Elizabeth I's Secret Lover

by Robert Stedall

  Eventually, Elizabeth graciously ‘deplored that she was not ten years younger’,8 and politely refused Charles IX, causing the French to think again. In another attempt to stop the Austrian negotiation, they now bribed Eric of Sweden to resurrect his suit, but Elizabeth showed no interest. With her suit to marry Maximilian rumbling on, the Austrian envoy – the Lutheran Adam Swetkowitz (or Zwetkovich), Baron Mitterburg – appeared in London, but was in no hurry to promote the Emperor until his future status in England was clarified. Cecil had jealously guarded the question of religion and made clear that, as a consort, Maximilian would have no authority. Such conditions were unlikely to gain Habsburg support. Although Cecil and Sussex laboured hard to arrange a visit for Maximilian, the Emperor was ‘doubtful about the religious conditions and did not want to risk a loss of dignity’.9

  Although Mitterburg hoped that Robert might be instrumental in helping to modify Cecil’s terms, Cecil tried to weaken Robert’s standing by telling de Silva that Elizabeth would never marry him. He even persuaded her to confirm this. On 9 October, de Silva reported that Elizabeth had told him in confidence:

  I am insulted both in England and abroad for having shown too much favour to Lord Robert. I am spoken of as if I were an immodest woman. I ought not to wonder at it: I have favoured him because of his excellent disposition and his many merits, but I am young, and he is young and therefore we have both been slandered. God knows they do us grievous wrong, and the time will come when the world will know it also. A thousand eyes see all that I do, and calumny will not fasten on me for ever.10

  It may have been fortuitous that she was not pregnant.

  In his determination to keep Spain and France from joining in alliance against heretic England, Cecil strongly disapproved of Robert’s interference in Elizabeth’s marriage negotiations, as he wanted a political marriage beneficial to the English interest. The demise of Huguenot influence in France heralded strongly Catholic French calls for an alliance with Spain to extirpate heresy. Catherine de Medici had already met her daughter, Elisabeth to Valois, now Queen of Spain, at Bayonne to cement closer ties. This posed the real threat of Mary Queen of Scots being promoted as the English Queen. Cecil had always relied on balancing French and Spanish rivalry. If Elizabeth married one of their Continental allies, even one with Protestant sympathies, he hoped that England would be provided with protection.

  Such niceties were completely lost on Robert, and Cecil considered him a loose cannon. That is not to suggest that Cecil particularly disliked him, and they always remained on cordial terms, but as has been shown, he saw Robert’s approach to European politics as erratic and hawkish. He was always careful not to reveal his personal views, but his detailed notes setting out advantages and disadvantages show his true concerns. While these remained hidden, he manipulated others to take the lead. This was not difficult to achieve given Norfolk’s intense dislike of Robert. Norfolk repeatedly told Robert not to interfere with the Government’s European marriage negotiations in which he was involved. There was no love lost between them. ‘When Norfolk showed himself anxious that the Queen should accept the Archduke Charles, Lord Robert told him that no true Englishman wanted to see the Queen married to a foreigner.’11 Matters came to a head in March 1565 during a real tennis match between them at Whitehall in Elizabeth’s presence. Norfolk was incensed at Robert’s impertinence for leaning over to use Elizabeth’s napkin to wipe his sweating brow. It was Elizabeth’s turn to become indignant when Norfolk threatened Robert with his racquet.

  Sussex was another senior peer who detested Robert’s meddling. In July 1565, when Robert tried to rekindle his suit to marry Elizabeth, he faced violent opposition from Sussex, who was about to go to the Continent with Norfolk to spearhead negotiations with the Archduke Charles. He considered that Elizabeth’s only important task was to marry and have children. He did not realise that it was she who would never agree to the Austrian match, and he blamed Robert for putting personal ambition above the interests of his country.

  Chapter 13 Marriage considerations

  Following Elizabeth’s illness with smallpox in 1562, her succession had become a matter of increased concern. The Protestant faith was at stake. Although Mary Queen of Scots had readied herself for news of Elizabeth’s death, no one supported her succession in the English Parliament. Opinion on Elizabeth’s likely successor seemed to be divided between Catherine Grey and Henry Hastings, who had now succeeded his father as 3rd Earl of Huntingdon and, following the death of Devon, was the Plantagenet claimant to the English throne. Cecil wanted to follow the will of Henry VIII by backing Catherine, but she had seriously diminished her chances by her own shortcomings and remained under arrest after her ill-advised marriage. With her children being deemed illegitimate, Elizabeth had no respect for her. It was generally assumed that Huntingdon would succeed. He was an ardent Puritan and had married Robert’s sister, Catherine Dudley, but they had no children. Although Robert strongly supported his brother-in-law, Elizabeth was wary of him. Despite Robert’s best efforts, this had resulted in Huntingdon being excluded from high office and, perhaps as a result, he became impoverished. He was devastated that Elizabeth might consider him untrustworthy and was only looking for some signal cause to confirm his loyalty.

  Huntingdon eventually sought permission from the Queen to sell his estates and to equip an army in support of the Huguenots. Given his financial difficulties, this might have seemed foolhardy. Elizabeth had no desire to see good English money being frittered away on some foreign cause and ‘refused out of hand’ to allow him ‘to withdraw himself and his wealth ‘in this strange sort’.1 Eventually her attitude thawed. Perhaps through Robert’s and even Cecil’s influence, he became an assiduous, if much hated, jailer of Mary Queen of Scots, and later achieved the politically important role of Lord President of the Council of the North.

  Despite the lack of English support for Mary Queen of Scots, the choice of her husband was of paramount interest. Although she had hoped to marry Philip II’s son, Don Carlos, his mental and physical disabilities made any possibility of this unthinkable, but neither Mary nor the Spanish ambassadors seem to have realised the extent of his incapacity. Although she also considered marriage to the Archduke Charles, she did not consider that the Austrian Tyrol offered sufficient military clout for her to assert her rights and did not want Elizabeth’s cast-off. With Catherine de Medici remaining in conflict with Mary’s Guise relations, she vetoed Mary’s marriage to another of her Valois sons. Cecil made it very clear that he wanted her choice of husband to be approved by the English interest. With Mary increasing her diplomatic pressure for nomination as Elizabeth’s heir, she sought a meeting with Elizabeth at York, which Cecil was determined to avoid.

  With Elizabeth’s marriage also being urgently considered by the Council, the majority seemed to believe that Robert was preferable to no husband at all. Sussex, who had quarrelled with Robert, wrote to Cecil that the most important outcome was to achieve a ‘child of the Queen’s body’. He continued: ‘Therefore, let her choose after her own affection; let her take the man at sight of whom all her senses are aroused by desire.’ That was the surest way to bring them a blessed Prince, and he declared: ‘Whomsoever she will choose, him will I love and honour, and serve to the uttermost.’ The Council sent a delegation hoping ‘that it would please your Majesty to dispose yourself to marry, where it shall please you, to whom it shall please you, and as soon as it shall please you’.2 Elizabeth merely prevaricated. As it was obvious that she wanted to retain Robert without marrying him, the delegation focused on her naming a successor. She told them that ‘she was very conscious of her duty to her people but that she would not declare herself yet on the succession issue “because I will not in so deep a matter wade with so shallow wit”’.3

  Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, together with the Bishops of London and Ely, wrote a joint letter to tell her that it was her duty to submit herself to marriage and childbearing as the only means o
f safeguarding the Protestant succession. Cecil’s confidante Sir Thomas Smith, the English ambassador in Paris, produced a series of addresses with characters, who argued the case in favour of childbirth, ‘to gain so precious treasure’ for ‘a little pain in birth of an hour or two, or at most one day’.4 During a sermon before Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey in January 1563, the Dean of Westminster, Dr Alexander Nowell told her:

  As the marriage of Queen Mary was a terrible plague to all England, so now the want of your marriage and issue is likely to prove as great a plague … If your parents had been of your mind, where had you been then? Or what had become of us now?5

  Cecil even prepared a Bill suggesting that if Elizabeth died without an heir, her divine authority would be transferred to the Council, making England an ‘aristocratic republic’.6 Parliament would then choose her successor, converting England into an elected hereditary monarchy. This, of course, predated the Glorious Revolution by 150 years. Elizabeth would have none of it. She stifled the Bill, preferring to live with uncertainty. If the Bill had been passed, there is considerable doubt who Parliament would have chosen.

  It seems that Elizabeth was influenced by the pressure placed on her and knew that a foreign marriage suit was politically desirable. Cecil remained immovable over Robert’s hopes and had told her that he would resign if she married him. Despite her popularity, she knew that marriage to Robert would threaten the real possibility of rebellion and assassination. With Robert apparently out of the running, despite his continuing close attendance on her, Elizabeth, with her political hat on, realised that she should extract herself from the relationship. Without discussing it with him in advance, she made the heart-wrenching decision that he should marry Mary Queen of Scots. In March 1563, she mentioned it to Maitland, who was in London to promote Mary’s nomination as her heir. Most people saw it as a ploy to delay Mary choosing a husband less wedded to the English interest, but Robert had already failed Elizabeth’s test of his integrity by promoting a scheme to revert England to Catholicism.

  Marriage between Robert and Mary was not a bad political alliance. He was a suitor entirely acceptable to the English interest, and the marriage was strongly supported by the key members of the Council including Cecil, no doubt because they wanted to end his interference with Elizabeth’s European marriage negotiations. Cecil may well have promoted the idea. Not only would it remove Robert from constant contact with Elizabeth, but by placing a staunch English ally in Scotland, the menace of Mary making a French or Spanish marriage would be ended. Robert would be a steadying hand, and it was assumed by everyone that their marriage would result in her being accepted as heir to the English throne. It had long been recognised that Cecil opposed this, but a letter he wrote to Sir Thomas Smith shows that Elizabeth was also in two minds about nominating her, even if married to Robert. He reported: ‘I see the Queen’s Majesty very desirous to have my Lord of Leicester placed in this high degree to be the Scottish Queen’s husband; but when it cometh to the conditions to be demanded [the English succession], I see her then remiss of her earnestness.’7 In the light of Elizabeth’s experience during the reign of Mary Tudor, when her position as de facto heir to the throne placed her at great risk, she remained determined not to nominate a successor who might act as a catalyst for rebellion against her rule. Cecil was always determined to prevent a Catholic succession, even by a monarch married to a Protestant. Nevertheless, he wrote a letter to Maitland wholly supportive of Robert’s marriage to Mary, saying that he:

  is a nobleman of birth – yea, noble also in qualities requisite, one void of all evil conditions that sometimes are heritable to princes and in goodness of nature and richness of good gifts comparable to any prince born, and, so it may be said with due reverence and without offence to princes, much better than a great sort now living. He is also an Englishman and so meet a man to carry with him a consent of this nation according to yours, which amongst all other aspects hath not the least interest. He is also dearly and singularly beloved [sic] esteemed of the Queen’s majesty, so as she can think no good turn nor fortune greater than may be well bestowed upon him.8

  Maitland was taken aback at the marriage proposal, particularly when Elizabeth told him that Robert was one ‘in whom nature had implanted so many graces, that if she wished to marry, she would prefer him to all the princes in the world’.9 He responded that:

  it was a great proof of love to his Queen that her Majesty was prepared to give her a thing so dearly prized by herself, but he did not think that the Queen of Scots would deprive her of the joy and solace of his companionship.10

  He was right. Mary considered marriage to Elizabeth’s cast off and her ‘groom’ as demeaning unless it was accompanied with recognition as Elizabeth’s heir. Furthermore, under no circumstances was Robert prepared to be put out to grass in Scotland, however attractive Mary might be. When he asked Sir James Melville what Mary thought about it, Melville admitted that she was ‘cold’. Melville reported:

  Then [Robert] began to purge himself of so proud a pretence as to marry so great a Queen, declaring he did not esteem himself worthy to wipe her shoes; declaring that the invention of the proposition proceeded from Mr. Cecil, his secret enemy. For if I, says he, should have appeared desirous of that marriage, I should have offended both the Queens and lost their favour.11

  Mary admitted that Robert told her privately that the proposal was a ‘mere fetch [contrivance]’ on Elizabeth’s part.12 Cecil also became nervous about it. He realised that if Robert were prepared to seek Spanish help to underpin his marriage to Elizabeth in return for supporting a Counter-Reformation, he was even more likely to do the same when married to Mary.

  Robert was in an impossible position. It seems that he was still secretly sharing Elizabeth’s bed and had no desire to spend the rest of his days isolated in Edinburgh. He believed that Cecil had dreamed up the plan as a means of getting him out of the way. Nevertheless, Thomas Randolph, the English ambassador in Scotland, was incredulous that Robert would forgo such a woman of perfect beauty as Mary. He wrote to Sir Henry Sidney: ‘How many countries, realms, cities and towns have been destroyed to satisfy the lusts of men for such women.’ Robert had spurned a kingdom and the chance to lie with her ‘in his naked arms’.13

  Robert desperately looked for a face-saving solution without offending Elizabeth, to enable him to re-establish his suit with her. He adopted a progressively more anti-Catholic stance to make himself less appealing to Mary, becoming one of their bitterest enemies. By 1564, he was firmly espousing the Puritan beliefs of his upbringing. Nevertheless, rumours about his private life made his cultivated strains of Puritan devotion appear hypocritical, particularly when the Earl of Leicester’s Men were performing some bawdy play. Furthermore, he was not averse to continuing his support for Catholics or Catholic causes that were useful to him.14

  When Cecil realised that Robert was unwilling to marry Mary, they hatched a plot to send Elizabeth’s Tudor cousin, Henry, Lord Darnley, to Scotland. He was a tall and athletic sportsman and a virtuoso on the lute, but seemed insufferably spoilt, bisexual and devoid of common sense. Neither of them had a good opinion of him. He was described by the Cardinal of Lorraine as a ‘gentil huteaudeau’ [agreeable nincompoop]. Despite this, he was male; he had been born in England and was dynastically third in line to the English throne after Mary and his mother, Margaret Lennox. Margaret had been scheming for him to marry Mary since her own failure to gain nomination as Mary Tudor’s heir. Their combined dynastic credentials seemed to make them unassailable. Unfortunately, Margaret had made unguarded comments that, once married, they should immediately claim the English throne; these were overheard by spies in her household.

  It may seem surprising that Cecil and Robert suddenly supported Darnley’s suit. They had had ample opportunity at the English court to see his shortcomings for themselves. Cecil concluded that, if Mary ‘take fantasy to this new guest, then shall they be sure of mischief’.15 His objective was to put paid t
o both their ambitions to be nominated as Elizabeth’s heir in one go. He gambled that if Darnley should marry Mary, he would destroy her credibility. ‘He probably considered the suit as another temporary diversion to delay her more serious opportunities, never expecting that Mary would tolerate his bisexual and boorish character for long.’16 What Cecil failed to appreciate was that their marriage would seriously jeopardise the status of the Protestant members of Mary’s Scottish Government, with whom he was closely allied.

  Darnley was a loose cannon. He had ambitions to obtain the English and Scottish thrones for himself. He portrayed himself to Continental superpowers as a more ardent Catholic than Mary, who was continuing to demonstrate toleration to her Reformist subjects. His arrival on the Scottish scene caused a ‘volte face’ in Continental opinion over Mary’s suitability to remain the Catholic pretender to succeed Elizabeth. Darnley had been cultivating Spanish support. It was now the Spanish rather than the French who backed their marriage and their claim to the English throne. De Silva in London reported:

  Considering the Queen of Scots’ good claims to the Crown of England, to which Darnley also pretends … the marriage is one that is favourable to our interests and should be supported to the full extent of our powers … if they will govern themselves not to be precipitate but will await a juncture when any attempt to upset their plans would be fruitless, I will then assist and aid them in the aim they have in view.17