mary’s clemency by expressing his concern at her changes. If he wanted to protect his daughter in the Tower, he needed to keep his mouth shut.

  Elizabeth, who was now 20, made every show of supporting her sister. She attended Mary’s coronation at Westminster Abbey wearing a heavy gold coronet and driving in a litter accompanied by Anne of Cleves.17 With the 38-year-old Mary devoting herself to the service of God and the restoration of the Catholic faith, opposition only grew. It was rumoured that she was contemplating marriage in hope of providing a Catholic heir. Although she considered her second cousin, the lacklustre Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, the Plantagenet pretender to the throne, he was a Protestant. (Courtenay was a great-grandson of Edward IV, through his daughter, Katherine Plantagenet.) In late 1553, news was published that she was negotiating marriage to Philip, heir to the Spanish crown, ‘a prince ripe in age and estate, worthy of her pleasant embraces’,18 and eleven years her junior. She was too excited to conceal their betrothal and instructed Bishop Gardiner, now Lord Chancellor, to proclaim it throughout the realm as ‘the most splendid royal match since the Norman Conquest’.19

  A combination of national pride and anti-Catholic hatred caused an outcry. Scurrilous pamphlets were distributed, and Mary was obliged to double the palace guard. ‘A dog was thrown in the Presence Chamber at court with shaved head, cropped ears, a halter about its neck and a label saying that all priests and bishops should be hanged.’20 With Gardiner facing death threats, he was forced to take up residence in the royal household.21 Steps taken to restore law and order rapidly filled the prisons. Hundreds fled to Germany and Switzerland to avoid charges of heresy and treason and to seek the safety of the more extreme centres of Protestant reform. None of this helped the prisoners in the Tower, and the Queen was advised to take action against rival ‘claimants to the throne, in whose interests rebellions might be launched’.22

  The people most at risk from any purge of royal rivals were the Princess Elizabeth and Jane Grey. Elizabeth was retained at court, but irritated Mary by displaying half-hearted conformity to the restored Catholic faith.23 Jane’s problems were more immediate. On 13 November, she was brought to trial at the Guildhall together with Guildford, Ambrose and Henry Dudley and Archbishop Cranmer. She was dressed entirely in black as a sign of her penitence, carrying a prayer book in her hand. Although Cranmer initially quibbled about pleading guilty, all of them ultimately confessed to high treason and were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. As was normal practice in treason trials, none of the accused was permitted to speak in their defence and no witnesses were called. They showed no sign of distress before being returned to their quarters in the Tower. It is probable that Mary hoped eventually to release them, as she had already released Suffolk.

  Robert had to wait for his trial as his treasons had occurred in Norfolk, and local evidence was needed. On 9 January, a commission of ‘oyer and terminer’24 was held in the Shire house at Norwich. It found that he had:

  possessed and in warlike manner fortified [King’s Lynn] and there traitorously published and proclaimed to be Queen of this realm of England one Jane Dudley … and that … with [Northumberland] and … other traitors he continued to levy very cruel war against the said Queen Mary his sovereign and … falsely and treacherously worked for, abetted and encompassed the utter destruction of the said Queen …25

  On receiving this report, Thomas White, the Lord Mayor of London, assembled a court at Guildhall to hear Robert’s plea. This was in the name of ‘Robert Dudley’, as his courtesy title had disappeared with his father’s attainder. The court was to consider evidence, pass judgement and pronounce sentence. On 22 January 1554, he arrived from the Tower on foot, preceded by the Gentleman Gaoler bearing his axe. It was bitterly cold, and the mood of the people was tense. With Spaniards now being frequent visitors to London, few citizens waited in the streets to jeer him as he passed, and there were growing rumours of rebellion in the country. When Robert pleaded guilty, he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, as befitted a traitor. Yet again, hope remained that his sentence would not be carried out.

  Jane, who remained steadfastly Protestant, continued to be held in the Tower. It was not just Northumberland, whose attempt to recant had gained her disrespect. Dr Thomas Harding, a former chaplain at Bradgate Park, chose Mary’s accession as the time to convert to Catholicism. She lamented the ‘state of his soul’ and wrote severely to reduce him to repentance. She referred to him as ‘the deformed imp of the devil … now the unshamefaced paramour of antichrist … O wretched and unhappy man, what art thou but dust and ashes?’26 This was no shrinking violet!

  The shock of Harding’s conversion can have been nothing to that of Jane’s father accepting Catholic rites. This seems to have been entirely political, as an attempt to protect Jane when condemned to death. Suffolk’s former chaplain, John Hooper, had noted him as ‘pious, good, and brave, and distinguished in the cause of Christ’.27 His conversion did not involve any outward display of conformity as required of Northumberland. His claim to support the Spanish marriage seems to have had the desired effect on Mary, who ‘reinstated him by means of a general pardon’.28 This took the pressure off any decision on the future of Jane and the remaining Dudley sons, so that the conditions of their imprisonment in the Tower were relaxed. Amy was able to visit Robert ‘at any convenient time’, and it is probable that Jane and Guildford were permitted time together. Robert exercised on the leads of the Beauchamp Tower and was sometimes able to meet other prisoners as a guest at the Lieutenant’s table. Northampton, who had been condemned beside Northumberland, was pardoned and permitted to leave the Tower.

  Even Elizabeth appeared to conform to the Catholic faith, despite Jane’s praise for her ‘religious modesty’.29 She asked Mary to send her ‘ornaments for her chapel: copes, chasubles, chalices, crosses, patens and other similar objects’.30 Yet she let her allies see ‘the perfunctory nature of her conversion’.31 Mary became suspicious of her involvement in ‘some great evil’32 and arranged for her house to be watched. Cecil took Mass at his home, and even Cheke, who was being held in the Tower, ‘could not face the fires of martyrdom, and recanted. Miserable and outcast, he retired to the country, where he died – of a broken heart, people said – in 1557.’33

  Mary’s betrothal to Philip of Spain caused great consternation. Parliament refused him the Crown Matrimonial, which would have subsumed England under Spanish rule by allowing him to rule England as King if Mary predeceased him. There were several plots contemplating the murder of the Queen to allow for the succession of Elizabeth, who was to be married to Devon. She was more popular than Jane, who was little known, but the threat of insurgency placed each of them in dire peril. Sir Thomas Wyatt led a rebellion in Kent, with a diversionary revolt in the West Country led by Sir Peter Carew. ‘With a treachery and ingratitude equalled only by his incompetence’,34 Suffolk raised a force in the Midlands to support Wyatt. This was extraordinarily unwise, given his daughter’s predicament in the Tower at a time when she was hoping for a pardon, but it shows that his new religious views were only skin-deep.

  Devon, who had already spent fifteen years in the Tower, generally in solitary confinement, was a nervous participator. When questioned, he revealed all he knew. This implicated
Suffolk. Mary tested Suffolk’s loyalty by sending instructions to Sheen for him to take command of royal forces levied against Wyatt’s Kentish men. By the time her messenger had arrived, Suffolk was already committed to rallying the West Midlands on Wyatt’s behalf with help from his younger brothers. Although he undertook to act on Mary’s instructions and Frances tried to make him abandon his unwise rebellion, he set off for his Leicestershire estates. This action was to result in Jane’s execution.

  As soon as Mary learned of Suffolk’s deception, she pronounced that he was ‘ungrateful for the favour he had received and the pardon he had obtained from his sovereign, after Northumberland’s sedition’.35 She sent Huntingdon to chase him down. Huntingdon was a good choice as he was in conflict with Suffolk over land acquisitions in Leicestershire. Suffolk was still calling for Jane’s restoration, even though Wyatt was planning to install Elizabeth on the throne. If Jane were not already doomed, this was the final straw. As always, Suffolk proved incompetent and Huntingdon quickly routed him, taking both his baggage and money. Although Suffolk managed to hide with his brothers at one of his properties, an estate worker seeking a reward for their capture exposed them, and Huntingdon brought them back to London under arrest. Although Suffolk wrote a confession, this no longer survives. It apparently displayed his irritation at arrest, rather than any penitence for his treasonable actions, despite implicating several of his fellow conspirators. It made no mention of Jane whose life was now in jeopardy.

  In Kent, Wyatt’s rebel army of 3,000 men marched on London. Although the veteran Duke of Norfolk confronted the insurgents, many of his men defected to the rebel cause. The remainder trailed back into London, ‘their coats torn, all ruined, without arrows or strings in their bows’.36 Mary showed ‘splendid courage’,37 urging Londoners to take up arms. ‘She had thus far retained the love of her people’,38 but her plans to marry Philip of Spain were unpopular.

  As Wyatt approached London, shipping was cleared from Tower Wharf, so that guns could be trained across the Thames. Although his men overran Southwark on 3 February 1554, they failed to take London Bridge.39 This forced them to head west and to cross the Thames at Kingston, from where they advanced through the west of London four days later. Being short of provisions, many crept away after failing to gain Londoners’ support. Wyatt reached the City walls at Ludgate, where the outcome hung in the balance for some hours, but he was forced back and surrendered at Temple Bar. With his bedraggled supporters, he was marched to the Tower for distribution within its overcrowded quarters.

  Urged on by her Catholic advisers, Mary inflicted savage reprisals on the rebels. Gardiner and his supporters then pushed her into approving the execution of Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley. Their concern was to remove possible rivals for the throne, who might jeopardise her Spanish marriage and incite more rebellion. Jane was probably advised of Mary’s decision on 7 February. She behaved with ‘great resolution’,40 determined to die steadfast to her faith. With her execution confirmed, Mary offered her one last opportunity to recant to save her immortal soul. She sent Dr John Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster, to debate with her, hoping that she would back down as everyone else seemed to be doing. Feckenham was a staunch Catholic, who had spent much of King Edward’s reign in the Tower. On his first visit, he realised he was making no progress, but, out of kindness, asked Mary for more time to win Jane over. Mary agreed to defer the execution date by three days until 12 March. Unlike Northumberland and her father, Jane welcomed death as a means of demonstrating martyrdom for her faith. She was well able to hold her own with Feckenham and was fired up by their debate. Despite being saddened by his failure, Feckenham respected her fortitude. Having developed a mutual understanding, he proved a great comfort to her, undertaking to remain at her side during her execution.

  On 12 February, Jane wrote some words to her father in her prayer book:

  The lord comfort your grace that in his word wherein all creatures only are to be comforted and though it has pleased god to take away two of your children yet think not I most humbly beseech your grace that you have lost them but trust that we by losing this mortal life and I for my part as I have honoured your grace in this life will pray for you in another life. Your grace’s humble daughter, Jane Dudley.41

  The Prayer book was then passed by her jailer to Guildford, who also wrote to Suffolk:

  Tarry not for I am even at the point of death: Your loving and obedient son wisheth unto your grace long life in this world with as much joy and comfort, as did I wished to myself, and in the world to come joy everlasting. Your most humble son to his death, G. Dudley.42

  Although Guildford requested a final meeting with Jane on the eve of their execution, Jane declined. Her focus was on remaining composed for the ordeal that was to follow.

  She let him answer that if their meeting could have been a means of consolation to their souls, she would have been very glad to see him, but as their meeting would only tend to increase their misery and pain, it was better to put it off for the time being, as they would meet shortly elsewhere and live bound by indissoluble ties.43

  This does not denote any great earthly feelings for him. She had never wanted to marry him, but their fates were now intertwined.

  Guildford was the first to face death. Having embraced his brothers, he was taken to the place of his father’s public execution at Tower Hill, outside the Tower. By all accounts he made a brave end, resolute in his faith to the last and refusing the ministrations of a Catholic priest.44 Jane saw his bleeding carcass from her lodging window as it was returned to the Tower. She cried out: ‘Oh Guildford, Guildford’, and was overcome by the reality of it all. Her own execution had to be delayed while she recovered her composure. When she was at last taken down, she was met by Sir John Brydges, the Lieutenant of the Tower. He much admired his courageous charge and she gave him her only remaining possession, her small prayer book, in which she had inscribed her messages. Her last entry ended with the words of Ecclesiastes: ‘There is a time to be born and a time to die and the day of death is better than the day of our birth.’ She did not have to face public execution but was taken to a specially erected scaffold on the green outside St Peter ad Vincula, in full view of the remaining Dudley brothers from the Beauchamp Tower. She walked to her place of execution, ‘prayed, spoke to a few bystanders, knelt and submitted her neck to the axe’.45 She had to be led, as a handkerchief had been placed round her eyes, but died with quiet fortitude from one swing of the axe. There is no memorial erected to her, but she was immediately recognised as a martyr. Such executions left a bitter taste.

  Suffolk, who had been arrested two days earlier, was executed on 23 February. Wyatt was hanged, drawn and quartered in April, but most of the remaining rebels were freed in a great show of compassion. They were marched through the London streets in bonds to the tiltyard at Westminster, where they knelt before Mary to receive her pardon. Cecil’s ally, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, was acquitted by a London jury and survived to become one of Elizabeth’s foremost advisers.

  Gallows were set up all over London for the religious persecution that was to follow. Prisons became so overcrowded that many prisoners were housed in churches, ‘forty or more at a time’.46

  Chapter 7 Surviving Mary Tudor’s reign of terror

  In the wake of Wyatt’s rebellion, Elizabeth was summoned from Ashridge, but feigned illness, causing Mary to place more spies in her household. It is difficult to judge the extent of her complicity, but she was too cunning to be incriminated and Wyatt’s later testimony exonerated her. There can be little doubt that Cecil had advised her how to act.

  Three councillors arrived to collect Elizabeth for examination at the Tower. Although she had pleaded with Mary to send her elsewhere, Gardiner ‘had persuaded the Queen and bullied the Council’.1 Renard urged Mary not to miss the ‘heaven-sent’ opportunity to remove her head. ‘He had noted her attraction to the people, which he thought might menace the prospects for his master’s son, the Pr
ince of Spain.’2 She moved there by slow stages, ‘prostrate with anxiety’ and ‘all swollen’.3 On arrival, she travelled through ‘a city of horror and desolation, where traitors’ heads and quarters spoke their obscene warning from the City gates and twenty gallows stood to recall a day of awful butchery just past’.4 She reached the Privy Stairs (not Traitors’ Gate as is sometimes claimed) on Palm Sunday 1554, terrified to be at the place where her mother had been executed and buried. She made a brief speech to the Lieutenant: ‘Oh Lord! I never thought to have come in here as a prisoner; and I pray you all good friends and fellows, bear me witness that I come in no traitor but as true a woman to my Queen’s majesty as any is now living: and thereon I will take my death.’5 A party of ‘yeoman-warders broke rank, and, kneeling down, called out: “God save your Grace!”’6 Without Elizabeth, the Protestant cause would have no plausible figurehead on which to focus attention.

  With Wyatt’s objective having been to place Elizabeth on the throne, Gardiner was convinced that she must be implicated. Despite her repeated denials of involvement, she and those in her service faced remorseless interrogation, but she was already a master of duplicity and professed her loving allegiance to Mary and adherence to the Roman Catholic faith. Although it appeared that Wyatt had written letters to her on two occasions, she denied receiving them and there was no evidence that she had replied.7

  Elizabeth was housed in the Bell Tower, next to Robert in the Beauchamp Tower. With the execution of Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley having removed any potential rivalry between the Dudley family and Elizabeth, they were not initially permitted to see each other. She was surrounded by the strictest security, with five guards whenever she stepped out of her room. Her only meetings with Robert would have been as guests at the Lieutenant’s table, but he may have smuggled messages of encouragement to her. For several weeks, she remained unwell and, being confined to her rooms, permission was granted for her to walk on the leads and later in the Privy Garden, where they may have been able to meet. Their shared experience in the Tower undoubtedly established a strong bond between them.8 This was only strengthened by Mary’s marriage to Philip of Spain which took place by proxy after Easter, followed, after his arrival, by a ceremony at Winchester Cathedral on 25 July 1554.