Elizabeth I's Secret Lover

by Robert Stedall

  What mattered most was to prevent Catholic bishops and clergy from attempting to stir up trouble before the country became accustomed to her authority … There is no doubt that she believed she was God’s lieutenant on earth and that all subjects owed to her unconditional obedience.16

  It was convenient for her that at Mary’s death, five bishoprics were vacant, and five more incumbents died within the year. All were replaced by Protestants.

  The Supremacy Bill faced a bumpy ride through Parliament. Conservative bishops and peers argued ‘that only the Church could determine matters of belief’.17 Bedford stood up and asked whether it was true that when a Catholic deputation was sent to Rome during Mary’s reign, ‘the Roman Cardinals had offered to get them whores?’18 John White, Bishop of Winchester, and Thomas Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, ‘were charged with disobedience to common authority and were sent to the Tower’. Without them being present, the Bill was carried by three votes. London was very quickly restored to the Protestant faith. Within a few days all offenders held in prisons for their religion were released and it was clear that Philip II would ‘have no further government’ in England.

  It was ‘Puritanism [that] aroused [Elizabeth’s] indignation and abhorrence’.19 As Bishop White exclaimed: ‘The wolves be coming out of Geneva and other places of Germany, and hath sent their books before, full of pestilent doctrines, blasphemy and heresy to infect the people.’20 She hated John Knox, although they never met, but The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women was an anathema to her with its criticism of women rulers. Although it was not aimed against her, and Knox wrote ‘to convey his unfeigned love and reverence’,21 he told her that she ruled by the will of the people and not by dynastic right. She refused in future to have his name mentioned.

  Elizabeth was now surrounded by the 38-year-old Cecil and those other ‘brilliant sons of Cambridge with whom [her] education and life had been so intimately linked’.22 During the first six months of her reign, she reduced the Crown’s expenditure to £108,000 from the £267,000 spent during the last six months under Mary. This was largely achieved by ending English hostilities against France on behalf of the Spanish. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, signed on 2/3 April 1559, confirmed her as the rightful English Queen, but this was bought at a price. Calais was ceded to France and St Quentin restored to French control in exchange for French concessions in Italy. Thomas Gresham was sent to the Netherlands to negotiate repairs to English credit. Debased coinage issued by Mary had seriously interfered with English trade. It was now recalled and reissued in a reliable form.23

  Elizabeth’s marriage became a constant topic of concern. She made great efforts to string Philip II along as a suitor in the hope that he would ‘paralyse hostility at Rome’ and protect her right to the throne;24 this did much to prevent her being declared illegitimate. He soon ruled himself out by requiring her to convert to Catholicism and by admitting he would need to spend much time abroad. Nevertheless, Catholic though he was, he was determined to undermine Mary Queen of Scots’ claim to the English throne, as an Anglo-French alliance would threaten his means of communication through the Channel. He sent Gómez Suárez de Figueroa y Córdoba, Duke of Feria, as his ambassador to ensure that Elizabeth chose a husband acceptable to the Spanish interest. Philip was confident that Feria, as a Spanish grandee, would be able to influence her. He had been Mary Tudor’s principal adviser, but ‘was devoid of humour, proud and patronising’.25 When he explained that she owed her throne to his master’s goodwill, Elizabeth made clear that she was no one’s puppet and owed her position to the support of the English people. He soon realised that this 25-year-old was a power to be reckoned with. He wrote to Philip: ‘She seems to me incomparably more feared than her sister, and gives her orders, and has her way as absolutely her father did. Her present Comptroller, Parry, and Secretary Cecil govern the Kingdom …’ Having heeded the Council’s concern at the prospect of a Spanish marriage, she kept Feria’s attention with vague promises, until she felt sufficiently secure to tell him that she had decided not to marry for the time being. ‘He was exasperated at the cool manner in which he was treated. Instead of being given a room at court and taken into counsel on every question, as he expected, he found himself in embarrassing ignorance of what was going on.’26

  When it came to diplomacy, Elizabeth adopted indecisiveness as a weapon in a manner that exasperated her advisers but did much to protect her in the early part of her reign. She learned her skills extremely quickly, and her ability to survive unscathed from the rebellions of both Thomas Seymour and Wyatt had already demonstrated that she could look after herself. She refused to invade Scotland to back its rebel cause led by Lord James Stewart, the illegitimate half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots, against the Queen Regent, but provided him with money while hotly denying any involvement to the foreign ambassadors in London, ‘at which she was expert to the point of genius’. Her powers of dissimulation were such that the ambassadors had to admit: ‘She is the best hand at the game living.’27 It was these skills that she would use to great effect to defend herself from criticism of her morality.

  Initial diplomacy was all about finding Elizabeth a husband. She ‘was far and away the best marriage to be had in Europe’.28 She gave the impression of very great intelligence and her love of music and dancing made her attractive. According to Sir Richard Baker: ‘She was of stature indifferent tall, slender and straight.’ She had ‘delightful hands’ with ‘fingers of unusual length … whiter than whitest snow’.29 She had piercing eyes but seems to have been short-sighted, so that enlarged pupils hid their golden yellow colour, making them appear black. Nevertheless, Feria considered her ‘the daughter of the Devil and [one of] the greatest scoundrels and heretics in the land’.30 He concluded: ‘I am afraid that one fine day we shall find this woman married, and I shall be the last person in the place to know anything about it.’31

  Elizabeth needed to marry and a powerful alliance would be welcome, but the principal concern was for her to produce an heir. Without this, there was every prospect of war, with the French and Spanish fighting it out on English soil. Philip put forward his cousins, Archdukes Ferdinand and Charles, brothers of the Emperor Maximilian. Ferdinand, whose Catholicism was unassailable, was soon withdrawn as Elizabeth was ‘not sound in religion’, and the Emperor became concerned at the thought of subjecting Charles ‘to the danger of forfeiting the eternal salvation of his soul’.32 Quite apart from the religious complexity, they had never met, and after Henry VIII’s disappointment on first seeing Anne of Cleves, and Philip’s agony on meeting Mary Tudor, Elizabeth would not trust a portrait and ‘would not give the Archduke cause to curse’.33 Although there were plans to bring Charles to England incognito, the Emperor Maximilian would not hear of it. The Prince of Savoy, another Habsburg connection, was also still being considered. Prince Eric, heir to the Swedish throne, was another to put his name forward, and his ambassador showered lavish presents on members of the court, who accepted his gifts, but laughed ‘at his outlandish ways’.34 Elizabeth, who was a fine exponent of courtly love, enjoyed all the attention and strung everyone along. Nevertheless, she claimed to have no desire for the wedded state: ‘In the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.’35 The House of Commons ‘did not think that there was anything alarming in the prating about virginity. Let political considerations or passion single out some man, and another protesting spinster would go the way of most flesh.’36 Even she admitted that ‘she was but human and not insensible to human emotions and impulses, and when it became a question of the weal of her kingdom, or it might be for other reasons, her heart and mind might change.’37 Robert was married, apparently quite happily, and initially did not consider himself as a suitor. This did not stop her enjoying his company. He was very attractive and turned heads. By 18 April 1559, Feria was writing:

  During the last few days Lord Ro
bert has come so much into favour that he does what he likes with affairs and it is even said that her Majesty visits him in his chamber day and night. People talk of this so freely that they go so far as to say that his wife has a malady in one of her breasts and the Queen is only waiting for her to die to marry Lord Robert. I can assure your Majesty that matters have reached such a pass that I have been brought to consider whether it would not be well to approach Lord Robert on your Majesty’s behalf promising your help and favour and coming to terms with him.38

  Italian observers wrote similar reports. Eleven days later, Feria wrote: ‘Sometimes she speaks like a woman who will only accept a great prince, and then they say she is in love with Lord Robert and will never let him leave her.’39

  Elizabeth showered Robert with gifts. He was granted parcels of land in Kent, Leicestershire and Yorkshire, with the manor on the river at Kew. He also became Constable and Lieutenant of Windsor Castle and Park. On 23 April 1559, he was made a Knight of the Garter along with Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, and Edward Manners, 3rd Earl of Rutland, both allies of Cecil. Yet, Robert was given preferential treatment. He was excused payment of the parliamentary subsidy in 1559, while Norfolk had to pay £160, one of the highest charges in the country. Cecil was concerned that their shared pleasure in music and dancing was encouraging a growing infatuation between them. It seemed that only Amy’s life stood between Robert and the Crown.40 He was now the focus of attention for all those wishing to press suits upon the Queen.41 As her intermediary, he was inundated with letters and requests, and no doubt benefited financially from having the Queen’s ear. He was particularly responsible for the preferment of staunch Protestants to bishoprics and deaneries. These included Thomas Young, Archbishop of York; Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London; Robert Horne, Dean of Durham and later Bishop of Winchester; Edwin Sandys, Bishop of Worcester, and Edmund Scambler, Bishop of Peterborough. Such patronage did little to maintain his rapport with Cecil and senior peers led by Norfolk, who formed an anti-Dudley faction at court.

  Elizabeth also tasked Robert with brokering her foreign marriage negotiations. On the face of it, he was ideally placed for this. He had known Elizabeth from childhood and had served under the King of Spain. Nevertheless, her reluctance to commit herself was interpreted as an attempt by him to promote his own suit at the expense of more desirable political attachments. ‘The fungus of bitter envy grew naturally and luxuriantly on the tree of Elizabethan court life.’42 Suits for Elizabeth’s hand arrived from many quarters. In October, there were ‘ten or twelve [ambassadors] competing for [her] favour and eyeing each other in a far from friendly manner’.43 Eric of Sweden had been formally rejected in May 1559, but he came back for more and faced four rejections in all, even after threatening to ‘hasten to her through the seas, dangers and enemies, confident that she would not chide his faith and zeal’.44 Having several suitors provided a degree of safeguard from hostility elsewhere, and she strung along the Archduke Charles, who was politically the best match, as an insurance policy.45

  While the Council expressed particular hopes that she would choose within the realm, Robert was certainly not the preferred candidate. The widowed Arundel, who was Catholic and aged 46, seemed to believe that his standing made him a serious contender, but ‘he was not handsome, and rather silly and loutish’.46 With Elizabeth’s enjoyment of the ritual of elaborate courtship, she played him along, spending five days at his home at Arundel in August 1559, until he believed that he had won her favour. He had become an implacable enemy of the Dudleys after imprisonment by Northumberland in the Tower without trial, but Elizabeth never trusted him. In May, while Robert was at Windsor on a hunting expedition, she also flirted with the diplomat, Sir William Pickering, a ‘comely’ 43-year-old bachelor, ‘very much a lady’s man, and said to have enjoyed the intimacy of many’.47 Arundel was upset when she granted Pickering rooms in Whitehall Palace. This enabled her to play them off against each other, and Pickering over-stretched his diplomatic credentials by calling Arundel ‘an impudent, discourteous knave’.48 She told the Council, which had become anxious at her delaying tactics:

  Whenever it might please God to incline her heart to marry, her choice would light upon one who would be as careful for the preservation of the realm as she herself; or if it pleases Him to continue her still in this mind to live unmarried, provision would be made for the succession to the throne.49

  Robert may not have been too concerned at the threat posed by either Arundel or Pickering but another candidate, the Scottish James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, a confirmed Protestant, was more concerning. He was in line to the Scottish throne after Mary Queen of Scots and his father, Châtelherault, the Scottish Regent. This was not the first time that such a marriage had been considered. Twelve years earlier, Henry VIII had hoped that an English/Scottish alliance could be reinforced by Châtelherault’s son marrying his younger daughter, while Prince Edward married Mary Queen of Scots. With these negotiations coming to nothing, Arran spent much of his upbringing in France and distinguished himself against the Spanish at St Quentin. While still in France, rumours of his interest in marrying Elizabeth started to spread, and he was threatened with arrest. In August 1559, Cecil spirited him to London to test whether, once more, he should be considered as Elizabeth’s spouse or whether he had potential as a Scottish Regent rather than Lord James Stewart. Cecil, who housed Arran at his home in Canon Row, Westminster, also discussed the possibility of Arran and Elizabeth replacing Mary Queen of Scots, who remained in France, on the Scottish throne.

  Robert saw Arran’s suit as threatening to his own relationship with Elizabeth and ‘at once set about frustrating Cecil’s national policy for his personal advantage’.50 He immediately renewed discussions for the Austrian match of the Archduke Charles. He seems to have hoodwinked his sister, Mary Sidney, into believing that Elizabeth was supportive of the Archduke’s suit. Acting on Robert’s instruction, she told the new Spanish ambassador, Alvarez de Quadra, Bishop of Aquila, of Elizabeth’s interest, but claimed that, as a woman, she would need to be ‘teased’ into it. It may well be that Elizabeth was in on the act and played along ‘with pretended anticipation of the coming of her Imperial lover’.51 Although de Quadra called for the Archduke Charles to visit, when he raised the proposal with Elizabeth she immediately backed off, but on Mary Sidney’s advice he continued to press her. Mary was highly embarrassed, believing that she had been duped by Robert. Both she and Sir Henry were furious with him, but their anger quickly subsided. Nevertheless, de Quadra considered Robert devious. Cecil was also extremely angry at him trying to thwart his objective of keeping the Archduke’s suit simmering along, without it coming to fruition. He now concluded that Robert ‘was ready to swear allegiance to any cause to serve his purpose of dominating the Queen, a purpose which was … dangerous to the national welfare’.52 When de Quadra realised that Robert was using the Archduke as a decoy to thwart Arran’s suit, Robert began promoting the match of Eric of Sweden. Meanwhile his enemies whispered that he was planning to poison his wife and to marry Elizabeth himself.53

  Although Arran was interviewed by Elizabeth in London, he came up short and the marriage proposal came to nothing. It is not clear whether Robert’s intervention played a part in this. Tragically, Arran’s family suffered from a strain of inherited insanity. The first reports of him being delusional arose during the siege of Leith in the following year, but, by 1562, he had become completely deranged and had to be locked away. It is quite possible that signs of madness were already manifesting themselves in London, or it may be that Elizabeth was too infatuated with Robert to contemplate Arran. Unfortunately, there is no written explanation available.

  To develop his political skills, Robert was elected as a Member of Parliament for Norfolk, where he was gaining local respect, but Cecil blocked him from joining the Council. No one could accuse him of a lack of conscientiousness, but politics required an incisive mind. Nevertheless, his provision of patronage gave him the autho
rity to influence the monarch.54 This brought him into conflict with Cecil, who found himself increasingly insecure after having his policies countered. Despite being knighted, Cecil was not an aristocrat and his position depended on the Queen’s goodwill. He was careful not to display any resentment at the favours she showed to Robert, but preferred to cultivate the 24-year-old Norfolk, Robert’s rival.

  Robert’s forte was in organising court functions. In May 1559, he greeted the French mission, which arrived to ratify the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, meeting them at Tower Wharf and escorting them to their lodgings. He arranged ‘five days of banquets, processions and entertainments, all of which demanded his presence’.55 In October he welcomed Duke John of Finland, who arrived at Harwich to promote the suit of his brother, Prince Eric of Sweden. Eric had sent Elizabeth glamourous presents of ermine fur, and both gold and silver money.56 With the French looking for any means to prevent her from making a Habsburg alliance they promoted Eric, but, to Robert’s relief, Elizabeth remained disinterested, although the suit lingered on.

  In July 1559, political uncertainty was heightened when Henry II of France was killed in a jousting accident in Paris, resulting in Mary Queen of Scots becoming the French Queen consort. Her ambitious Guise uncles were quick to assume control. This resulted in additional French troops being sent to Scotland to support their sister, Marie of Guise, in her struggle to maintain the Scottish throne for her daughter. The English Government saw their arrival as a prelude to a French incursion into England from the north. The Protestant lords in Scotland asked Elizabeth for assistance to oust them, but she remained lukewarm. She detested the republican sentiments of Calvinist doctrine as espoused by John Knox and needed to maintain peace with France, so dearly won by the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. Although Norfolk waited for her instructions at Berwick, she frustrated Cecil by leaving his invasion force inadequately manned and equipped, despite the Scottish lords’ good progress against the hard-pressed French. When she at last relented, Norfolk’s attack on the French garrison at Leith on 7 May 1560 resulted in him being repulsed with the loss of 1,000 men. This was no disappointment to Robert. It did not help that Scottish prostitutes in Leith, not wanting to lose their French clientele, threw burning coals from the walls onto the attackers!